Trip to Pittsburgh: Friday: Lounge, Cosmic, Tasty, CTSWF, JM, Cards.
Okay, so I'm in the lounge (the CMU Computer Science Undergrad lounge) with a whole bunch of people, and I'm writing this entry from ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nickjong's laptop. Oo! I'm sitting at a table... Nick is to my left, platypuslord is next to him, buoren is next, then rjmccall, and user. They're playing spades... at the other table, Pete, Roman, Tom7, Tom's friend Heather, and Martin, are playing Settlers of catan. There are other people around chatting about random stuff. It's like I never left... It should feel SO much weirder to be in the lounge after not being here for four months, but... it just feels natural to be sitting at a table with my friends playing cards at 1am on a Friday night. :)
Anyway, today: We got to town, got to Mike's, etc. Went to campus, looked for people... realized we don't know where anyone's offices are anymore (and that most people we knew are gone now anyway). Talked to Catherine Copetas for a while, and then went to the lounge. I got involved in a game of Puerto Rico with Adam, Nick, Paul Harada, and Mark Tomczak. It was a lot of fun. I'd play that game again! A lot of people came by, and many said hi, but none said anything like "hey, haven't seen you in a while". Weird, isn't it? It's like I never left... I wonder if anyone really noticed that I hadn't been around this year at all. Still.
After the game, Nick and I went to the Taste of India on campus to get some lunches for us and for Adam. The ToI guys were happy to see us. It was cool to walk across campus even if I don't recognize everyone anymore. We came back to the lounge and ate, and more people had shown up. It's so great to be around a huuuuuge group of friends again... I really really miss being Deanna. And I really really miss all of these people. Still. So I sat around playing some card gamerupes showed us, with err, nickjong and bpr. It was funky.
So eventually Carl showed up with Cosmic Encounter, and we played that. It was AWESOME. We did two powers, one moon each... so the game was, Dan was Philanthropist Loser, Kevin was Void Laser, Adam was Healer Connoisseur, Carl was Silencer Wraith, and I was Bully Macron. I completely forgot about Bully for the whole game - it's a nice power, but seriously, one has to actually remember that it exists to use it. Adam's combination meant he always had tons and tons of cards... and that Kevin's void was almost ineffective since Healer can undo Void effects. Shrug. Still, it was fun - Dan was leading for quite a bit of the game, then I got 4 external bases, then Kevin did too... and eventually Kevin won. But, it was great fun. I truly missed playing CE with this group.
Oh, yeah, so we have a digital camera now... I took tons of pictures of people all day. That was also fun, although I ran the battery low by 5pm. I went to check on zephyr to see what was up with dinner, and decided to just go to Alex (Groce)'s office to talk to him about plans. I ended up being there for like an hour talking to him and his officemates. Turns out his officemate Matt is from Seattle... went to UW, and even grew up in Kent! I wonder if he knows my friends from Kent. Forgot to ask. Anyway, that was cool, he had a lot of stuff to say about Seattle. Eventually I realized it was 5:40 and I was supposed to walk to Mike's, get the car, AND drive to Tasty, all by 6pm. So Alex and I woke up Eli and I went to walk to Mike's. Got there... went in to get the battery charger for the digital camera (Mike was insulating the door or something) and then drove to Tasty, getting vaguely lost because I forgot whether Highland was before Shady. Still.
Got to Tasty... and there was a huge group! Pete and Karen were there with their newborn son Kai, and Kevin W, and Eli, and Stewart Clamen had driven up for the weekend too!, and Rochberg was still at dinner, and Tomault, and Benoit, and Sprite, and Alex. Big group! Lots of food! I only stayed for like 45 minutes, but it was pretty neat. I never knew before that Benoit was left-handed, but now I know (since I sat to his left). It was good to see people and to take a lot of pictures of everyone. We actually charged the camera battery at Tasty... that was pretty funny in its own way. Plugged it into the wall while we ate food. At 7pm I excused myself and drove back to campus for Capture the Stuff with Flags.
Wow! There were like a hundred people there... and even better, I knew half the people in the room. Sooo good to see everyone again. The rules went pretty smoothly relatively... I thinksleepsong definitely over-did some of the rules, which was necessary given how some of them have gotten screwed up in the past. There were lots of silly antics from teki and damion and whitemage, and stuff. theadana showed up eventually and said "DUDE I'M SCARED OF DEANNA! I HIT ON HER MAN BY ACCIDENT!" or something. And so after that we divided up into teams. I was on the yellow team with pretty much all my friends... that rocked. We had Wean the first game, and I volunteered to be Jailor. It would have been more exciting if the game had lasted longer than 25 minutes -- I only got to do one jail break cycle! Anyway... we won! So we all went back upstairs, hung out again, and then split back up, this time we were Doherty. I took defense again... though at some point I did a little offense (never got a jail cycle though). Eventually I had this incident when I went to catch a guy in the physics wing thingy in the A-level, and... he had run in, and then Yanna was there too, and so she came in and out and he thought I had left too. I stayed there, quiet as could be (I can't run, but I'm GOOD at stealthy). Eventually the guy came back out. I lunged at him, and he was like "SHIT!" and turned to run, except that he tripped and fell. Unfortunately... I then tripped and fell over HIM, and smacked my face right into the wall. I DID tag him in the process, but unfortunately, I was in a LOT of pain. My nose hurt like HELL and I felt really dizzy. The guy was pretty nice about it, he was apologizing a ton and even waited there for me to get him and take him to jail, and was like "damn, you're the first one to actually get me on stealth", etc. But... I felt pretty lousy. Kelli (friend of allwein's who plays DDR and stuff) was jailor for our team and she was like "your nose looks pretty bad..." so I called it quits and went to the judges' room, where Alisa took a look at me, and poked my face a bit and said "well, it's not broken... let's get someone to get you some ice," and I ran my nose under the waterfountain while waiting for ice. In the meantime, the yellow team won again... and then ice showed up... and then like EVERYONE was like "what's wrong? Are you okay?" because I was crying and still swelling. I told my story, usually "Err... I had a bad run-in with a wall." Anyway... I decided to go say goodbye to a whole bunch of people and then leave.
I was kind of annoyed with this guy Andrej, who was putting fake fake flags all over the place... he had yellow pieces of felt that were obviously too small and offcolor to be real flags, but it still bugged the Red team a lot, and even a whole lot of us were yelling at him for it. I don't think he understood why it was really bad of him to be doing that.
Shrug. Anyway, went to the lounge... hung out with people for a while. Went to Joe Mama's in Oakland (it's an Italian restaurant with halfprice food after 11) with Tom7, Heather,rmitz, combinator, Pete, jcreed, Kaustuv, platypuslord, and Carl. We got split into 4-3-3 for tables... I sat with Dan and Carl, which was fun. Despite having not seen Carl in person in 3.5 months, I'm still vaguely hooked into his brain, which is nice to know. Infact, I just want to mention how totally awesome it is to be around him... it makes me so wonderfully happy just remembering that he exists. I know he's going to be either annoyed or flattered by that sentence, but hey, I don't care. :)
Anyway, after dinner there, we walked back here to the lounge, and I've been here ever since, playing a game of Lost Cities with Carl and then some suicide spades with people and now a big game of Cancellation Hearts. I know Eli's called like twice and told me to come home and go to sleep so we can get up tomorrow for stuff, but DAMN is it good to be around these people playing cards and stuff again. It's really like I never left... I almost want to cry, I'm so happy to be here with everyone.
Yes,whitemage, I know I write too much. :)
nickjong's laptop. Oo! I'm sitting at a table... Nick is to my left, platypuslord is next to him, buoren is next, then rjmccall, and user. They're playing spades... at the other table, Pete, Roman, Tom7, Tom's friend Heather, and Martin, are playing Settlers of catan. There are other people around chatting about random stuff. It's like I never left... It should feel SO much weirder to be in the lounge after not being here for four months, but... it just feels natural to be sitting at a table with my friends playing cards at 1am on a Friday night. :)Anyway, today: We got to town, got to Mike's, etc. Went to campus, looked for people... realized we don't know where anyone's offices are anymore (and that most people we knew are gone now anyway). Talked to Catherine Copetas for a while, and then went to the lounge. I got involved in a game of Puerto Rico with Adam, Nick, Paul Harada, and Mark Tomczak. It was a lot of fun. I'd play that game again! A lot of people came by, and many said hi, but none said anything like "hey, haven't seen you in a while". Weird, isn't it? It's like I never left... I wonder if anyone really noticed that I hadn't been around this year at all. Still.
After the game, Nick and I went to the Taste of India on campus to get some lunches for us and for Adam. The ToI guys were happy to see us. It was cool to walk across campus even if I don't recognize everyone anymore. We came back to the lounge and ate, and more people had shown up. It's so great to be around a huuuuuge group of friends again... I really really miss being Deanna. And I really really miss all of these people. Still. So I sat around playing some card game
rupes showed us, with err, nickjong and bpr. It was funky.So eventually Carl showed up with Cosmic Encounter, and we played that. It was AWESOME. We did two powers, one moon each... so the game was, Dan was Philanthropist Loser, Kevin was Void Laser, Adam was Healer Connoisseur, Carl was Silencer Wraith, and I was Bully Macron. I completely forgot about Bully for the whole game - it's a nice power, but seriously, one has to actually remember that it exists to use it. Adam's combination meant he always had tons and tons of cards... and that Kevin's void was almost ineffective since Healer can undo Void effects. Shrug. Still, it was fun - Dan was leading for quite a bit of the game, then I got 4 external bases, then Kevin did too... and eventually Kevin won. But, it was great fun. I truly missed playing CE with this group.
Oh, yeah, so we have a digital camera now... I took tons of pictures of people all day. That was also fun, although I ran the battery low by 5pm. I went to check on zephyr to see what was up with dinner, and decided to just go to Alex (Groce)'s office to talk to him about plans. I ended up being there for like an hour talking to him and his officemates. Turns out his officemate Matt is from Seattle... went to UW, and even grew up in Kent! I wonder if he knows my friends from Kent. Forgot to ask. Anyway, that was cool, he had a lot of stuff to say about Seattle. Eventually I realized it was 5:40 and I was supposed to walk to Mike's, get the car, AND drive to Tasty, all by 6pm. So Alex and I woke up Eli and I went to walk to Mike's. Got there... went in to get the battery charger for the digital camera (Mike was insulating the door or something) and then drove to Tasty, getting vaguely lost because I forgot whether Highland was before Shady. Still.
Got to Tasty... and there was a huge group! Pete and Karen were there with their newborn son Kai, and Kevin W, and Eli, and Stewart Clamen had driven up for the weekend too!, and Rochberg was still at dinner, and Tomault, and Benoit, and Sprite, and Alex. Big group! Lots of food! I only stayed for like 45 minutes, but it was pretty neat. I never knew before that Benoit was left-handed, but now I know (since I sat to his left). It was good to see people and to take a lot of pictures of everyone. We actually charged the camera battery at Tasty... that was pretty funny in its own way. Plugged it into the wall while we ate food. At 7pm I excused myself and drove back to campus for Capture the Stuff with Flags.
Wow! There were like a hundred people there... and even better, I knew half the people in the room. Sooo good to see everyone again. The rules went pretty smoothly relatively... I think
sleepsong definitely over-did some of the rules, which was necessary given how some of them have gotten screwed up in the past. There were lots of silly antics from teki and damion and whitemage, and stuff. theadana showed up eventually and said "DUDE I'M SCARED OF DEANNA! I HIT ON HER MAN BY ACCIDENT!" or something. And so after that we divided up into teams. I was on the yellow team with pretty much all my friends... that rocked. We had Wean the first game, and I volunteered to be Jailor. It would have been more exciting if the game had lasted longer than 25 minutes -- I only got to do one jail break cycle! Anyway... we won! So we all went back upstairs, hung out again, and then split back up, this time we were Doherty. I took defense again... though at some point I did a little offense (never got a jail cycle though). Eventually I had this incident when I went to catch a guy in the physics wing thingy in the A-level, and... he had run in, and then Yanna was there too, and so she came in and out and he thought I had left too. I stayed there, quiet as could be (I can't run, but I'm GOOD at stealthy). Eventually the guy came back out. I lunged at him, and he was like "SHIT!" and turned to run, except that he tripped and fell. Unfortunately... I then tripped and fell over HIM, and smacked my face right into the wall. I DID tag him in the process, but unfortunately, I was in a LOT of pain. My nose hurt like HELL and I felt really dizzy. The guy was pretty nice about it, he was apologizing a ton and even waited there for me to get him and take him to jail, and was like "damn, you're the first one to actually get me on stealth", etc. But... I felt pretty lousy. Kelli (friend of allwein's who plays DDR and stuff) was jailor for our team and she was like "your nose looks pretty bad..." so I called it quits and went to the judges' room, where Alisa took a look at me, and poked my face a bit and said "well, it's not broken... let's get someone to get you some ice," and I ran my nose under the waterfountain while waiting for ice. In the meantime, the yellow team won again... and then ice showed up... and then like EVERYONE was like "what's wrong? Are you okay?" because I was crying and still swelling. I told my story, usually "Err... I had a bad run-in with a wall." Anyway... I decided to go say goodbye to a whole bunch of people and then leave.I was kind of annoyed with this guy Andrej, who was putting fake fake flags all over the place... he had yellow pieces of felt that were obviously too small and offcolor to be real flags, but it still bugged the Red team a lot, and even a whole lot of us were yelling at him for it. I don't think he understood why it was really bad of him to be doing that.
Shrug. Anyway, went to the lounge... hung out with people for a while. Went to Joe Mama's in Oakland (it's an Italian restaurant with halfprice food after 11) with Tom7, Heather,
rmitz, combinator, Pete, jcreed, Kaustuv, platypuslord, and Carl. We got split into 4-3-3 for tables... I sat with Dan and Carl, which was fun. Despite having not seen Carl in person in 3.5 months, I'm still vaguely hooked into his brain, which is nice to know. Infact, I just want to mention how totally awesome it is to be around him... it makes me so wonderfully happy just remembering that he exists. I know he's going to be either annoyed or flattered by that sentence, but hey, I don't care. :) Anyway, after dinner there, we walked back here to the lounge, and I've been here ever since, playing a game of Lost Cities with Carl and then some suicide spades with people and now a big game of Cancellation Hearts. I know Eli's called like twice and told me to come home and go to sleep so we can get up tomorrow for stuff, but DAMN is it good to be around these people playing cards and stuff again. It's really like I never left... I almost want to cry, I'm so happy to be here with everyone.
Yes,
whitemage, I know I write too much. :)
no subject
I've spent this weekend playing games myself - hee, I played Puerto Rico on the same day as you! Didn't get to play Cosmic Encounter, but the convention, ConSummation, had an ongoing meta-game called Cosmic Convention in which all con attendees had one special power that (very slightly) affects gameplay. These powers can be traded under certain circumstances.
For instance, at the start of the con, I was Sauron, who had the power of Seeing - the power to look at a little secret information from another player. At the end, I was the National Enquirer - I quote:
"You have the power of impertinence. Once per game, you may ask another player a question that is not relevant to the game. They may either answer truthfully, or block. Legitimate blocks are a punch, a slap round the face or a jug of cold water over the head."
It was very silly indeed, but silly in a very satisfactory fashion. That said, I fear that most of even the UK games-con-going crowd are too old and straight-laced for a game of CTSWF. :-(