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Today was the Amazon picnic. Whee! Much better than last year, as now I know people. We rode there with Paul and got there fairly early to watch broomball, but we missed Paul's team that he was cheering for. So we sat down to have lunch, and were joined by Ami and Katie (Ami's on my volleyball team), and then after lunch got up and wandered around. We ran into Ann and Jacob and their friends at the beer garden but didn't stay long. And I got to see Shawn's family again and they look like they're doing well (his 4-year-old and 3-year-old daughters admired all my Hello Kitty stuff). Eli finally got to meet Dan K for a few minutes and see what I mean about "nicest guy ever, but wow, it's good to have a 7-foot-tall guy to send after people when they break Perl code", and we also sat and talked to Yan and Aaron from my team, and Aaron's girlfriend, who is in town. That was good, but I kinda wish Colin had been there, he always makes things more amusing (plus I wanted to see what he thought of last night's Mariners game). I saw some other people I knew, and I met a few new people, and generally hung out and talked to people, watched some broomball, ate a lot of food, etc. Around 3pm we were picnicked out so we left. And we left our picnic shirts in Paul's car after coming back, oops. But yeah, it was a lot better than last year, it's nice to feel like I know a bunch of people now.
Came home, and meant to lie down for a few minutes before heading out, but I ended up reading half a chapter of Ty Cobb and then sleeping for 45 mins or so. I woke up because DJ called me. Oops. So at that point I splashed my groggy face with water and headed up north to Nykkel's house.
Dude, what a fun night :) Nykkel and DJ and I got dinner at the Japanese place half a block from his house, and then we went through our tourbooks and through a bunch of Nyk's stuff and talked about Ikebukuro, with the plan that we'd stay at the Kimi Ryokan since Nykkel stayed there most times he went to Tokyo. After that we called up Sylffor and had him come over for games. We played some DDR on Nykkel's Cobalt Flux pad - it really is very good, I had a few miscellaneous goods/misses from just misalignment, but overall it was really responsive, and I got fairly decent scores on a whole buncha heavy songs (including Shining Polaris, 8 greats, first time I'd ever played it on feet (if at all)). Jeff almost finished Random Oni a few times, too! After DDR, we played a game of Puerto Rico, which I totally smashed everyone on, but that was because DJ and Jeff had never seen it before. The final scores were 55/45/35/25, no joke. I did a lot of building, as usual. Nykkel did a lot of shipping. If I hadn't been allowed to staff my big buildings, he would have won. Anyway, it was fun but I was really zoned out and being kinda careless about several plays. Didn't matter. After that we looked around Nykkel's games and stuff, he has an impressive collection of games, CCGs, manga, books, CDs, everything... He has all of these old board games that are way out of print now. And he had this one bag full of paperback books and I swear that I also have about 70% of the books that were in there, mostly sci-fi. He even had bridge books, apparently he played back in college too! It's just so cool being friends with someone else who collects all the same stuff I do (well, minus his hentai stuff, *cough*), is as big a packrat, and is even MORE oldskool! After looking around stuff we went and played Dungeon, YES the old old game that even preceded Talisman. We just did the basic game, all warriors, and I ended up winning because everyone else ran off to the 4th-6th level monsters early on and I just went around beating up on smaller monsters and picking up a ton of treasure. Whee. At that point it was like midnight and Jeff said he was too tired and wanted to head home, so we all split. But overall it was a great night. And it was so good to see Jeff again, I really don't think I'd seen him since DM5. He really reminds me of someone I know, but I totally can't place who, it's really bizarre.
Anyway, I came home, and after an hour of waffling about it and reading LJ/etc, I called the Kimi Ryokan. I was prepared to talk in Japanese, but they answered in English so I just talked to them in English, figuring it was better than accidentally screwing up. (I had pretty much prepared a few sentences... "もしもし。。。予約したいんですが。。。" but just went ahead and did it in English.) But, I'm always SO scared of calling places and so I'm proud of myself for going ahead and doing this. So we're all set. Yay! Gosh, this is so weird. I kinda wish Nykkel was going with us. That would just make it more awesome. But oh well. JAMES, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU. But right now I need to sleep.
Came home, and meant to lie down for a few minutes before heading out, but I ended up reading half a chapter of Ty Cobb and then sleeping for 45 mins or so. I woke up because DJ called me. Oops. So at that point I splashed my groggy face with water and headed up north to Nykkel's house.
Dude, what a fun night :) Nykkel and DJ and I got dinner at the Japanese place half a block from his house, and then we went through our tourbooks and through a bunch of Nyk's stuff and talked about Ikebukuro, with the plan that we'd stay at the Kimi Ryokan since Nykkel stayed there most times he went to Tokyo. After that we called up Sylffor and had him come over for games. We played some DDR on Nykkel's Cobalt Flux pad - it really is very good, I had a few miscellaneous goods/misses from just misalignment, but overall it was really responsive, and I got fairly decent scores on a whole buncha heavy songs (including Shining Polaris, 8 greats, first time I'd ever played it on feet (if at all)). Jeff almost finished Random Oni a few times, too! After DDR, we played a game of Puerto Rico, which I totally smashed everyone on, but that was because DJ and Jeff had never seen it before. The final scores were 55/45/35/25, no joke. I did a lot of building, as usual. Nykkel did a lot of shipping. If I hadn't been allowed to staff my big buildings, he would have won. Anyway, it was fun but I was really zoned out and being kinda careless about several plays. Didn't matter. After that we looked around Nykkel's games and stuff, he has an impressive collection of games, CCGs, manga, books, CDs, everything... He has all of these old board games that are way out of print now. And he had this one bag full of paperback books and I swear that I also have about 70% of the books that were in there, mostly sci-fi. He even had bridge books, apparently he played back in college too! It's just so cool being friends with someone else who collects all the same stuff I do (well, minus his hentai stuff, *cough*), is as big a packrat, and is even MORE oldskool! After looking around stuff we went and played Dungeon, YES the old old game that even preceded Talisman. We just did the basic game, all warriors, and I ended up winning because everyone else ran off to the 4th-6th level monsters early on and I just went around beating up on smaller monsters and picking up a ton of treasure. Whee. At that point it was like midnight and Jeff said he was too tired and wanted to head home, so we all split. But overall it was a great night. And it was so good to see Jeff again, I really don't think I'd seen him since DM5. He really reminds me of someone I know, but I totally can't place who, it's really bizarre.
Anyway, I came home, and after an hour of waffling about it and reading LJ/etc, I called the Kimi Ryokan. I was prepared to talk in Japanese, but they answered in English so I just talked to them in English, figuring it was better than accidentally screwing up. (I had pretty much prepared a few sentences... "もしもし。。。予約したいんですが。。。" but just went ahead and did it in English.) But, I'm always SO scared of calling places and so I'm proud of myself for going ahead and doing this. So we're all set. Yay! Gosh, this is so weird. I kinda wish Nykkel was going with us. That would just make it more awesome. But oh well. JAMES, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU. But right now I need to sleep.
