How I Spent My Thanksgiving Weekend
Thursday morning we got up a little later than intended and drove to Portland. I drove the first 70 miles until I was getting sleepy and then we stopped at a gas station, filled the tank, and continued on our way. Got to the Big House Of Thanksgiving at around 2:30, which was about half an hour after they started eating Thanksgiving dinner, which was just as well, because it meant we didn't have to wait in line for anything.
(Thanksgiving dinner was at... I'm not sure whose house it actually was. I think it was Eli's brother's wife's aunt's house. It was a really really old and nice house in the suburbs of Portland that was very mazelike at times.)
We ate food, we hung out talking to people, we helped put together a puzzle, we wandered around the house, and then we went downstairs and played some pinball and foosball. They had a Firepower pinball machine in the basement! (Firepower is like, one of the first multiball machines ever). It took me forever but I got a multiball... the main problem was that I was taking turns playing with two little kids that didn't really know what they were doing. God, I hate little kids. I know it's dumb but I just get frustrated with little kids ousting you from foosball games or getting in your way during pinball or whatnot, and knowing that I'm not allowed to yell at them or tell them to go the fuck away. Oh well. Man, sometimes when I see these magnificent old pinball machines in someone's basement, I can't help but wonder if they know exactly what they have...
So after that we went back to Josh&Brooke's apartment, where we watched Home Alone because it was on TV and had too many commercials, and then The Big Lebowski, not on TV, so no commercials. I'd never seen it before. It was pretty funny I guess. I finished reading Tales from the Dugout, and then went to sleep.
Friday we got up and read books for a while, and then Eli and I went to Powell's. There was a huge protest going on at Powell's, which was really frustrating because they were harrassing and booing people for going into the store. They were like "Don't shop here today, go tomorrow" and I'm like "Hello, I live in Seattle. I won't be here tomorrow. Get out of my way." So I was at Powell's for like an hour or so, maybe hour and a half. Scoured the D&D books and got some 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms stuff that had to do with pirates, and then went over to baseball books and bought way too many. (Note to self: update amazon wishlist and cross off the two I got.) Then I called Kyle and Mendel and headed over to Avalon.
AVALON! Yay! Stephen showed up a few minutes after I did, and a bit after that Mendel showed up, and then Kyle and Drastick (whose real name I have forgotten). Whee! So I hung out with them for 3 hours or so. That was really neat! We played a ton of DDR, and also Mambo a Go Go. Nobody can pass Gamelan, even with 2 or 3 people, or even Mendel, who's crazy good at it. That song is just crazy hard. I enjoyed playing Mambo in general, but I could see how people could get sick of it pretty quickly since there's only like 15 songs. Still a neat game though.
Drastick and I had the funniest conversation, it was about the Taito Tower (I think) in Shinjuku. We were talking about going to Japan and playing Bemani games, and I was saying how I'd played IIDX 9th all over, and he was saying the arcade he played it in was too cramped and loud for him to really play, and I said "huh," and he said "Yeah... all the Bemani was off in a corner.." and I said "Wait, don't tell me. It was laid out like, IIDX here, DDR facing it, then GF and DM, and a PNM9 facing it that had a thingie that kept falling off?" "Yeah! On like the 3rd story of..." "...with the metal games on the outside..." "in Shinjuku..." "Holy shit!" He was so freaked out that I knew exactly what arcade he was talking about :)
And, aww, it was so good to see Mendel again, 'cause I had barely talked to him at Narrows Gamma because I had no idea who he was except "some nice guy from Eugene who seems closer to my age than the rest of those kids", but have since found out he's "some awesome guy who's also from Philly who I kinda knew a billion years ago etc". Which is still freaky but is awesome! But what kinda sucks about hanging out for DDR is that you don't really talk about much else. And it was really hard to talk at Avalon anyway - I currently have a sore throat because I was shouting so people could hear me.
I left around 5:30... ("Bye Kyle! See you at IZ tomorrow!") and drove back to Powell's. It was raining so the protest had pretty much stopped. I found Eli pretty quickly, he got his books, and we walked over to Sushi Takahashi (another kaiten sushi train place that Pete took us to back in May). Josh and Brooke and Ollie met us there. I ate a ton of sushi because it was so cheap. Whee! There were people putting little plastic army dudes on the sushi train with little notes like "NO WAR!" and whatnot. After dinner the others walked home to their apartment, and Eli and I hit the road.
I drove the first 90 miles or so out of Portland until I was drowsy and then Eli drove the rest of the way home while I slept.
I got home and played some Puzzle Pirates. It was pretty good. Had a crazy amazing run which earned me like 5k actually. Lots of pillage, and lots of good jobbers. Lambda apparently seems to want to take over my job in the crew. I'm not sure whether to feel intimidated or just go with it... my initial reaction is "hey, yo, I'm the gunner, back off," but when I think about it, my reaction should be "ok, cool, I will train you to be a backup Janthina". We'll see.
Saturday I got up and logged into PP, which was silly. Went sailing with Farren for a few hours. We had decent jobbers and extremely decent forage. I was carping up a storm, it's pretty funny - Farren was like "I never thought I'd see the day where you'd prefer carp to sails or bilge..." Har! Played for a few hours, quit around 5pm or so.
Eli and I went to dinner at a place called Blue C Sushi. It's another kaiten place, bt with a conveyor belt instead of a train. A little more upscale than Sushi Express... they have circle plates with colors on the outside to denote price, and the text on the inside is the various names of tokyo subway lines. No, there was no super-expensive Yamanote plate. The sushi was fairly good, and the selection was fairly good too, since we never figured out how to order stuff until pretty late (you press a button and a light turns on and a waiter comes over to where you are). Still, there was some pretty neat stuff on the belt, I guess, and I liked everything I had. I'd go back. But blah, that means now I have two kaiten sushi places I need to go to on a regular basis!
Stuck around at home for a little while to digest, then headed out to Illusionz. There were a bazillion people there. Okay, not really. There were more people than usual, that's for sure. Off the top of my head I remember![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
diskozombie, zannah, laurii, flotastic, keevon, gappv2, kyleward, Warren-the-Juggler, Zannah's husband, Pete's cousin and friend, metroid23 and megami, Keevon's friend George, Casey, and I'm blanking on others if there were any. I spent most of the evening playing Pop'n'Music, to be honest. I did play a lot of Para Para, especially early on when people were still there, it was fun to do it in a group, but there wasn't nearly as much enthusiasm about PPP as there used to be. I think I only played one game of DDR, and it was with Casey. Same for ITG - I wanted him to see the landmines so I got him to play Hip Hop Blam with me. Kyle was way cool and let us have a free song for that purpose! :) ITG was either broken or had a long line for most of the night anyway. I played a lot of PNM though, both 3 and 5. I'm getting a lot better at reading 1x for PNM3... many new songs that I like a lot. The "Funny" one, and Classic 2, and Kangtong, and Anime Hero R, and so on. I played the "Celt" one because Farren couldn't make it, but to be honest it was more dorky than celtic. PNM 5 is great too, of course. I'm just really lovin' the PNM action at IZ with the two machines now. :) I think I played like one game of DM, too, oh and one game of 4th+. Just wasn't up for DDR, I guess.
After IZ, Pete and Kyle and Casey and I went to go get food... we first tried the Factoria Applebee's but they were closing so soon we diverted to Stella's instead. That was cool because we could stay there really late. I had lasagna, it was too cheesy. And I made everyone help me eat tiramisu. And the best is that we hung out talking for like 3 hours. It often divided into Kyle and Pete talking and me and Casey talking, but that's ok. It's been so long since I've really gotten to talk to Casey... he's so cool! Every time we hang out together I have a blast. Then I got to drive Pete home and talk to Pete for a while too. I wish I could go to the Portland tourney next weekend, but it just doesn't really make sense to, I don't think.
Got home like 3am. Talked to Farren because he was still awake and feeling yucky... then I couldn't fall asleep until like 6am. Kinda sucked. Eventually went to sleep.
Sunday I got up around 2pm and played PP for a few hours... sailed with Farren mostly. It was good, we got to Alpha just in time for me to shower and change and get ready for D&D.
D&D was pretty fun. We had pizza because it was D&D and we had cake because Justin's birthday was last week! Yay! Our battle picked up where it left off, with us meeting up with Rogar in the inn... and totally kicking his ass! (Ok, to be fair, our NPC Serena actually killed him, as Cory rolled two consecutive 20's in a row. Har!) Our party left town, levelled, and now we're in a wandering city or something. Man, 3rd level druid spells own. Shame I only get one right now. Looks like it'll be Call Lightning most of the time, I think. Also have to figure out how Wild Shape works. Yar.
Josh bought me some baseball card sheets and Heidi gave me a looseleaf book so I spent a bunch of the session downtime putting baseball cards into sheets. That was fun :) I haven't done baseball card things like this in so long. It's so cool and happy and stuff. I ♥ baseball stuff.
Came home, played more PP. I had a great jobber from the Mantids, and despite my network totally conking out on me a few times and ruining two battles, she put up with me, and eventually we did an Oyster Island forage run which worked out pretty well, with me mostly avoiding brigands. I'm hoping to convince her to join our crew because she's in the wrong time zone for hers, and we'd all still be under the same flag and all, and she fights well.
Haha, like anyone's actually read this far ;)
Wow, that's a long entry, and I'm sure I'll want to edit it more come morning, but hey, I should just post it now, as I'm suffering through another bout of insomnia. This week is so going to suck sleepwise...
(Thanksgiving dinner was at... I'm not sure whose house it actually was. I think it was Eli's brother's wife's aunt's house. It was a really really old and nice house in the suburbs of Portland that was very mazelike at times.)
We ate food, we hung out talking to people, we helped put together a puzzle, we wandered around the house, and then we went downstairs and played some pinball and foosball. They had a Firepower pinball machine in the basement! (Firepower is like, one of the first multiball machines ever). It took me forever but I got a multiball... the main problem was that I was taking turns playing with two little kids that didn't really know what they were doing. God, I hate little kids. I know it's dumb but I just get frustrated with little kids ousting you from foosball games or getting in your way during pinball or whatnot, and knowing that I'm not allowed to yell at them or tell them to go the fuck away. Oh well. Man, sometimes when I see these magnificent old pinball machines in someone's basement, I can't help but wonder if they know exactly what they have...
So after that we went back to Josh&Brooke's apartment, where we watched Home Alone because it was on TV and had too many commercials, and then The Big Lebowski, not on TV, so no commercials. I'd never seen it before. It was pretty funny I guess. I finished reading Tales from the Dugout, and then went to sleep.
Friday we got up and read books for a while, and then Eli and I went to Powell's. There was a huge protest going on at Powell's, which was really frustrating because they were harrassing and booing people for going into the store. They were like "Don't shop here today, go tomorrow" and I'm like "Hello, I live in Seattle. I won't be here tomorrow. Get out of my way." So I was at Powell's for like an hour or so, maybe hour and a half. Scoured the D&D books and got some 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms stuff that had to do with pirates, and then went over to baseball books and bought way too many. (Note to self: update amazon wishlist and cross off the two I got.) Then I called Kyle and Mendel and headed over to Avalon.
AVALON! Yay! Stephen showed up a few minutes after I did, and a bit after that Mendel showed up, and then Kyle and Drastick (whose real name I have forgotten). Whee! So I hung out with them for 3 hours or so. That was really neat! We played a ton of DDR, and also Mambo a Go Go. Nobody can pass Gamelan, even with 2 or 3 people, or even Mendel, who's crazy good at it. That song is just crazy hard. I enjoyed playing Mambo in general, but I could see how people could get sick of it pretty quickly since there's only like 15 songs. Still a neat game though.
Drastick and I had the funniest conversation, it was about the Taito Tower (I think) in Shinjuku. We were talking about going to Japan and playing Bemani games, and I was saying how I'd played IIDX 9th all over, and he was saying the arcade he played it in was too cramped and loud for him to really play, and I said "huh," and he said "Yeah... all the Bemani was off in a corner.." and I said "Wait, don't tell me. It was laid out like, IIDX here, DDR facing it, then GF and DM, and a PNM9 facing it that had a thingie that kept falling off?" "Yeah! On like the 3rd story of..." "...with the metal games on the outside..." "in Shinjuku..." "Holy shit!" He was so freaked out that I knew exactly what arcade he was talking about :)
And, aww, it was so good to see Mendel again, 'cause I had barely talked to him at Narrows Gamma because I had no idea who he was except "some nice guy from Eugene who seems closer to my age than the rest of those kids", but have since found out he's "some awesome guy who's also from Philly who I kinda knew a billion years ago etc". Which is still freaky but is awesome! But what kinda sucks about hanging out for DDR is that you don't really talk about much else. And it was really hard to talk at Avalon anyway - I currently have a sore throat because I was shouting so people could hear me.
I left around 5:30... ("Bye Kyle! See you at IZ tomorrow!") and drove back to Powell's. It was raining so the protest had pretty much stopped. I found Eli pretty quickly, he got his books, and we walked over to Sushi Takahashi (another kaiten sushi train place that Pete took us to back in May). Josh and Brooke and Ollie met us there. I ate a ton of sushi because it was so cheap. Whee! There were people putting little plastic army dudes on the sushi train with little notes like "NO WAR!" and whatnot. After dinner the others walked home to their apartment, and Eli and I hit the road.
I drove the first 90 miles or so out of Portland until I was drowsy and then Eli drove the rest of the way home while I slept.
I got home and played some Puzzle Pirates. It was pretty good. Had a crazy amazing run which earned me like 5k actually. Lots of pillage, and lots of good jobbers. Lambda apparently seems to want to take over my job in the crew. I'm not sure whether to feel intimidated or just go with it... my initial reaction is "hey, yo, I'm the gunner, back off," but when I think about it, my reaction should be "ok, cool, I will train you to be a backup Janthina". We'll see.
Saturday I got up and logged into PP, which was silly. Went sailing with Farren for a few hours. We had decent jobbers and extremely decent forage. I was carping up a storm, it's pretty funny - Farren was like "I never thought I'd see the day where you'd prefer carp to sails or bilge..." Har! Played for a few hours, quit around 5pm or so.
Eli and I went to dinner at a place called Blue C Sushi. It's another kaiten place, bt with a conveyor belt instead of a train. A little more upscale than Sushi Express... they have circle plates with colors on the outside to denote price, and the text on the inside is the various names of tokyo subway lines. No, there was no super-expensive Yamanote plate. The sushi was fairly good, and the selection was fairly good too, since we never figured out how to order stuff until pretty late (you press a button and a light turns on and a waiter comes over to where you are). Still, there was some pretty neat stuff on the belt, I guess, and I liked everything I had. I'd go back. But blah, that means now I have two kaiten sushi places I need to go to on a regular basis!
Stuck around at home for a little while to digest, then headed out to Illusionz. There were a bazillion people there. Okay, not really. There were more people than usual, that's for sure. Off the top of my head I remember
diskozombie, zannah, laurii, flotastic, keevon, gappv2, kyleward, Warren-the-Juggler, Zannah's husband, Pete's cousin and friend, metroid23 and megami, Keevon's friend George, Casey, and I'm blanking on others if there were any. I spent most of the evening playing Pop'n'Music, to be honest. I did play a lot of Para Para, especially early on when people were still there, it was fun to do it in a group, but there wasn't nearly as much enthusiasm about PPP as there used to be. I think I only played one game of DDR, and it was with Casey. Same for ITG - I wanted him to see the landmines so I got him to play Hip Hop Blam with me. Kyle was way cool and let us have a free song for that purpose! :) ITG was either broken or had a long line for most of the night anyway. I played a lot of PNM though, both 3 and 5. I'm getting a lot better at reading 1x for PNM3... many new songs that I like a lot. The "Funny" one, and Classic 2, and Kangtong, and Anime Hero R, and so on. I played the "Celt" one because Farren couldn't make it, but to be honest it was more dorky than celtic. PNM 5 is great too, of course. I'm just really lovin' the PNM action at IZ with the two machines now. :) I think I played like one game of DM, too, oh and one game of 4th+. Just wasn't up for DDR, I guess.After IZ, Pete and Kyle and Casey and I went to go get food... we first tried the Factoria Applebee's but they were closing so soon we diverted to Stella's instead. That was cool because we could stay there really late. I had lasagna, it was too cheesy. And I made everyone help me eat tiramisu. And the best is that we hung out talking for like 3 hours. It often divided into Kyle and Pete talking and me and Casey talking, but that's ok. It's been so long since I've really gotten to talk to Casey... he's so cool! Every time we hang out together I have a blast. Then I got to drive Pete home and talk to Pete for a while too. I wish I could go to the Portland tourney next weekend, but it just doesn't really make sense to, I don't think.
Got home like 3am. Talked to Farren because he was still awake and feeling yucky... then I couldn't fall asleep until like 6am. Kinda sucked. Eventually went to sleep.
Sunday I got up around 2pm and played PP for a few hours... sailed with Farren mostly. It was good, we got to Alpha just in time for me to shower and change and get ready for D&D.
D&D was pretty fun. We had pizza because it was D&D and we had cake because Justin's birthday was last week! Yay! Our battle picked up where it left off, with us meeting up with Rogar in the inn... and totally kicking his ass! (Ok, to be fair, our NPC Serena actually killed him, as Cory rolled two consecutive 20's in a row. Har!) Our party left town, levelled, and now we're in a wandering city or something. Man, 3rd level druid spells own. Shame I only get one right now. Looks like it'll be Call Lightning most of the time, I think. Also have to figure out how Wild Shape works. Yar.
Josh bought me some baseball card sheets and Heidi gave me a looseleaf book so I spent a bunch of the session downtime putting baseball cards into sheets. That was fun :) I haven't done baseball card things like this in so long. It's so cool and happy and stuff. I ♥ baseball stuff.
Came home, played more PP. I had a great jobber from the Mantids, and despite my network totally conking out on me a few times and ruining two battles, she put up with me, and eventually we did an Oyster Island forage run which worked out pretty well, with me mostly avoiding brigands. I'm hoping to convince her to join our crew because she's in the wrong time zone for hers, and we'd all still be under the same flag and all, and she fights well.
Haha, like anyone's actually read this far ;)
Wow, that's a long entry, and I'm sure I'll want to edit it more come morning, but hey, I should just post it now, as I'm suffering through another bout of insomnia. This week is so going to suck sleepwise...
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