Carnival Saturday -- Awesomeness
I got to geek out about baseball a ton today, which means it was a good day.
Okay, not exactly, but more than I usually do. A quote this evening was something like
Me: "At least my obsession is more socially acceptable than Warcraft."
Isaac: "I think it REALLY depends on what crowd you're in!"
Anyway, the day started with my heading to the Lounge BBQ. Except I had forgotten that 376 is a nightmare due to roadwork, so it took me like 45 minutes to get there instead of 15. Grr. I got to see a whole lot of people and hang out, catch up on what people are up to, eat various grilled food, etc. Thanks to![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ohhim I somehow ended up baseball geeking with popejeremy from the Shady House, who I don't really know but I remembered we got in an Uggla-Utley argument on someone's LJ once, so hey. Also got to see that shoebox_bird's boyfriend is still alive despite his accident on a Segway yesterday, and caught up with techstep, and with alford (who is getting married next year -- freaky!), and well, bunches of people. Fun fun. I probably owe zorblive a few bucks towards the meat pot since I didn't bring any food, though, so I suck.
gwillen told me that the KGB party had ended, but then rjmccall and dracai told me it hadn't, so I decided to head over there for a bit, where I ran into lots of old people! mistergone was brandishing his eponymous Stillers jersey, and the first thing I said to relaxatorium was "so, what was up with the Red Sox wearing green yesterday?" and getting into a convo about Curt Schilling, which is always fun. And then I chatted with various KGB people who are even older than me, like ocnn who I always talk to on Puzzle Pirates, and alicelee who doesn't log in anymore, and Becca and Dan (who now have a kid! eek!) and Dale, who actually lives somewhere for real now apparently, and Eeyore was filming people for a 20th anniversary video, so he got me and mj2q and Jay on tape. Fun.
Let's see... after that... I walked across campus with Mark and with Tom Strong, who also was at the KGB thing. And then I decided to backtrack and immediately ran intoarashink and ladysephiroth right by the ridiculous People Walking Into Nowhere statue. Unfortunately, I was feeling really sort of heat-sick because of all the sunlight I'm not accustomed to (it was literally like 80 degrees and sunny, I swear) so I retreated into the UC for a bit. Didn't find anyone, saw I had a text message from genericman, so I called him back, and ended up heading over towards Shadyside for a bit because he was at jweisz's place watching dorky Nintendo cartoons :)
Sigh, I need to catch up with Justin for real sometime, hopefully I'll get a chance before I skip town. He's just another one of those awesome people who I wish I was better at staying in touch with (last year, he and adubois said I should play WoW so I could hang out with them online, heh). After about 40 minutes he had to go to campus though, so I gave him a ride, and then I headed up to Squirrel Hill. We were supposed to meet atbhudson's place for games at 6:30, basically. I got there at 6pm.
Went to Bruegger's and got more bagels (I have to remember to get a dozen on Monday morning before I fly back to Seattle), and asked them if they could make me an iced chai. They were like "uhh... it's not on our menu but... how about if we make you a really strong chai and then just pour it over ice to make it cold?" And I'm thinking, "isn't that what iced chai is ANYWAY?" It was pretty good regardless.
So, when I got there,csg87, buoren, skydiamonde, and rupes were all playing Barbu, being kibitzed by chamois and mpa, and Benoit was cooking stuff. Charlie and Kevin left and the rest of us played a game of Ricochet Robot, and then we started on the REAL game for the evening - Das Scepter Von Zavandor, which I don't think I'd played since December 2004 when we played it 5 times in one week at Adam's place in Austin. (Maybe I played in Carnival 2005, I'm too lazy to look it up.) Anyway, I started with the power that gets you cheap artifacts and I think I bought one too many too early too cheap which made the 10+ point powers turn on for everyone. Jen started with the rubies track, Emilie with the extra dust, mpa with the extra cards, and I forget what everyone else had. Either way, I think I felt like I was a turn behind on income for most of the game, and in the end I placed fourth out of 6, but that was like, one point behind whoever was in 3rd. (funny part is, I forget who won, but I think it was Adam, who had two sentinels. I did manage to get the one sentinel I wanted though. Benoit sacrificed all his diamonds to get the diamond sentinel, which sucked for him.)
Oh yeah, Benoit set up a weird grill thing for people to grill veggies and cheese over. I chose to not do that and just make a lettuce-pepper sandwich on one of my bagels.mj2q and cdinwood dropped by for a while and I thought they were making dessert but then they disappeared :P Joanna woke up at some point but also subsequently disappeared, but not before I could ask her about all the artwork in the apartment, which is actually hers, which is actually pretty cool.
I do feel a little bad that I didn't make it tojcreed's band playing, but we weren't done the game until like 11pm :(
So after games, Adam and I went down to the Shady House, where he ended up playing poker, and where I ended up sitting in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arct1cfox's room hanging out with him and garzahd and Jayen and their friend Shinsuke, who I hadn't met before but who was in from Japan for Carnival and stuff. And somehow it came out that I'm into Japanese baseball and I totally freaked him out by knowing so much about it. But it was so awesome! Like, I said how Ogasawara used to be my favorite player, and Shin's all like "and now he's with the GIANTS and he SHAVED" and I'm like "YES, EXACTLY" and we talked about Rakuten and stuff, and I was saying how I learned Japanese geography due to baseball and listed off a few of the high schools in Koshien -- and he was just like "you're crazy. WHY do you know all this crap?" Or we were trying to get Isaac's speakers to set off with bluetooth at one point, and I showed off my phone background, and he's like "of all players, WHY do you have Kensuke Tanaka as your background?" heee. But man, it was so awesome to actually be able to really talk about random yakyu stuff in English to someone in person who actually knows about it that I probably just got way too hyper. Oh well.
We also sat around talking about old D&D groups and whatnot. I guess it really HAS been like 7 years since that whole gigantic RPG club we were all in. Crazy. And Jayen's going to Australia! That's so neat. It seems like half of this weekend has been hearing about people either getting married or people moving off to crazy places for grad school, I swear. Either way, I had a lot of fun hanging out and talking. Whee!
Eventually poker ended and I gave Adam a ride back to Shadyside, and then I came back here, and now I am updating LJ, and soon I will sleep. And then tomorrow hopefully I will find stuff to do, and then Monday... and then Monday I have to go back to Seattle. Funny, I was apprehensive about coming to Pittsburgh for a bit there but now I'm back in my "I don't really want to leave" mode again, which sucks, because I know it's not for real and it's just carnival. I don't appreciate these times enough though -- at one point during Zavandor I just sort of spaced out thinking "Dude, I'm in Squirrel Hill, at Benoit's, playing board games with my CMU friends. HOW COOL IS THAT."
Yeah.
Okay, not exactly, but more than I usually do. A quote this evening was something like
Me: "At least my obsession is more socially acceptable than Warcraft."
Isaac: "I think it REALLY depends on what crowd you're in!"
Anyway, the day started with my heading to the Lounge BBQ. Except I had forgotten that 376 is a nightmare due to roadwork, so it took me like 45 minutes to get there instead of 15. Grr. I got to see a whole lot of people and hang out, catch up on what people are up to, eat various grilled food, etc. Thanks to
ohhim I somehow ended up baseball geeking with popejeremy from the Shady House, who I don't really know but I remembered we got in an Uggla-Utley argument on someone's LJ once, so hey. Also got to see that shoebox_bird's boyfriend is still alive despite his accident on a Segway yesterday, and caught up with techstep, and with alford (who is getting married next year -- freaky!), and well, bunches of people. Fun fun. I probably owe zorblive a few bucks towards the meat pot since I didn't bring any food, though, so I suck.gwillen told me that the KGB party had ended, but then rjmccall and dracai told me it hadn't, so I decided to head over there for a bit, where I ran into lots of old people! mistergone was brandishing his eponymous Stillers jersey, and the first thing I said to relaxatorium was "so, what was up with the Red Sox wearing green yesterday?" and getting into a convo about Curt Schilling, which is always fun. And then I chatted with various KGB people who are even older than me, like ocnn who I always talk to on Puzzle Pirates, and alicelee who doesn't log in anymore, and Becca and Dan (who now have a kid! eek!) and Dale, who actually lives somewhere for real now apparently, and Eeyore was filming people for a 20th anniversary video, so he got me and mj2q and Jay on tape. Fun.Let's see... after that... I walked across campus with Mark and with Tom Strong, who also was at the KGB thing. And then I decided to backtrack and immediately ran into
arashink and ladysephiroth right by the ridiculous People Walking Into Nowhere statue. Unfortunately, I was feeling really sort of heat-sick because of all the sunlight I'm not accustomed to (it was literally like 80 degrees and sunny, I swear) so I retreated into the UC for a bit. Didn't find anyone, saw I had a text message from genericman, so I called him back, and ended up heading over towards Shadyside for a bit because he was at jweisz's place watching dorky Nintendo cartoons :)Sigh, I need to catch up with Justin for real sometime, hopefully I'll get a chance before I skip town. He's just another one of those awesome people who I wish I was better at staying in touch with (last year, he and adubois said I should play WoW so I could hang out with them online, heh). After about 40 minutes he had to go to campus though, so I gave him a ride, and then I headed up to Squirrel Hill. We were supposed to meet at
bhudson's place for games at 6:30, basically. I got there at 6pm.Went to Bruegger's and got more bagels (I have to remember to get a dozen on Monday morning before I fly back to Seattle), and asked them if they could make me an iced chai. They were like "uhh... it's not on our menu but... how about if we make you a really strong chai and then just pour it over ice to make it cold?" And I'm thinking, "isn't that what iced chai is ANYWAY?" It was pretty good regardless.
So, when I got there,
csg87, buoren, skydiamonde, and rupes were all playing Barbu, being kibitzed by chamois and mpa, and Benoit was cooking stuff. Charlie and Kevin left and the rest of us played a game of Ricochet Robot, and then we started on the REAL game for the evening - Das Scepter Von Zavandor, which I don't think I'd played since December 2004 when we played it 5 times in one week at Adam's place in Austin. (Maybe I played in Carnival 2005, I'm too lazy to look it up.) Anyway, I started with the power that gets you cheap artifacts and I think I bought one too many too early too cheap which made the 10+ point powers turn on for everyone. Jen started with the rubies track, Emilie with the extra dust, mpa with the extra cards, and I forget what everyone else had. Either way, I think I felt like I was a turn behind on income for most of the game, and in the end I placed fourth out of 6, but that was like, one point behind whoever was in 3rd. (funny part is, I forget who won, but I think it was Adam, who had two sentinels. I did manage to get the one sentinel I wanted though. Benoit sacrificed all his diamonds to get the diamond sentinel, which sucked for him.)Oh yeah, Benoit set up a weird grill thing for people to grill veggies and cheese over. I chose to not do that and just make a lettuce-pepper sandwich on one of my bagels.
mj2q and cdinwood dropped by for a while and I thought they were making dessert but then they disappeared :P Joanna woke up at some point but also subsequently disappeared, but not before I could ask her about all the artwork in the apartment, which is actually hers, which is actually pretty cool.I do feel a little bad that I didn't make it to
jcreed's band playing, but we weren't done the game until like 11pm :(So after games, Adam and I went down to the Shady House, where he ended up playing poker, and where I ended up sitting in
arct1cfox's room hanging out with him and garzahd and Jayen and their friend Shinsuke, who I hadn't met before but who was in from Japan for Carnival and stuff. And somehow it came out that I'm into Japanese baseball and I totally freaked him out by knowing so much about it. But it was so awesome! Like, I said how Ogasawara used to be my favorite player, and Shin's all like "and now he's with the GIANTS and he SHAVED" and I'm like "YES, EXACTLY" and we talked about Rakuten and stuff, and I was saying how I learned Japanese geography due to baseball and listed off a few of the high schools in Koshien -- and he was just like "you're crazy. WHY do you know all this crap?" Or we were trying to get Isaac's speakers to set off with bluetooth at one point, and I showed off my phone background, and he's like "of all players, WHY do you have Kensuke Tanaka as your background?" heee. But man, it was so awesome to actually be able to really talk about random yakyu stuff in English to someone in person who actually knows about it that I probably just got way too hyper. Oh well.We also sat around talking about old D&D groups and whatnot. I guess it really HAS been like 7 years since that whole gigantic RPG club we were all in. Crazy. And Jayen's going to Australia! That's so neat. It seems like half of this weekend has been hearing about people either getting married or people moving off to crazy places for grad school, I swear. Either way, I had a lot of fun hanging out and talking. Whee!
Eventually poker ended and I gave Adam a ride back to Shadyside, and then I came back here, and now I am updating LJ, and soon I will sleep. And then tomorrow hopefully I will find stuff to do, and then Monday... and then Monday I have to go back to Seattle. Funny, I was apprehensive about coming to Pittsburgh for a bit there but now I'm back in my "I don't really want to leave" mode again, which sucks, because I know it's not for real and it's just carnival. I don't appreciate these times enough though -- at one point during Zavandor I just sort of spaced out thinking "Dude, I'm in Squirrel Hill, at Benoit's, playing board games with my CMU friends. HOW COOL IS THAT."
Yeah.
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I kind of miss Carnival, but always end up having other stuff to do.