Every Day an Adventure

I had this really weird thing last night; I went to sleep around 11pm but woke up several times before finally really waking at 10:30am, due to factors like "wait, I am still wearing my street clothes" or "my throat hurts, it is too dry" or "there are dogs barking and they are loud" or "my arm is asleep and it hurts", and so on.

Oddly, each time I woke up I instinctively reached for my keitai to check what time it was and see if I had any email, only my keitai wasn't there, and I got very confused as to why I wasn't in my room in Japan.

So yeah, I have a sore throat again, which I think comes from a combination of the dry air in here and not getting enough sleep.
It IS feeling better than it was yesterday though.

As for yesterday, nykkel kindly offered me a ride to ACME Bowl, the bowling alley near Southcenter that has a bunch of Bemani games, so we went there for the 20th of November (it's a little hard to believe that it's my NINTH year doing a Bemani day), where we immediately discovered that DDR MAX2 does NOT have 20 November on it, but SuperNova apparently does. So yay.

Actually, more like, first we went to Chipotle so I could get my burrito fix, and then we went to ACME, and I spent a while playing Pop'n before I felt up to stepping on a DDR machine. They have Pop'n 13, but what is weird is, with no card reader and whatnot, a lot of stuff doesn't seem to be unlocked. Either that or I've just forgotten how many songs got added between 13 and the current 16! It was good to play though since I actually haven't been doing Pop'n that much in Japan since my nearby arcade doesn't have it.

Eventually between Pop'n and Drummania I felt ready to get on DDR, where I played like 3 games, and the upshot is that I can still pass 8-footers but I feel really crappy doing so. This was probably my first time on a machine in like two years, as well. But, I played 20 November, and that was the important thing.

And then I played some more random stuff waiting for Nykkel to kill himself on the arrow-stomping games. We finished off with a Session game on GF/DM, where I made him play チェリー and 777 and PPR, for old times' sake. Hehe. I'd been playing random Japanese pop songs all day which I'd totally forgotten were on Drummania (like ロビンソン and　花火 and such).

On our way out we ran into farren_bronaugh, who was on his way in. Good to see him again if just for a minute or two.

I came home and collapsed for a bit -- by then my throat hurt a bit more. Took some Dayquil to help. It did.

Carl came home and I talked him into getting pizza (not too hard, he hadn't had pizza in a while), so we went to Pagliacci's and got a pepperoni pizza. Yum! Also stopped by Fred Meyer's up there. I hate jeans.

As for today, I have no clue what the day holds for me. I'm working on some Perl, and doing laundry, and pretty much hanging out at home for the afternoon trying to get better, I think. I DO feel a bit better -- no medicine today and my throat is just feeling dry rather than painful, but... we'll see.

Yeah, okay, so I started playing DDR six and a half years ago and I mostly stopped playing two and a half years ago, but whatever. Tonight I had quite a workout, as I went to the gym and lifted weights, then drove down to ACME Bowl to play Bemani games. The first thing I did was play IIDX, where I passed 20 November on Light 7 and failed it on 7 Keys. :) Played another game of IIDX, then went over to the DDR Extreme machine. Keep in mind that in the last year I've played DDR maybe twice. I only actually remember once, that being when Krispy and I played one game of Supernova hanging out in Shibuya.

So I play 20 November on basic. No problem. I play it on standard. No problem. I play it on Heavy. No problem, but this 14-year-old-or-so girl jumps up on the player 1 side of the machine halfway through and starts bar raping along with the song for whatever unknown reason.

Song ends. I turn to her.
Me: "Don't you kids ASK before jumping on anymore?"
Her: "Uhh.. umm... uh... sorry?"
Me: [rolls eyes]
Her: "What was that song called, anyway?"
Me: [as the machine shows my final set of 20 November, 20 November, and 20 November] "It's CALLED 20 November. Do you know what today's date is? It's the 20th of November."

Man. Kids these days.

Anyway, awesomely enough, the arcade cleared out except for one other guy around 9:45pm -- I hear they kick out the under-21s after 10 -- and so I actually played about five games of DDR, some Extreme, some SuperNova. I can still pass 8-footers, and I thought my knees were just fine, until I tried to climb the stairs when I got home and got a twinge. Bleh. It's not as bad as it used to be, though! I think I could actually probably play DDR again if I was careful about it. I'd like to at least try out all the new songs on Supernova at some point. But, you know what songs I'd rather play again? Strictly Business, Sung Suk, 1.2.3.4.007, Starian, Kick The Can, Wonderland, Young Forever, One Two, etc. BRING BACK K-POP GODDAMNIT!

It's funny for me to remember past 20 Novembers:

2000: I had 2nd Remix and a Japanese PS1 and that was it, having only been playing for a few months at the time. But I played 20 November, goddamnit.

2001: I had a party and had people over to play DDR, but since it was nearly Thanksgiving we only had like 15 people show up, but we played 20 November in both DDR and Beatmania. I remember that Barbara brought Katy and Seth to it, and Bob Rost and Krispy were there too, and I think Marybeth and Marc too. Isaac and Carolee were there because of my reference to the "para para all nerds", and I think Rebecca and Angel were there, and Carl obviously too, and maybe even kw. Hmm.

(side note: finding the old video of me and Rebecca doing our "Let The Beat Hit 'Em" routine at DDRFest 2002 was fucking awesome. At the time I think I thought we sucked but looking back now that was actually pretty good.)

2002: Hung out at IZ with the usual suspects. It was a Wednesday night, and at the time, Farren and I had this "let's go hang out at IZ and go to Krispy Kreme afterward" thing going on every week, which was awesome. So that week we just had a lot more people along with us. I still sort of remember that, Kiefer making these two guys step off the DDR USA machine so we could play 20 November, since at the time, it wasn't on Max 2, and Extreme hadn't come out yet. (Those were the days.)

2003: Went to IZ and got my first ever AAA, which was, ironically, of 20 November. And of course the only person who saw it was Tada, even though I actually went to IZ with Farren (and by then the big Bemani crowd had dwindled due to drama and other crap, plus IZ had started to suck). Also, I remember having that Schmidt #20 t-shirt, but I never saw it after I moved out of the Greenlake house. That and my Tsuboi #7 are probably the most prominent things I lost in that move.

2004: I was back in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving, and since Bayani had to leave town early, he and Kate and I ended up going to the UC and playing our traditional DDR together on 19 November instead. Having run into rjmccall at the DDR machine, the gang of us adjourned to run our sore legs off playing Capture The Stuff With Flags.

2005: I went to ACME for the first time. At least then, when I got on the IIDX machine, the guys who had been playing saw me picking 20 November and were like "Holy shit! It's the 20th of November!" unlike today. My sinuses acted up, too, which sucked. I guess I should be glad that also didn't happen today. Maybe I am in better shape now.

Wow, things have changed in six years. I still remember that tiny apartment in Pittsburgh, where I had this one room that literally had exactly enough floor space for two DDR pads. Life was so much simpler then.

Okay, so Thursday was... eh. I remember driving down I-5 and seeing the grey grey clouds and the Seattle skyline looking like a black-and-white photo, which was neat, except behind me the sky was blue and everything was in color. Almost as if I was travelling through a TV time machine and in front of me was the 1962 World's Fair and behind me was today's Greenlake neighborhood. Eh.

Work was, of course, eh.

I stopped by Blue C on my way home from work to grab dinner, figuring I wasn't sure I'd have decent sushi for a week or two, and got home around 8-8:15ish, which should have been plenty of time to pack and play some Pop'n (that morning I'd played one or two games and I unlocked the Des-Row course and Daikenkai, whee) but instead I logged into PP, which is always dumb. Ah well, I did pack and wasn't too much over on my time guess. Josh was nice enough to give me a ride to the airport, and I got there with PLENTY of time to spare.

The plane flight itself was eh. I couldn't sleep for the first part, so I read The Three Musketeers, because I'm on another Dumas kick I think (and now I can make Carl read The Count of Monte Cristo). I probably got like 200 pages in before realizing, whoa, it was late. So I tried to sleep; I think I got like an hour of sleep total. Bleh.

I got into the airport at 7am; got off the plane; got to the car rental place; rented a car... then got to brave Pittsburgh rush hour to get here. It actually did, veritably, suck, but since Carl had said I should come over around 9, I figured it didn't matter if it took a while. I stopped in Squirrel Hill around 8:30am, and went into Bruegger's to get a bagel, because dammit I'm on the east coast and WE HAVE BAGELS. I ran into three KGB people, one of whom I recognized from the lounge (mbrewer?) and another who is the Sgt at Arms (lizza?) and another whose name I never caught. But they were nice and hyper despite having been up all night, as was I, so I talked to them for a while and then drove over here to Carl's.

(As an aside -- Driving a rental car has really made me appreciate and love my Honda Civic Hybrid all the more.)

Carl had to go to work, so we chatted a bit and then I fell asleep on the couch for a few hours, waking up at 2pm or so eastern (which is my normal 11am or so western, I guess). I ended up getting to campus at 3:30pm. My car had already been ticketed for daring to park in Area J. Sigh. Ah well, so I went to campus; oddly, I was able to walk from Morewood and Forbes to the CS Lounge without recognizing ANYONE or stopping to say hi. I am not sure this has happened in many many years. Maybe I really am gone. Anyway, I got to the lounge and I saw buoren and sk4p and whitemage, and oh! and degauss too. and other people who I am sure have LJs but whose names I don't know offhand. Oh, I saw dracai and mygrane as well, heh. ("Hey, it's the governor of Zeta!" "Hey, it's the governor of Turtle!")

After that I wandered around Wean a bit... stopped in to see Mark Stehlik, then I stopped in to see Catherine Copetas... then I showed up on bhudson's doorstep, and eventually jcreed walked by too, and Alex Groce called me about maybe getting dinner and csg87 started IMming me about getting dinner, so... we figured on getting dinner somewhere in Squirrel Hill so we'd be near Charlie. Alex came to campus and came up to Benoit's office, and Jason and I knocked on platypuslord's door on our way to the lounge for me to get my jacket, and so Dan got dragged in too.. so we ended up at Gullifty's, where we were randomly joined by Chris Colohan and his fiancee (!!) Lea, who is apparently Jason's officemate. I *love* how it is here, where I had no plans for dinner, yet just a little walking around Wean Hall and I end up going to dinner with 7 CS grad students! It's just so awesome. Only way it could have been better is if Kevin (Watkins) had actually been in the office as well when I came over to harrass Benoit :)

Woooo, that was really awesome. After that I came to campus and went to Wean 7500 for the rules for Capture the Stuff With Flags. arashink showed up with his girlfriend, and we hung out in the back of the room for a while. Zarf showed up! Wowie! It was really funny because NOBODY knew who he was. 150 people there and a good half at least were freshmen. He got up like "Hey, I'm Andy Plotkin. I like, wrote this game ten years ago, and like... my gosh, I barely recognize it anymore." There was a severe lack of alumni as compared to past years though. I mean, most of the ones I've mentioned were there, and jcipa and redglasses and some other people I don't know if they've graduated yet (for example, what's the deal with Ben Gilbert?) but for the most part I didn't know 90% of the people there, which was odd for me. Ah well.

I didn't actually play in the first round because Bayani and Kate and I decided to go to the UC to play DDR, since Bayani leaves tomorrow morning for Thanksgivingy things, and tomorrow is 20 November, so we'd just play 20 November on 19 November. Oh man, I really feel like I suck at DDR now, even if I might not be so awful for Pittsburgh. Oh, and rjmccall was on the DDR machine when we got there so that was odd. I didn't know he played, but I think it's cool that he does, and he's gotten really good! So after a few games I suggested going back to the CTF game. We went through Doherty and ran into Carl! The first game was just about to end, so we decided to try to all end up on the same team for the second game.

Kevin, Carl, John, and I went around as "Alumni Strike Force" for a bit until we got split up. I somehow ended up sneaking in to Doherty on my own on the highest floor... nobody was there so I went up the stairs to the 4320 offices. Still nobody there, and no flags hidden in the area. I went down the steps on the other side and... THERE WAS A FLAG IN THE STAIRWELL! So I grabbed it and ran back up the stairs, through the offices, through the top floor, and to the judges' room! Wheeee! I got a flag I got a flag I got a flag I miss rkane. But, dude, I got a flag. I think Randy got like 3 flags. Still. (Oh, this second game they were playing with 10 flags. Total chaos.)

There was a pretty amusing point when in jail, people were lying down on the floor to stretch out the jail line, and so I was in the stairwell next to Carl, saying "dude, this is dumb" when Zarf walked down and sat with us in jail for a while talking about games and whatnot. It was pretty funny since I was just like "Uh, yeah, this is totally how I want to spend my Friday night... lying on the floor in a stairwell in jail. Wheeeee." As jail break happened, a guy came up to me like "Hey, I think I met you last year. Weren't you the CS Lounge girl who cares about baseball?" He was wearing a Red Sox hat. We had a nice chat for about 20 minutes. :)

Wooo, so it was fun running around and whatnot. Carl and I decided to give up after that game and came back here, where he had dinner-ish food and made me some hot chocolate. Stayed up talking a bit and now even though it's midnight my time I should go to sleep because it's 3am here. What a day :) I'm really happy to be back at CMU. Really, really happy. And really, really old. But mostly happy.

(oh, for those playing the home game, and who may be confused, mostly the PP folk, Carl's my best friend. he also plays PP, but nowhere near as much as I do. But he is governor of Wrasse. Hee. My island's cooler. NOT.)