Every Day an Adventure

Actually, I just don't really feel like writing anything long. I've been feeling really tired, headachy, and just plain bleh for most of this weekend.

Saturday, I went out to Redmond to play Twilight Imperium with bpr, his coworkers Dave and Tom, and Mike from my Puzzle Hunt team and Mike's wife Erin. Dave and Brian and I were the ones who had played before, so the game went a lot slower than expected... by 10pm (we expected to be done by 7) we decided to just call the game. Dave had 9 points and Erin had 8, so they were the defacto winners. I guess the interesting part of the game was that everyone was doing weird things with their alien races -- the Merchants of Hacan (Tom) were major warmongers, I was the Mentak Coalition, the pirates, and I just went super-technology to build War Suns, etc.

Tonight I went to Oren's and watched two more episodes of Gokusen, which is really a pretty good show. It had been bugging me how familiar some of the people in the show looked (I mean, I know I've seen Nakama Yukie in a bunch of stuff, and the girl who plays Fujimaya-sensei was Tsujimoto in Taiho), so I went and looked them up, and heh, the school nurse is Yuko Nakazawa (from Morning Musume) and Sawada is Jun Matsumoto (from Arashi). It's just weird.

Hmm, the rest of the weekend was spent playing Pop'n'Music or reading books or working on baseball projects, I think. I'm finally 95% of the way through unlocking PNM8, as I got Linus this afternoon. (I'd thought about going to volleyball today, but I had a huge headache and stomachache and figured it'd be a bad idea.)

Today was a really good day, I think, but somehow I don't feel energized by it, which is an exceptionally bad sign.

I guess I woke up at 9:45am or so. I-Gene, who had crashed on the couch here last night, woke me up to say he was going down to ACME Bowl for the IIDX tourney. I was too zonked and decided there wasn't really a point in my entering anyway, so I'd roll over for another hour or two of sleep, expecting I'd make it down there around lunchtime.

Well, I woke up at 12:45pm. I think I finally made it to the arcade around 2:30pm. Both the In The Groove tourney and the Beatmania IIDX tourney were both in full gear at that point, surprisingly.

I saw kyleward and Chris Foy! I hadn't seen either of them in forever. Kyle looks great, he's lost a lot of weight since last time I saw him, and it sounds really exciting how him and Chris Danford actually get to work on ITG full-time now. We were reminiscing about the crazy old days when we'd always randomly meet up at Sunset Bowl at bizarre hours to play DDR. And Foy is still crazy, of course. I had fun brainstorming with them and Jerrad about tourney timing for their Las Vegas thing next week, which sounds like it'll go pretty well anyway, though. (good luck to all of you guys who are going! despite that I can't play the arrow-stomping games anymore, I am excited for you all.)

I also saw a lot of people in the IIDX tourney -- metroid23 was running it, and farren_bronaugh, cynic573, crackoon, bobsyouruncle, keevon, thunderbird8, tadzilla, zqfmbg, and some other people I didn't know or am forgetting, had all entered it. I got to see James win, and I-Gene come in second. There was some little kid named Gorrum or something who was pretty frickin' good, too. The funniest round was without a doubt the one where Met had this list of four incredibly easy songs and got people to eliminate them down to two songs -- THEN told them they had to play them on Light-14 (aka doubles mode). That was hilarious. Met deserves lots of style points for that, though I still think it would have been funnier to actually force people into playing Ballad For You.

There was a side room set up with some IIDX and Pop'n and all. I don't remember who the one guy was with the Pop'n setup (Gosha, maybe?) but it was really discombobulating to have the controller down on a table and have the screen be 8 feet up in the air. Almost like touch typing. I played a few songs on his controller though, and his right green key was sticking. If I'd had a screwdriver there I would have been happy to take it apart and fix it like I fixed mine :)

The side room was both cool and frustrating all at once. Sometimes I really hate how I end up acting more aloof and spacey around Bemani people because they can really, really frustrate me. The oldskool folks, the ones I know well from back when I first moved here and we'd all hang out at IZ or have Bemani parties all the time, they're cool, but the new crowd, which is pretty much all teenagers, I just don't really click with at all, especially since it always feels like they're mostly from the school of point 3 of a post that seishinbyou made a few weeks ago. There were a few nice people that I'd never met before, though, I guess; I shouldn't entirely generalize.

At any rate it got a lot more fun later on when it was Keevon and Amber and I sitting around singing along loudly and poorly to stuff like Dr. Bombay songs ("S! S! O!") and Prince on a Star and Macho Gang, and the m-flo songs on IIDX. There was also some guy who came in that was a friend of the ITG tourney organizer, and he was really nice and funny. ("I can't believe you guys are talking about Super Famicom cartridges!") It's a little bizarre to go to a big Bemani tourney in the Seattle area and not know who a lot of people there are -- but even more bizarre to not even know who the people *running* the thing are, since I used to be behind the desk helping out at so many of the DDR tourneys around here for a while. I still think my most memorable Seattle DDR tourneys were things like working all weekend for Nykkel at DM5, or being Steve's number cruncher at the first team tourney. Sigh.

But now, I just feel old. I dunno. God, I can't believe it's coming up on almost SIX YEARS since I first started playing DDR, and almost a year since I had to outright quit due to the knee and foot problems.

I ran into Bill Masterman (the guy who runs the arcade) though, and he still remembered who I was :) And I asked him whether he'd thought about getting Pop'n'Music, and he promised me that he's keeping his eye out for a good deal on a machine -- and that he specifically would want to get Pop'n' 10 or later, something new and cool. That made my day. I hope he was serious! And I hope Met-Matt will run a Pop'n tournament if he does get a machine!

I left the arcade around when the IIDX tourney ended, because I wasn't sure what dinner plans looked like for everyone, and also, I had said I'd show up at the gaming party at the House of Slack today. So I did. I arrived about 15 minutes before dinner was ready at the House of Slack, anyway. Megan and Josh had roasted a huge turkey, and also made stuffing, and mashed potatoes with horseradish, and some other stuff, and I was starving, so it was great.

Bill and Katje are in town, which was the impetus for having people over. It was sort of funny since because when I arrived, the living room was full of people with babies and puppies, and the dining room was full of people playing a piratey boardgame that Bill described as being "a combination between Monopoly and Talisman", which doesn't speak well for it at all! After they finished that and after dinner and after hanging out chatting a bit with Sheryl and Ficus and all, a bunch of us ended up getting out the World of Warcraft board game -- I'm really not making that up -- and played it for hoooooooours.

Jarrett and Josh and I were the Horde characters, and Bill and Justin and Cory were Alliance. Horde went first, and I guess we got lucky with our quests and never got jumped by random monsters, and Josh had a polymorph spell which knocked them out easy anyway. So we jumped ahead pretty quickly and kept levelling faster and beating up bigger and bigger things. I played a troll priestess, and I made a point of being an obnoxious online person *in real life* for amusement sake. Like, Josh would say "How about we go take on that quest over there with the goblins," and I'd be like "OMG OK I want XP LOL", to which Josh replied, "Deanna has been KICKED from the group." Heh heh. Or when the Alliance guys were near us on the board and we were a higher level I was suggesting we should go PVP them -- "Let's go gank those noobs LOL!" I was thinking it'd be really cute to get a t-shirt made for a newborn baby that simply read "NOOB", but something tells me that most of my friends who currently have newborn babies would not be into dressing them in such a t-shirt.

The game's supposed to take 30 turns, but we quit playing at 2am, about 24 turns in. I think it's a fun game, but it suffers from vague downtime issues -- while your faction is actually doing stuff, it's a lot of fun, but while the other faction is doing stuff, you pretty much sit there and wait for them, which isn't particularly exciting. Oh well. I'd play it again, and I don't even play World of Warcraft. So arr.

Anyway, yeah, it was a long day full of hanging out with people and playing games, which should have been pretty good, and I guess it was. I dunno.

My last day in Pittsburgh. Whee.

Got up, did some work, hung around here for a while. Walked to campus with Benoit at 2:30. Was meeting up with K at Craig Street Coffee at 3pm -- the PP folks will know her as as my crewmate Tamsin; she's in the HCI program at CMU this year. So that was pretty cool since I didn't really get to talk to her at the SF party last year, and this time we mostly talked about Pittsburgh and CMU and stuff. Whee! Unfortunately we lost track of the time and I made her late to her 4:30 class.

I also was on campus later than expected and I apparently literally missed Django by like 2 minutes in his office, so instead, I got in touch with Lahut over AIM, and then I went to the UC to acquire some new CMU t-shirts since I'm wearing out the ones I have. I ended up meeting up with Roman there, and we went to the Shady House to figure stuff out. We sort of figured out a plan, but what really happened was that I sat in the basement watching Matt play World of Warcraft for a half hour, and playing with the black cat who came downstairs to keep me company. Eventually people showed up at the Shady House, and we ordered pizza, and eventually we played the board game A Game of Thrones.

Keep in mind I was the only one who had not read all the George R. R. Martin books -- also, I ended up as the Greyjoy family -- and also, we kept having muster cards come up early, and supply late, and we only did Clash of Kings or whatever twice -- so it was really frustrating and I was very limited in what I could actually do since I couldn't place any star orders. I seem to recall this happened last time I played the game too. (Infact, ironically, I look back on the LJ entry and basically, it was a year and a half ago during Sakuracon 2004, it was me and Django and Konstantin and Matt and Jason (aka Fronsac, to the PP folk; he was in Seattle visiting me during Sakuracon). And we gave up at midnight and conceded the game to Matt, since he had 6 cities, and Django and Kon had to get back to the Sakuracon hotel. I think I was Greyjoy that time too.)

So this time, Konstantin was Lannister, and we clashed at the border of our territories. The only thing I really managed to accomplish was to totally knock out Kon's water forces, and later on I also took out Matt's eastern coast water forces (since he was Stark). Django, as Baratheon, kept the King's Landing territory forever, and everyone was just awash in power tokens for most of the game, oddly. Carl, as Tyrrell, sort of got screwed by everyone at one point or another. In the last turn of the game (it actually went to ten turns), everyone was doing crazy fights. I had managed to take over Winterfell from Matt, but then I used those forces to attack Riverrun, which was my grudge border with Kon. So Matt jumped back into Winterfell and it was his seventh city and he won. Whee.

It was 1am by then. Happy December.

I sort of feel like I should actually read the book and come back and play again at Carnival. I bet that would make Matt super-happy at least :)

Django gave me a ride back here, and I got to say 'night to Charlie with one last game of Set, and now I am staying up for another few hours so I can go take a bus to campus and then hop the 28x to the airport. I guess I'll sleep for 3 hours on the plane and hope to run on pure energy while I'm in Key West.

So, some of you I'll see in a few hours or a day or whatever, assuming nothing goes drastically wrong with my flight. And I'll be back in Seattle on Sunday night.

And I guess some of you I won't see again until Carnival. Hrm.

Today, there was a games party at the House of Slack. I played a game of "Candamir, the First Settlers" which is a variation on the Catan games. It was interesting, and I'd play again, but my only issue with it was a vague lack of interaction between players. It was sort of amusing since there's these potion components... honey, mushrooms, and well, um... badgers. See, Josh couldn't figure out what they were, so I said that as a joke, and it stuck. It worked, especially since they also had parts of the game where you'd kill snakes! And bears and wolves, but mostly it was like "Okay, I move that way and get a badger. And this way and I kill a snaaaaaake!"

I won the game a half turn before Josh would have, by sheer luck (I managed to get into the fields and find a cow.) Heidi and Luca also played, and Luca left 3/4 of the way through so Chris took over for him.

After that, we played... we played Betrayal At The House of Slack, and somehow we managed to have a big game full of rules disputes, which I wasn't used to. Infact, I died in the very first turn of the game, but everyone decided that was lame and let me live. Then we ended up with a dopplegangers scenario which suuuuuuuuuuucked. (Surprisingly, Cory wasn't the traitor for once, though he was the first character dead and as such hunted people with his doppleganger.) It came down to Colleen vs. Megan's doppleganger and the doppleganger won, so we all lost.

Before the party, I stopped by Tower and spent the gift certificate card I had, so I picked up the new Great Big Sea album, the OCR of Sweeney Todd, and the full version of Handel's Messiah as performed by the Robert Shaw Chorale. I previously had the RSC CD of just the choruses, but I wanted a full version, and I'm pretty loyal to Robert Shaw. I blame my high school choir director for that.

Also, the Marines swept the Konami Cup series as predicted. Fun stuff. I can't wait to get back to Chiba next summer.

Matt Lahut is in town for Microsoft Puzzle Hunt. I always forget how much I totally adore him until he comes to visit. The reason I really adore Matt is that not only is he absolutely fucking brilliant (sort of in the same way jcreed is, just some big raw energon cube of intelligence) but also, unlike everyone else in the galaxy (except maybe Nick), he laughs at all my jokes. You have no idea how gratifying it is to have someone around who actually always appreciates my warped sense of humor. I guess the bad part is that it makes me hyper-silly because I'm just trying to get out all my goofiness while someone's around who will laugh at it.

Anyway, after work, through a bunch of cellphone walkie-talkiness, we converged upon the Celtic Bayou for dinner; we being Lahut, Drew, Jason, Brian R, and me. I'm just not a fan of the CB's food, but oh well, it's still a good hangout place. Afterwards we went over to Microsoft Building 41 to play Robo Rally -- the new Wizards-of-the-Coasted version, that is. There are a few significant rule changes, mostly affecting how you get options, and there's these wacky new boards, and no virtual bots, and they've sort of dumbed down a little bit of it. Anyway, we played two games; the first was one board, two flags, and I won; the second was one board, three flags, and Matt won. Fun was had, although I spent most of the second game with 2 registers locked and just flailing around in board lasers. Wheeeee.

I came home and baked brownies, and am getting my junk together for Puzzle Hunt, which starts in about 8.5 hours, so I better go get some sleep, since I don't plan to sleep tomorrow night. Woo. PUZZLE HUNT! See you all Sunday night.

Also, I would like to point out that tonight was actually a monumental event: the first time since 1996 that I missed a fall semester game of Capture the Stuff With Flags. Crazy, isn't it? Oh well -- I'll be in Pittsburgh in three weeks and can see everyone then, without all the running around, screaming, and singing Yankee Doodle at the top of my lungs.

I think I'm in that part of being sick where it's not horrible, but it's persistent. Like one minute I feel all crappy, then I feel great the next.

After spending most of Sunday just hanging out at home trying to relax, I went downtown to hang out with some people for dinner; Jason's cousin Donna was in town so we had dinner at Jason's place, those two, Drew, and me. Drew gave me back my Flogging Molly CD that I lent him "for a night, right?" a month ago. (The upshot is that lending it to him got it out of constant repeat in my car, and instead, I've had Belle and Sebastian's album "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" on constant repeat for the past month instead!) I was really very out of it and doped up on cough syrup, but we managed to play a game of Alhambra anyway, which I somehow won. We also solved this 5x5 soma cube puzzle thingy that Drew had custom-made. It had letters on the sides when you solved it properly, and spelled something, but I shouldn't give it away in case he makes anyone else I know try to solve it.

Today, I went to work, and now Jack is sick, but he says that he probly caught the cold from someone else, so I shouldn't feel bad. I was still kind of brain-fuzzy but I did get a few things done.

After work, I decided I might as well go to choir because even if I couldn't really sing, I still needed to find out what changes he was making to the music. I sang at half-strength for most of the rehearsal, except when they did "Their Sound Has Gone Out", where I couldn't help but belt a lot of the tenor solo lines. It just feels so *good*, if you know what I mean.

And after choir, I went weight-lifting anyway, but I also took it easy there -- didn't do any cardio, and skipped one or two things, and didn't up the weights on the cable row and press like I'd meant to this week. I ran into Eddie from the weekly volleyball games, as he was also lifting. He commended me on my fashion sense.

And now my throat feels a little sore. I think I'll take it easy tomorrow.

Yesterday, I went to lunch with meerkat299 and georgejas, the latter of whom is in town this weekend but was going off for most of the real weekend to be camping with Megan and whoever. We went to Soup Daddy. They didn't have any of the soups I like. They say I should call and find out when they have the ones I like; I think it'd be more useful if they had like, a soup warning service you could sign up for, like they'd email you in the morning if they had the specific soups you were watching for.

After work, Oren picked me up, and we went to Taste of India for dinner with Nick. We drank a LOT of chai. It ruled.

Watched "Major League" after that - god I love that movie, but I wish it didn't remind me of the Philadelphia Phillies this year. Ryan Howard is Cerrano, David Bell is Rodger Dorn, Mike Lieberthal is Jake Taylor, etc.

Drew and Jason came by as we were finishing the movie, and they played Tichu with me and Nick, since Oren decided to go home. Yay for Tichu!

Today, we went to the east side, and got lunch at Thai Chef with Drew and Jason after an adventure involving Drew getting a flat tire on 520 and stuff. Oops. Played Ticket to Ride over at Drew's place, along with a friend of Nick's (Shaheen? I forget his name). Drew won the game but I completed a metric assload of tickets for 68 points plus my 46 points in tracks. Not too shabby.

I have an Orbital CD to give to Eli, returned from Drew.

Nick and I went to the Mariners game. It sucked. Game review's in the normal place. Tomorrow is Felix. We will be there. Oh yes, we will be there.

Today, Benoit came downtown with me again. So I actually took an hour lunch break (gasp!) and we went to Tropics, in the international district. I had figured on either there or Shanghai Garden, and SG was packed with Amazonians. I kinda expected to run into former coworkers, but I guess many of the people I worked with are now gone, and there are ninety billion new people at the company anyway.

Apparently nothing blew up when we did the code rollout yesterday, fortunately.

After work I went to the gym with Megan and Heidi. We were there for like two hours -- we did our leg weight workouts and then went swimming for a while. I smell like the pool! Whee!

bpr and oren came over in the evening. We played Carcassonne, and then Benoit came back, and the four of us played Nippon Rails, which he won because he's a lucky bastard. Damn train games. No, seriously, he always had three contracts he was working on and I think the rest of us got lousy draws -- I never was working on three at once, and I even swapped contracts at one point. I think Oren just kept swapping, too. It was sad. I did start off with Hokkaido though, which was new and different.

The funny part is that I know all of them from Wean, but none of them knew each other. Oren was class of 2000, Brian was class of 2004, and Benoit is a CS grad student. Although they all know chamois, so go figure.