dr4b: (ginkakuji)
Whoa, weekend. I didn't update yesterday because I got home too late and was almost thinking of the same for today.

So yeah. Yesterday at the last minute I got invited to come out to Redmond and play board games. Jason and Drew and I played a game of Runebound. It took bloody forever since we hadn't played before, and I eventually left at 1:30am (after about 4-5 hours of game) because it seemed like I wasn't going to get a third rune (I was seriously one turn away from getting it and winning the game when Drew sniped it out of the city I was heading for.) and I just started throwing my character against really hard quests, at which point I lost my second rune when I died. Doh.

Today, [profile] damienroc and [profile] theonlymegumegu had invited me to come to a games party at this guy Leon's house in Tacoma. I was a little bit chicken about going, but when Jeff reminded me that it was sort of like the first time I ever met him, when I invited him to a games party at my house and he didn't know anyone either, I figured, what the heck. So I drove down to Tacoma and hung out there for several hours, and it actually went pretty well, plus I did know about half of the people there.

The first game I got in on was Duel of the Ages or something -- and we just made a board and dealt out some items to people and had characters go kill each other. It started off REALLY boring -- as in, I'd go away for 15 minutes and it wouldn't be anywhere near my turn -- but when we got to the end of the game and it was basically these two guys fighting each other and Wooko and I fighting each other on the other side of the board, that was a lot more fun. I lucked out and killed off Wooko's two characters, only losing one of mine in the process, and then I went across the map to try to kill off the other guys -- except that in the meantime they'd killed each other off. One of them had a "sentinel" item that kept attacking me even though the character was dead, so the sentinel thingy actually killed me -- but technically, 1) I was last man standing so I won, 2) I had a device to teleport me away from it, and it couldn't follow, so I should have won. Oops.

After that I played Tsuro with Rochelle and Brien and Chris (and later Jeff and Fuzzy too), and I won my first game of it, but in the second game, Chris pretty much killed three of us off in one tile, so Jeff won. I liked it, I would like to play again, I think, so I can get my head around the way it works more.

We had a big game of The Big Idea after that, with 8 players. The last time I had played The Big Idea, seriously, was before Ralph had moved off of Beechwood, meaning 1999 or 2000... and Laura Tweedy and I were going to draw extra cards for it, I remember, for the "suffixes" like "On a stick" and "In a Box" and all. Really, I wasn't that big a fan of the game, but with 8 people it was actually a bit more fun, even if I'm pretty sure I came in near the bottom if not dead last in ranking.

Jeff and Wooko and Chris and I played a quick game of San Juan after that. I won it, with my chapel. Apparently Wooko really hates chapels. Apparently I shouldn't make fun of Wooko about hating chapels, or steal his Skittles for that matter. Arr.

Anyway, by that point it was like 1am so I figured I should probably drive home. So I did.

I had a pretty good time. I'm glad Jeff convinced me to come down there. I wish Tacoma wasn't so damn far. I think it's awesome that I've had two big weekends of board games in a row, though. Plus Leon's house is way cool, his basement is a really good gaming setup.

Also, a funny thing that happened on the way down was that when I went past the Tacoma Dome they had a big sign for "TOBY KEITH -- TONIGHT!!" up on the blinky thing, and at the time, I was listening to a cover of a Toby Keith song, realizing I've never actually heard the real guy sing it. Weird. (I don't know what's gotten into me lately about country music -- I even borrowed a Tim McGraw CD from Drew yesterday, and I actually sort of like it.)
dr4b: (pop'n'music Sana)
Oops, I guess I went to sleep last night without updating. I thought I had, weird. Friday at work, I was a bad girl and ducked out of yet another all-hands meeting, to go down to the IT guys and beg someone to make my laptop work for remote VPN stuff. They were all like "Bah, we are very very busy, file a ticket and we'll get back to you in a couple of days," and I said "Can't I just plug it in and show you the error I got since I already installed all the stuff and I'm just getting a weird message or two?" So they gave me a cable modem to plug it into, I booted it up, showed them one message which turned out to be that I needed to uninstall Norton, and the second was some arcane Lotus Notes problem, but the IT guy typed a few random incantations into it and it magically worked. I think I wasted a total of maybe half an hour of his time, so I guess I do feel a little bad, but it wasn't like I had some huge hours-and-hours-long issue to work through.

After work we had D&D at Cory's house. We now ACTUALLY have one session remaining. As in, our final boss to fight is in the floor above the room we're at. We've worked our way up the outside tower thing, found the ethereal plane portal, went up the other side, had a few fights, and are now there. We were going to do the shopping thing, since Cory got turned to stone (for like the third time -- honestly, he had sprung a prismatic spray trap early on and got turned to stone but Justin decided that'd be lame so instead he just got hit with a lot of damage by a ray. Then later, we had prismatic spray cast on the party and AGAIN Cory got hit by the "turned to stone" ray and AGAIN failed his save) but Josh decided to Miracle him back since I didn't have Stone to Flesh memorized, and so in theory we'll just plow through, next session. Though next session might not be until mid-December at this rate thanks to travel.

Today I meant to do some shopping and then go visiting people, but I was exhausted and slept until 2pm. Oops. So instead, I got up, called [personal profile] oren, went and picked him up around 4ish, and we drove down to Tacoma.

First I stopped by Narrows because the In The Groove nationals qualifying tourney was going on and I just wanted to stop by and say hello to people. I didn't see many people I knew -- [profile] darknote and [profile] toastercookie and Jedi and Shakespeare by the 5th mix, and [profile] cynic573 behind the table, and [profile] bobsyouruncle and [profile] crackoon getting ready to actually compete, and [profile] keevon over by the Beatmania III machine. There were bunches of other people there, but I didn't know who they were. I played a game of Beatmania so I could play 20 November just in case, and I also played a game of Drummania for the hell of it. Oren played a game of Initial D, and in the meantime Jeff had called me, so I called him back and we headed even further south down to Lakewood.

We got to [profile] damienroc and [profile] wooko's place, and they were there, as was Pete, and Julianne. Wooko took Pete home for some reason or another, and Jeff and Julianne and Oren and I went to grab pre-HP dinner; we ended up at Applebee's. It wasn't too bad. [profile] islandergirlro and Brien caught up with us to give us movie tickets at Applebee's, and then we all ended up at the theater a bit later, and we saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'll talk about that in a second.

After the movie we came back and watched a 5-minute episode of some weird anime (Magical Play?) with "The 2-D vs. 3-D fight!", and then I suggested we watch the Simpsons softball episode, which was of course vastly entertaining, and then we all headed home. Whee.

Tomorrow I might go try to play IIDX at that new arcade thing, or maybe stop by Illusionz or such, but more likely I will just go shopping for my trip and maybe start packing. I will make sure to play 20 November on some Bemani game one way or the other, though.

I guess I'll LJ-cut in case people haven't seen the movie, but is it really possible to spoil it?

Harry Potter And The Triwizard Tournament )
dr4b: (Oliver Puppy)
I do things besides write parody lyrics. Honest.

Today I drove down to Tacoma to go see a movie with [profile] damienroc. On the way there, there was an accident around Federal Way. Traffic was totally stopped, so I called Jeff to let him know I was running late. The funny part was, he was looking at traffic maps and cams on the net trying to figure out what the problem was, and as far as he could tell, there *was* no problem. It was very odd. But, I was on the phone and there were all these sirens and such going by... so, yeah. It turned out there was a van which had flipped over in the middle of the highway and two lanes of I-5 were unusable.

Well, I got there like 4:30, and so Jeff and Wooko and I went over to see the 5:30 showing of Dukes of Hazzard. Wooooooo, that was a really fun movie. I think it's hilarious to watch as its rating gets lower and lower on IMDB -- it's down to 3.8 as I post this -- but, seriously, it was a fun movie. I mean, you can't go into it expecting to relive your childhood or expect a quality experience -- you have to go into it expecting a goofy bunch of crap with a lot of car chase scenes and all the other usual capers of the Dukes of Hazzard. And then you won't be disappointed.

After the movie, I called back Oren, who was down at PLU for a Go congress or something, and we went and picked him up and went to Mory's for dinner. Jeff and I just ended up hanging out and talking about baseball and junk for a while; by the time I thought of maybe annoying Wooko to play games or something, he had gone to sleep anyway. Arr.

The drive home was pretty uneventful, fortunately. I listened to three volumes of Forbidden Broadway on the way down and back today. I feel very inspired. Problem is, I really sort of wish I knew which Broadway shows are "well-known" and which aren't, so people will "get" the stuff I write? Ah, well...
dr4b: (Taki)
The B'z are such good car music. I think I'm on a kick for a bit.

I went today to find boxes to put baseball cards in. I tried to go to the card shop in Fremont but they were having an auction or something with lots of scary people. Instead, I got sushi from Blue C, and stopped by the Game Wizard on 65th for boxes.

There was a big antique car show going on, on my street, this morning/afternoon. I walked through it for a bit to go to the post office. I don't care about cars but it's neat to see thousands of people in my neighborhood.

I went to one round of the Wrasse blockade because Carl couldn't be there. Nyah.

I tried to go to [profile] animegothgrrl's beach party, but I drove to the park and the guy said I couldn't park in their lots because they were all full, and then I drove around the other lots and the area looking for a parking space, and eventually found one but thought "do I really feel like walking almost a mile there and back, given I'm not even sure how long I'll stay?" and so no, I wussed out. If Julie actually reads this, I apologize for wussing out.

Instead, I went down to Tacoma and hung out with [profile] damienroc for the evening (and occasionally [profile] wooko when I went and annoyed him too). Originally we were going to Chris's house for a bbq, and then a movie, except Chris got stuck in Seattle, so instead Jeff and I wasted time for an hour (he played PP, I read a book) and then we went down to PLU and got mexican food for dinner at a place called Rayna's (well, Reyna's, but since I know a Rayna, that's funnier), and then we saw the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

I know the movie got somewhat bad reviews, but I really liked it. You could either call it a mindless action flick with pretty people, or you could call it a romantic comedy with lots of guns, and either way you'd be right. I enjoyed how clever it was, though. Pitt or Jolie would utter a line totally deadpan and about 5-10 seconds later I'd get it and start laughing. Yeah, the lines themselves were dumb sometimes, but the setups were nice. I thought it was really well done and just really enjoyed it.

I still need to see Bewitched, though. And having seen the preview for it again, knowing that it's directed by Nora Ephron and the main character is a blonde, the mind wonders: why is Nicole Kidman starring in it instead of Meg Ryan?

On that note, I'm going to sleep.

As an aside, yes, there is a very big difference between wasting an hour reading a book here alone and wasting an hour reading a book when someone else is wasting time nearby. Call it "presence" or whatever.
dr4b: (Taki)
Today was a pretty good day. I got up really early to meet Megan and Heidi at the gym at 9:15am. We did leg exercises today. Because my knees are so screwed up from my years of DDR, I have a lot of trouble with some of their leg exercises, so they taught me how to do some of the curls and squats on a machine instead of with their freestanding versions, which stresses my knees less.

After the gym, we went to Cyndy's for breakfast, which was pretty good. Megan and Heidi went off plant shopping at that point, and Josh said, "well, I'm gonna go watch baseball, you're welcome to come along," so I went and watched baseball for a while. Eventually they all went outside to work on the fence and garden. I was mostly useless but I did yank a few weeds out of the ground and help measure fence stuff. When Cory and Justin showed up, I ducked out and stopped off at home for a bit.

Then I headed down to Tacoma... hung out at Jeff and Wooko's place for a while talking about Transformers (and we even watched an episode of it, because Jeff is a dork), then we went over to the movie theater, where we met up with Chris and two of his friends, and we all saw Batman Begins, which was, god forbid, a Batman movie that didn't totally suck. Well, Katie Holmes is pretty retarded in it, but most of the movie was actually good. Honest.

Afterwards we went to Mory's for dinner, and played a starting game of SPANC, this new game Wooko picked up, which is pretty silly (but like many other recent Steve Jackson Games, has a reasonably popular artist (Phil Foglio, in this case) doing the cards, so if nothing else they're funny to look at). Ro and Brien joined us at Mory's, and afterwards everyone went back to the apartment to play board games, except by that point I realized it was midnight and I should drive home. So I did. And now I am here. And going to sleep soon.

By the way, I think the Mariners have somehow activated an Infinite Improbability Drive, as they managed to actually beat the never-lost-to-the-Mariners Pedro Martinez, with Ryan Franklin pitching for us, and with Sexson ejected from the game, so our infield was Hansen - Lopez - Morse - Bloomquist. WHAT THE HECK?! I don't get it, but... wow. Just, crazy. If the improbability drive stays on, maybe Ichiro will hit four home runs tomorrow and Mike Cameron will be miraculously healed and get to play.

Arr.

Yes, I skipped the Fremont Fair... I just didn't feel like dealing with a hundred thousand people. I might go tomorrow, I might not. We'll see.
Oren and I drove down to Tacoma to see a Rainiers game. Jeff (Damienroc) was meeting us there. I also managed to go and meet up with some of the folks from Lookout Landing, formerly Leone For Third, one of the two top baseball blogs in Seattle. Jeff and Devin were there, and PositivePaul and PLU Tim and Mark, and Jon Wells and his wife. Jon Wells is cool because he edits the Grand Salami, which is that magazine you'll see people selling outside Safeco before Mariners games. And he gave me a free copy of the June issue :)

Anyway, we hung out a bit. I went down to the 51's dugout to see if I could catch Ryan Rupe and get him to sign my Nippon Ham Fighters yearbook from last year, but no dice, the pitchers hadn't come out yet...

...and they never really did, because it started raining around 7pm. And it didn't stop. Jeff and Oren and I sat around talking for like an hour and a half, which was kinda cool, but it kept raining and raining and raining, and eventually we gave up and left around 8:30pm.

(Guess what -- the game WASN'T rained out after all, they started the game around 9pm, and the Rainiers won, and Snelling hit a two-run homer, and I am sad I still haven't gotten to see him play this year)

Well, but we didn't know that. We went back to Jeff's apartment, and Eric showed up after a while, and we put Azumanga Daioh on the TV, and played some games... we played San Juan, and Uno, and Buried Treasure, and I forget what else. Wooko eventually woke up and came out to the living room for a bit but he looked and sounded pretty sick :( so we couldn't get him to play anything with us. So we went to Mory's for breakfast-like food after a while. I'd never been there before, and got an SOS or whatever, which was basically like, gravy with meat in it over hash browns, which was interesting.

And then I did the whole driving home thing. I wish Tacoma was like, closer, or at least had less obnoxious traffic. And I still want to go back to a Rainiers game, dammit! I wonder if I should try to make it to Saturday or Sunday's game... I also was sad because I wanted to see Norihiro Nakamura play. (He's on the 51s.) I did see him come out of the dugout... the main thing is, I just don't scuppering feel like driving back to Tacoma. Sigh.
dr4b: (Taki)
Went down to Tacoma today. Had dinner at Rock Pasta for [profile] theonlymegumegu's birthday thingy. There were a whole ton of people there, most of whom I recognized, many of whom I don't know the names of. I ended up at the "quiet" end of the table, and shared a pizza with Wooko and played Icehouse games with him and Stuph, we played two games of Volcano. Afterwards, we filtered out people at the Game Matrix, and then everyone converged on Eric's basement, where half the people played San Juan, and half played Settlers. I was in the Settlers game. I won. I think I'm too much of a gamer, it frustrates me when people make completely random and not-even-remotely-optimal moves, but I am getting a lot better at not expressing that at all. Half the group went to Seattle to see Izo as part of the SIFF, and the rest of us (at this point Wooko, Stuph, Ro, Brien, me, and the guy whose name I never caught) ended up at Jeff and Wooko's place, and played Betrayal At The House On The Hill. Nameless-Guy was the traitor, but the rest of us won, so it's all good. Then we played a game of Ninja Burger, which was utterly frustrating for me because d6's are my nemesis, but on the other hand I think I've figured out an important game mechanic for something else, so it's all good.

Drove home. Tacoma is far. Jeff has a beard. It looks weird.

Seattle is going through an odd thing right now where it's scaldingly hot during the day and horrendously cold at night. Makes it weird to sleep.

February 2019

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