Daily Adventures

Today was one of those days....

I was added back onto the roster of my old 6's team, I got my bee allergy shot, I helped plan a siege defense, I got to play Rainbow Siege Six for the first time with my son and his friend, I had a last minute dental appointment with my periodontist that was nearly foiled by my GPS, and I might have a mild eye infection as well. But I got Dairy Queen and good gaming.

I think I'm a little tired.

( Read more... )

Yes, it has occurred to me that the whole year's worth of pursuing gaming was actually my running away from something else.

Immersing myself within game worlds, with people I could probably never see face-to-face, whom I didn't even know the real names of, was incredibly like the early Usenet in some ways. Handles like MonkeyMasterB8, Synchronous Heartbeat, ExtraOrdinary, Randomizer, ToastGhoast, and my favorite EvilDeath1234 were all a part of it. Most people felt it mildly rude to be looking for real names, though, eventually, with all the time in conversation, we would start to talk about our real lives.

Pursuing, if not perfection, at least excellence, with those whose sole purpose was to get better at the game, was intoxicating, and playing with people who did little but play video games for all their time off filtered for those for whom this was their life for now. And it turns out a lot of us really are walking away from life for a while, for various reasons.

( And I had my own reasons... )

I started in October, at the very last minute putting an ad up on the UGC LFP forums for the NA Iron teams. There were, as I understood it, five divisions, the lowest being Iron, then Steel, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. And the teams that placed in the top so many spots of each division could move up.

I honestly didn't think I could even get into Iron... I only had 700 hours in the game, and barely 60 of them were as a Medic. I'd mostly played Pyro, Engie, Heavy, and Medic was my fourth-most played class. But Medic was the one class I thought I might be able to play in the 6's meta, which really only allowed for medics, soldiers, scouts, and demomen.

( I had no idea how bad I really was... )

Lots of things have been happening, some of them looked bad when they happened, but some of it has turned out all right.

Our 20-year-old Passat died a complete death, I've had periodontal problems, and my old overuse problems with my hands and arms have come back with the competitive video gaming. None of those things were particularly surprises, per se, but they haven't been that much fun.

( Coping has had a few good side effects... )

A UGC Steel team, even.

And people seem to be trusting me with it.

So.

Since about April, I got involved in the TF2 (Team Fortess 2) gaming community. It started with joining the failing Team Play First Community, and getting pulled into the staffing because someone found out that I could play with computers and get them to do what I wanted them to do.

( Read more... )

All right.

I finally got my Razar Stealth Blackwidow keyboard, and I'm happy with it and with the low weight needed to activate the keys. It makes my tendonitus just that much less aggravating. And it's as silent as I'd hoped that it would be. I'm also grateful to finally have function keys again, and some of the navigation and short cut keys that the Happy Hacker does not have.

Which isn't to say that I don't love the Happy Hacker for its capabilities when I'm writing code, but it is not the easiest thing to use when a lot of the game keys are function keys. And on the HH they take two key hits instead of one, so it's Not Good for reflex work. Yes, I know that I could reprogram it, but this just seemed a whole lot easier, and there was no way on earth I'd give up mechanical switches. The Razar ones are quite nice to the touch, too.

( I know... updating more than once in a week... it's insane... )

So John and I now have a tradition, where I take a week off for the Big Bad gaming convention and then he takes a week off to go to Seattle and be with his mom for a week. Poor Jet has to do the school thing, but since there was talk at BigBadCon of allowing 13+ to play and run in a kiddie pool, he's said that he'd like to come for the weekend and not skip any school to do it, but still come and play. That would be fantastic.

As it is, though, we each get our week to do what it is that we really want to do, and it turns out very well for both of us. Jet seems to get into the spirit of the whole thing, too, and is extra helpful for both of us while the other is gone.

( So... this was the prep days with Carl for BigBadCon.... )

I'm going to have cuts for each of the games in case someone wants to avoid spoilers for the games themselves.

( Not actually Jeremy Tidwell's Companions game, but Duane O-Brien's The Ultimate Grand Deadly Kumite of Exploding Death.... )

When my game finished, I went out to the food trucks to find some dinner, and ran into Jeremy at the King Knish cart. He apologized very nicely for showing up an hour late, and it turned out he'd run for those that had waited. I was a little disappointed with that, but it's just life. He had to run into his next game, and when the food took a little longer, I said that I'd be happy to bring it to him in his game when it was ready. He seemed kind of surprised by that, but I said that I didn't have a game and I might as well do it.

So I did. I also found Carl eating his knish in the main lobby, and I happily sat down with him to eat my dinner. The spicy ketchup that the Knish Man made was very good and the knish itself was savory and tasty. It was nice to just talk a bit with him before it was very late, and I went to bed feeling really sick from my cold, and resolved to sleep as long as I could because I didn't have a morning game.

I did manage to get up in time to ask Carl about the models he wanted me to build of the Russian airplanes that were flown by the Night Witches, and he happily gave me the kits and a little glue if they needed it.

I went back to sleep, only getting up for a little breakfast and a Nutella and banana crepe from the crepe wagon, and then another nap; and by the time it was 3pm and time for Carl's game, I actually had my voice back and enough energy to go play with him and the three guys signed up for the game.

( Carl's Night Witches: The Visit )

( Saturday night dinner was a long-time tradition... )

I'm not sure when it was, but at one point, Carl and I were just sitting in the lobby of the convention and Sean sat down to talk about a possible teenager extension to the convention. He was saying that there were people who couldn't come because their teenage kids couldn't come, so he wanted to create a safe venue for teenagers, at least thirteen and up. So we talked through what it would take to create some kids' tables, for the 13-17 crowd and what it might look like. That was fun, especially since Jet might be interested in such a thing.

I got to sleep at a reasonable hour, but after sleeping most of the day I had a hard time getting to sleep. I also thought that my first game started at 9; but I was wrong. Oops... luckily, I did both a good deed and got forgiven my mistake...

( We Are Iron Man by Christine Lorang... )

( And then Lali and I ran off to Hacking as Women. )

Given that this got to be bigger than the 64k limit... I'm cutting it here and putting the last and best game with Kevan Forbes in another post. *grins*

Lots of changes...

VBS was good, the small break was great, the last of the summer was full, and then yesterday Jet got his braces off for the last time (he'd had two sets of them, poor kid) and today he went to high school.

Yeah.

( For the Picture... )

Amazingly grateful for being able to walk around the neighborhood in the sunshine today, with Jet. I'm happy that I can cook again, that I can wander around the house again, that I can actually drive to church and do everything that I needed to do there. I'm amazingly grateful for just the simple act of being able to put my hair in a ponytail and not be dizzy from the unconscious head toss that I do when I do it. *laughs*

It's pretty amazing the number of things I have back.

The biggest was that I was able to let John go off on a trip to Cleveland on Wednesday through to today. I tested being able to drive on Tuesday morning, and was so exhausted at the end of the meeting I had then that I had to lie down on one of the couches at church for a conversation with someone else. After that I was good enough to get home. Luckily, it got better after that...

( Read more... )

Just been on a kind of recovery schedule... taking it easy, mostly, but trying to get some physical work in to let me sleep at night.

Yesterday I spent hours on the rose garden, wedding, watering, and dead-heading in full sun, and it was wonderful. We've had a month of rainier and wetter weather than we're used to, which is nothing compared to what we used to get in Seattle, but here it was pretty unusual, so it's been nice that this week we're back to high-80's during the day and 50's at night, so that it's comfortable to sleep.

Today I got in a good long walk through the whole neighborhood, too, along with a much needed two hour nap. I'm just wiped and not exactly sure why, but I'm sleeping when my body seems to really need the sleep. So that's all to the good.

( I also had about fifteen minutes of TF2 gameplay... )