(17:54:48) Tzar Nicholas: Steve! If you get to my house immejately, you can come to Gil's gamenight
And so, having nothing better to do, I grabbed a hot dog, some board games[0], and, of course, my crown, and got to Nick's as quickly as I could. I should note that at this point I had no idea who this "Gil" person was and had never even heard of him.
Gil lives down - up? No, it must be south of here - in Lodi. Nick drove - his parents gave him their old car as his own, and it needed gas, and apparently gas is cheap down in Lodi. Hm, I should probably note at this point that Mike Gofman[6] was with us too, though he drove separately.
Anyway, we get there, where I find that everybody else there is much older than us. Gil himself is married. And he lives in an apartment, not a house. I also meet what I think is the first cat I have ever been warned not to pet. (Well, first housecat. Actually I don't think anyone's ever warned me not to pet the tiger/lion/etc, BICBW.) When everyone but Andrew[3] had arrived, we went downstairs to the building's community room, and started playing a game of something I don't know how to spell but which is pronounced "stitial". Evil little trick-taking game with its own big deck. Every card you take that's not of your pain color, you get one point. Every card you take that's of your pain color, you lose a number of points equal to the face value of the card.
Harry[4]: I've found a way to modify Sucking Vacuum so that it doesn't suck.
Me: Wouldn't that make it just...?
Harry: Shut up, Steve.
Andrew arrived, and he, Gin, Gofman, someone whose name I don't remember, and I started figuring out the rules for A Game of Thrones. The game is based off a book, A Game of Thrones, only they went and made it into an actual game. We actually ended up missing quite a few important rules. Such as, everyone's supposed to start off with 5 power tokens, not 0. :P The game is sort of like Diplomacy, but, for one thing, there's a lot more rules. However, while orders are made simultaneously, they're not resolved simultaneously, so all that confusion is gone. What's really neat, though, is that orders aren't specific; you don't decide their exact effect until you actually take the action. Also, the game automatically ends after 10 turns ( :P ), although, because Nick and I had to be home by midnight, and because this was the first time any of us were playing AGOT (at the beginning, we spent quite a lot of time figuring out what the "consolidate power" order did, and how you claimed a space), we still didn't have time to finish.
Naturally, I wore my crown during the game. My symbol wasn't the frog (there was no frog), it was some kind of flower, but my color was green!
Nick, Gil, and Harry, meanwhile, went and played Sucking Vacuum, and later Stupiduel. Stupiduel can, I think, best be described by an approximate quote from it: (I may have the people wrong. I also do not remember Harry's words at all, which is why I have him talking like me.)
Harry: [probably playing something like a "gasoline" or a "cigarette" card] So, you're refilling your gas tank when you decide to have a smoke. BOOM! You're blown into the stratosphere.
Gil: [playing a "wild item" card] Hah! Luckily I was wearing my spacesuit!
Several of the people who normally come to Nick's gamenights - Lina, Sara, Tom, Ben[5] - turned up at some point, but left pretty quickly: they were too creeped out by the fact that Gil was married, although they said it was because Tom had a fire call and he was their ride (Tom is a volunteer fireman).
It turned out that it was actually the day before Gil's birthday, and so there was a birthday cake, which was yay, and had M&Ms in it.
Before we left, I got to meet Gil's ferret, Tardy! Yay! Ferrets are so cool. Hah, I had just been saying to my mom a few days ago about how it would be neat to have a ferret. Of course we're not going to get one, but I so want to get one when I'm older...
Anyway, we headed home, still low on gas. Well, now we were *really* low on gas. The low fuel light came on. It was OK, we had passed quite a few gas stations on the way there... except they were all closed. Except one, a Delta station where they were all out of every type of gas but super, so it ended up being actually more expensive. Oh well.
Me: You know, it seems kind of weird, that our town borders on Hawthorne... I mean, I know it does, but I don't think I've ever actually seen the border... well, I know I've crossed it once or twice, but never when I was paying attention...
Nick: You know where Lincoln Ave is? That's it.
Me: Oh... is that really it? That was sort of an anticlimax.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Do I actually have any games that Gil doesn't? Maybe one or two. Of course, I had no idea who Gil was at that point.
[3]Expect here a lot of names of people that you don't know and that I had never met before. Well, unless you know them.
[4]Just a reminder - I'm not Harry, I'm Steve.
[5]Academy people: These are Sara Allen, Tom Pimlot, and Ben Barenboim.
[6]Someone's going to have to explain this to me at some point: When I was a sophomore, I heard everyone calling him "Golfman". Then I found out his name is actually "Gofman". Now, Harry and Pete tell me, he was always called "Gofman", nobody ever called him "Golfman". Of course, they weren't there when I was a sophomore. So can someone tell me: Did I just mishear everybody, or was he actually called "Golfman"?
--
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but people who
live in polycarbonate houses can throw all the stones they want.
And so, having nothing better to do, I grabbed a hot dog, some board games[0], and, of course, my crown, and got to Nick's as quickly as I could. I should note that at this point I had no idea who this "Gil" person was and had never even heard of him.
Gil lives down - up? No, it must be south of here - in Lodi. Nick drove - his parents gave him their old car as his own, and it needed gas, and apparently gas is cheap down in Lodi. Hm, I should probably note at this point that Mike Gofman[6] was with us too, though he drove separately.
Anyway, we get there, where I find that everybody else there is much older than us. Gil himself is married. And he lives in an apartment, not a house. I also meet what I think is the first cat I have ever been warned not to pet. (Well, first housecat. Actually I don't think anyone's ever warned me not to pet the tiger/lion/etc, BICBW.) When everyone but Andrew[3] had arrived, we went downstairs to the building's community room, and started playing a game of something I don't know how to spell but which is pronounced "stitial". Evil little trick-taking game with its own big deck. Every card you take that's not of your pain color, you get one point. Every card you take that's of your pain color, you lose a number of points equal to the face value of the card.
Harry[4]: I've found a way to modify Sucking Vacuum so that it doesn't suck.
Me: Wouldn't that make it just...?
Harry: Shut up, Steve.
Andrew arrived, and he, Gin, Gofman, someone whose name I don't remember, and I started figuring out the rules for A Game of Thrones. The game is based off a book, A Game of Thrones, only they went and made it into an actual game. We actually ended up missing quite a few important rules. Such as, everyone's supposed to start off with 5 power tokens, not 0. :P The game is sort of like Diplomacy, but, for one thing, there's a lot more rules. However, while orders are made simultaneously, they're not resolved simultaneously, so all that confusion is gone. What's really neat, though, is that orders aren't specific; you don't decide their exact effect until you actually take the action. Also, the game automatically ends after 10 turns ( :P ), although, because Nick and I had to be home by midnight, and because this was the first time any of us were playing AGOT (at the beginning, we spent quite a lot of time figuring out what the "consolidate power" order did, and how you claimed a space), we still didn't have time to finish.
Naturally, I wore my crown during the game. My symbol wasn't the frog (there was no frog), it was some kind of flower, but my color was green!
Nick, Gil, and Harry, meanwhile, went and played Sucking Vacuum, and later Stupiduel. Stupiduel can, I think, best be described by an approximate quote from it: (I may have the people wrong. I also do not remember Harry's words at all, which is why I have him talking like me.)
Harry: [probably playing something like a "gasoline" or a "cigarette" card] So, you're refilling your gas tank when you decide to have a smoke. BOOM! You're blown into the stratosphere.
Gil: [playing a "wild item" card] Hah! Luckily I was wearing my spacesuit!
Several of the people who normally come to Nick's gamenights - Lina, Sara, Tom, Ben[5] - turned up at some point, but left pretty quickly: they were too creeped out by the fact that Gil was married, although they said it was because Tom had a fire call and he was their ride (Tom is a volunteer fireman).
It turned out that it was actually the day before Gil's birthday, and so there was a birthday cake, which was yay, and had M&Ms in it.
Before we left, I got to meet Gil's ferret, Tardy! Yay! Ferrets are so cool. Hah, I had just been saying to my mom a few days ago about how it would be neat to have a ferret. Of course we're not going to get one, but I so want to get one when I'm older...
Anyway, we headed home, still low on gas. Well, now we were *really* low on gas. The low fuel light came on. It was OK, we had passed quite a few gas stations on the way there... except they were all closed. Except one, a Delta station where they were all out of every type of gas but super, so it ended up being actually more expensive. Oh well.
Me: You know, it seems kind of weird, that our town borders on Hawthorne... I mean, I know it does, but I don't think I've ever actually seen the border... well, I know I've crossed it once or twice, but never when I was paying attention...
Nick: You know where Lincoln Ave is? That's it.
Me: Oh... is that really it? That was sort of an anticlimax.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Do I actually have any games that Gil doesn't? Maybe one or two. Of course, I had no idea who Gil was at that point.
[3]Expect here a lot of names of people that you don't know and that I had never met before. Well, unless you know them.
[4]Just a reminder - I'm not Harry, I'm Steve.
[5]Academy people: These are Sara Allen, Tom Pimlot, and Ben Barenboim.
[6]Someone's going to have to explain this to me at some point: When I was a sophomore, I heard everyone calling him "Golfman". Then I found out his name is actually "Gofman". Now, Harry and Pete tell me, he was always called "Gofman", nobody ever called him "Golfman". Of course, they weren't there when I was a sophomore. So can someone tell me: Did I just mishear everybody, or was he actually called "Golfman"?
--
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but people who
live in polycarbonate houses can throw all the stones they want.