Tufts vs The World...?

First of all, by 4 I meant 3. Me, Ginny, and Girl Alex. That was all we had. Against how many Hendersonians, Thompsonians, and Shoreyites?

Er, well, not that many. Henderson only sent like 3 people; none of the houses sent that many. There were probably less than 20 people total. So we just split into two teams arbitrarily (though Ginny, Girl Alex, and I made certain to stay on the same team) which were pretty fair, so we stuck with them pretty much the whole day, with only minor changes.

This was not the same place Tufts normally goes, it was somewhere actually in Illinois. It was somewhere known by one of the actual paintball players, Max of Shorey, who greatly emphasized the importance of the snake - a structure on one course that goes along the side; controlling it with even just one person can give you a huge advantage, apparently.

Notable things:
Someone found a baby deer just off one of the courses we were playing. Nobody knew what to do with it; we called the ref and he called the manager and eventually, he just picked it up and carried it to the main building. We expected it to bite him or something, but it didn't try anything.

ADDENDUM: Summer notes - so stupid! That probably killed it right there! Its mother's not going to take it back once you've picked it up! You have to call the conservationist!

No running water?! What the hell is this place?

I don't think I actually got a single kill all day, but I'd still say I did better than last time; due to finally understanding such things as covering fire, I was able to do more than just stand in one place and shoot at whoever poked their head out. Our team also realized how amazingly useful it is to actually communicate during battle. This probably wouldn't have worked on the larger courses - we played almost exclusively speedball - but our team was constantly shouting out the enemies locations for all to hear. I'm surprised the other team didn't do the same, it was pretty useful.

One game, though, they seemed to be down to just one person, one guy in the far right we were concentrating on, and then, splat! Out of nowhere I'm taken down in the face by a shot from the left. Sergey (of Shorey) had completely managed to avoid detection by all of us.

My goggles never really recovered from that shot, either (that was the only time I was hit in the face all day; I certainly survived a lot better this time around); after that, up until the last two games or so, I couldn't tell where my shots were landing and often couldn't tell whether that was an enemy gun sticking out or just nothing.

A dollar for a 12-ounce soda?! What the hell is this place?

Also, unlike last year when Tufts was paying for all the extra ammo, this time around PTC had allocated a pretty fixed amount of money for this, and so it was Max who bought us all extra paint. We didn't have a final respawning round to use it all up, he just kept all that was left.

Also, although there was a fortress map, which we played twice (once each way), they didn't have any special rules for it. No special grenades to help the unfortressed, no differing victory conditions, in fact, the victory condition had nothing to do with the fortress at all, it was just kill them all - oh and by the way, one side gets a fortress. I mean, it didn't really end up being too unbalanced, probably because we're not very good, but, you know, in a fortress map, aren't you supposed to do something to balance it, or at least make the fortress important? So that, you know, we're defending the fortress rather than just playing normally?

One round, it was down to just Max on our team versus several people on the other team, when Kelvin (of Shorey) ran out of ammo; since he was near the edge of the course, he called for more, and someone picked up a gun off the ground and handed it to him. Thing was, it was marked with a pink ribbon, which was our team color. So Max didn't shoot at him for a while because he thought he was a teammate. (Not that he had much of a chance anyway.)

I got someone else to take the tradidtional paintball photo, just me and Girl Alex and Ginny, before we left - on the phone on my camera since we had nothing else. Still trying to figure out how to upload it to the computer.

ADDENDUM: Ah, here we go:


-Harry

Walking into a massacre; The disgusting microwave

Well, tomorrow is paintball. How many people are we going? How many Tuftsians will stand against the forces of Henderson, Thompson, and Shorey?

4. Just 4. Not a joke. The price went down to $20, there was plenty of space, but no more first-years signed up, no more second-years signed up, no more associates or alumni signed up. No Sean, no Armoskus or Bowers, no Sayer, no Frank, no Chris, no Pavel or Doug, nobody. Instead even Mark and Sadie have dropped out.

Instead we have me, Ginny, Girl Alex, and, I think, Blake.

I'm awful. You're not going to see anything great from me, just stay covered, poke your head out and shoot when they're not shooting you, advance once you've killed them. Always useful, but in a team of 4, that's not the sort of thing that wins games. I'm not even a good shot. Ginny I remember is good, or at least she's a good shot, but not exactly good enough to win games by herself, you know? Girl Alex, to my knowledge, hasn't played before. I don't know if Blake has either. If we're going to not get totally wiped out with only 4 people, we'd need people like Armoskus and Bowers.

So basically, we're walking into a massacre.

Completely unrelatedly...

So I have a thing of Bagel Bites, I'm about to microwave it. I open the microwave, it looks perfectly normal, I set it down on the tray, and it displaces something. I made a, uh, distressed noise, which attracted some attention. "What's wrong?" "The microwave is... uh... I don't know how to put this... the microwave is wet."

I got to wiping it up, but of course that didn't get rid of it. I don't know what it was but it had a distinctly oily feel. I went to wash my hands, Kat suggested covering it in dish soap, and Agnes said she had some cleanwipes (?) she could use.

Of course, I still wanted my food, and I didn't want to wait for the microwave to be cleaned. So in the meantime I started searching for some sort of barrier I could put between the tray and the box. Yes, the box should be barrier enough, but still... I could have just used paper towels, but I wanted a bit more certainty and went asking around for disposable plates.

Eventually I came back to the lounge to find the microwave open, the tray gone, and inside oh my it's a whole pool of the stuff. Like some sort of disgusting, oily soup. It had bits of something orange in it, too, but I didn't get a very good look because I definitely didn't want too. The sight was literally nauseating.

I come back some time later to find the pool of disgustingness gone and the tray replaced. John Wood is there and tells me he cleaned it - he wiped the entire thing up. Sam and Chris walk into the room with some Bagel Bites of their own, and I warn them not to use the microwave, it's not clean. John insists he cleaned it. They put them in the toaster oven anyway, leading to an argument (I forget who was on what side) about whether Bagel Bites come out better in the microwave or the toaster oven. I eventually point out that the microwave really hasn't been cleaned, just wiped up. John responds by rinsing the tray.

Some time later I'm looking in my closet for a cup and find that, wait, *I* have disposable plates and had forgotten about it! I use this in combination with a paper towel, and finally I eat.

-Harry

Animal battle!

Posted to yobohost by Wai Lee. Buffalo vs. lions vs. crocodiles.