Holiday Times

Been enjoying the holidays the past few weeks. I’ve been on call for most of it, but fortunately it hasn’t really impacted me much. A few weekends ago I had some people over for a game of Twilight Imperium, it was Jeff, Steve, David, Tomas, and Taylor. We had a long 8 hour game, but all the players were fun to play with. I also played a few more games of War of the Ring with Max over the past week or 2. That has become one of my favorite games now, I even managed to paint all the 200+ figures in it. This past weekend I went over to Max’s place for a sort of holiday party. He has a fun group of people that he hangs out with, although their party focus is always on drinking, which is not that entertaining for me. Christmas Eve, Jesse and Jade came over for dinner and we played Rock Band until about 1am. I had only the guitar and a microphone for it at the time, but I went out and bought the whole set from someone on craigslist the next day. We played again yesterday for a long time with the drums and two guitars and microphone. We also made enchiladas and had a nice, fun time all around. We’ll hopefully be doing that more often. Tomorrow I’m going over to Jeff’s new house for a house warming party of sorts (with board gaming). David and Brian will be there as well, so it should be a good time.

Fun Weekend

This past weekend was really a lot of fun. Friday night I went over to Gamer’s Inn and played some really enjoyable games with a good group. Afterwards I talked to Erik for a couple hours about his job as a 6th grade teacher. He wants to become the ‘gifted’ student teacher at his school and the person currently in that position should be retiring at the end of this year, so he might get his chance. He invited me over to see the Hatton-Mayweather fight at his place the following night. That was pretty fun as well, it was him, his wife Megan, friends Dave and Amanda (people I played Runebound with before over there), and his wife’s sister and her husband. They are a pretty nice group of people, all of them have lived in Arizona their whole lives. Erik and his wife both love ASU basketball and have had season tickets for quite awhile. He also finished up his masters degree not too long ago. Today Clark (whom I met at Gamermaster games not too long ago) came over and we played a game of War of the Rings. I played the dark forces and won the game, although it was pretty close. I managed to find someone locally with a copy and traded for it, which was a lucky find since its been out of stock everywhere for quite awhile now. I started the impossibly long task of painting all the figures tonight as well. The game is really amazing though, so I don’t feel too bad about doing it.

Happy Birthday

.. to me. Another year passes by. Such a strange feeling really to watch time move around you, dragging you along. I went hiking over to Quartz Peak again for my Birthday. Its about a 6.5-7 mile round trip hike to the top and about 2500’ elevation gain. The drive took longer than I had thought it would. I wasn’t too into the hike today, sort of just felt like I was going through the motions or something. The Rainbow Rancho place that was on the way out there had burned down since the last time I drove out that way. It was not rebuilt. I think I’ve spent too much of my life alone to change. It really occurred to me the other day that I feel like a stereotypical ‘loner’ guy. You know, the kind of person that won’t be tied down and leaves once they get into a situation where they might be tied down. Doesn’t really bother me, but it does make me think about what I want out of life. Society dictates so much direction for people’s lives. I imagine most people start out thinking that the fairy tales they read about form the model of what the good life should be. You can learn fast enough I guess that this is not right, but past that its not so easy to know. It could come down to everyone is an individual and there perhaps is no right or wrong. That doesn’t seem quite right, however, as there are some things that would not make anyone happy. Maybe its just whatever works for you. I dunno. Who does.