Long Weekend

Not momentous in terms of what happened -- at least, not to us, and not until we had already left one gathering -- but in terms of what I realized.

Darin and I went back up north for the weekend. I hadn't been up there since mid-March, and while I'd exchanged e-mail with many and spoken with a few and of course read CJ's journal...it's not the same as being with the group of friends Darin and I spent so much time with and talked to so often.

I realized this with crystal clarity this weekend, as I laughed and made jokes and hung out like I haven't down here.

I also realized that what's done is done, and this really came home because Darin and I stayed at Mitch's place. Mitch's place, of course, used to be our place -- he bought our condo. And I came back to a place that was familiar but at the same time completely different: new carpeting, new paint, different furniture, not enough furniture...and most of all, we stayed in the guest room.

It's not our house any more.

We've moved.

Like I said, it wasn't momentous in terms of events.

Thursday

Darin and I flew north, rented a car, drove to Mitch's. Not much seemed to have changed at the airport, on 280, in Cupertino.

We went over to the Petries for Babylon 5 and dinner. Most of the usual suspects: Rob and Laura (and Nutmeg as the Beaver), Ceej and Lance, Greg, Michael, Mitch, Gordon, and probably a whole host of others I'm forgetting to include. One notable exception: Sho...who was down in Los Angeles.

While yukking it up with Ceej, I hatched a devious plan for us (where us was anyone who wanted to join in) to go to The Lost World on Friday. Six of us decided to go.

Friday

Greg came over and joined me and Darin for breakfast at the pancake place. They still had good pancakes.

We went down and got in line for the movie. Greg and I amused each other by devising vicious and medieval tortures for the brats in line ahead of us who were doing such charming things as drinking a gulp of water and then vomiting it into the shrubbery around us, or climbing the sides of the theatre and ignoring their mother's half-hearted pleas to "stop, stop...oh yeah, stop."

Michael and Mitch joined us right before the line went into the theatre, and since Michael was last, he was assigned to wait for Ceej. Mitch and I assigned ourselves to munchies duty, while Greg and Darin held down the seat fort.

This was not as trivial as it sounds.

The pre-movie show

As already mentioned in Ceej's journal, testosterone poisoning broke out in a major way in the rows in front of us. She missed the hilarity; Mitch and I returned in the middle of it. One guy and 20 of his closest friends were saving 25 seats. Another guy, his wife, and their 4 kids came and sat right in the middle of the saved seats, saying, "You can't save seats." (He then proceeded to throw jackets over a couple of seats to save them for his kids.) The guy who had bought the 45 tickets on Monday -- Monday, dammit, do you understand, Monday! And this is Friday! -- started shouting.

Furious, in-your-face shouting ensued: a battle of the assholes versus nincompoops. The 45 ticket man went and got the rent-a-cop. The interloper father leaned over the back of his seat and got in the face of one of the 45 behind him, saying things like, "You wanna piece of me? You wanna make something of this?"

Threats of violence. Shouting. More ineffectual interference from the rent-a-cop.

I really thought someone was going to pull a knife.

Oh yeah, and we saw some dopey movie. Wonderful special effects, incredible action sequences...dopey movie. My companions pointed out several of the horrible gaps in logic that had gone right past me because I had just reached the point where I said, "I'm not even going to bother figuring this out."

Spielberg could only have made this movie for one reason: money. Which is pretty pathetic if you think about it.

Dinner and small talk

After the movie we all hung out for a while but then decided to bag on doing anything together. Mitch, Darin and I went out to dinner, and since we haven't found really great Chinese down here in LA yet, I asked for Mandarin Gourmet.

I was pretty zombiesque during dinner, which worked out just fine because Darin and Mitch were discussing some computer stuff. They kept talking about "allocators" and asked why I was giggling; I said I was going to make a stupid, non-funny joke about "crocodiles." And then I had to explain why I said that. I went back to being non-responsive.

I noticed, though, that Darin was as "on" as he's been in a while. He hasn't had this kind of rapid-fire intellectual/technical discussion in a while, at least not that I've seen. He's not getting this down in Los Angeles. Maybe he gets some of this over the phone during his discussions with clients/co-workers, but it's not the same as being in person. We may have to make trips up north just to get that for him.

Saturday

Darin and Mitch played Heroes of Might and Magic II, which they enjoyed mightily. I played around on-line courtesy of Mitch's ISDN line -- brothers-in-law with an ISDN: very, very convenient -- and played a lot of Nethack.

Nethack: a memoir

I've gotten much better at Nethack recently. This is due to two factors:

1. I've started saving the game religiously and making back-up copies.
2. Darin taught me how to hack the character file and give myself better stats, thereby upping my ability to win.

I'm not proud, but I'm learning the game.

As 5 o'clock approached, I plucked my fingers from my +0 Long Sword and hied to A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books to get some graduation presents for my sister and her boyfriend, both of whom are graduating with degrees in MechE this spring. I bought cards.

I came home and asked Darin if I could nap. He said no. We were going to Rob and Laura's to play a game of RoboRally, just as we would in Ye Olden Dayes.

RoboRally: game of the damned

This nice, sweet little board game is the portal to dark entities within the people I know best.

We often played RoboRally with Rob and Laura while we lived up here, so the Petries arranged a friendly little game for while we were here that quickly grew to 8 participants. I thought about dropping out. But then I said, Oh no, it'll be fun.

Fun? It was internecine warfare.

The game lasted from approximately 7pm to 1:30am. At 1am, when Rob had pushed me off the board for the 2nd time and killed me for the 3rd time, leaving me with my last life, I stood up and said, I forfeit my last life. Gordon Sheridan, who was just watching, drove me home. Darin and Mitch came home at 1:40 or so, after the game had broken up by mutual consent, and without a winner, at 1:30.

Mu suggestion: with 6 or more participants, you get ONE life. Because we've only got one life within which to play the damn game.

Dinner was great though. And Nutmeg has taken quite well to her obedience classes, although she could not stay away from licking Mitch's ears.

Sunday

I woke up completely dehydrated from a combination of staying up too late, the coffee-set-to-stun Rob made, and a glass of wine. Ack.

Darin and I got dressed and headed to San Francisco for the reason we came up this weekend in the first place: my sister's graduation party.

Her boyfriend's family had come out for his graduation as well, so it was a family get-together as well as a party.

Darin and I picked my folks up, together with enough food for a Congolese celebratory feast, and went to my sister's apartment. We set up and chatted and I caught up with Deirdre because we haven't talked in a while.

Then the party started and guests started arriving and I could finally put a face to the names I'd heard about so often.

At 4 Darin and I had to bow out, so we kissed everyone goodbye and took off. I fell asleep in the car. Darin almost fell asleep, and in fact considered pulling to the side of the road to take a short nap.

We packed up our stuff at Mitch's and made arrangements to have dinner with Rob and Laura at Kikusushi. I wasn't hungry, so of course I made a pig of myself. Mmmmm...sushi.

Darin and I got to the airport, got on the plane, got off the plane, got our car, came home.

Diane goes ring-mad

As Darin watched Babylon 5 again I ordered Claris Organizer on-line (it's great! Not as great as MagicCap...but then, what is? And I can't get MagicCap for Mac, dammit) and then poked around the web. I discovered several other journallers have started web rings. I felt compelled to join all of them, but I decided this was silly. So I only applied for one, and we'll see how that goes.

It's late. Good night.