life has gotten an update. Yay life.
Life has been rather busy lately. Not particularly in the mood to write about things though, so here’s a dump of some photos instead.
Author Archives: Alan V
Activities
Greg has been away this week for a conference, so I have been alone in the apartment for the past few days.
Kind of ironic then, given that he keeps telling me I need to get out more, that this has been one of the busiest weeks I’ve had in a long time.
Most people who know me know that I don’t handle being alone well (even if this normally entails nothing more than existing in the same apartment as someone else), so I’ve been seeking out things to do.
On Monday, I went to lunch with bblum, and played some ITG after work. I managed to do extremely well on the marathon Driven, where I managed a full excellent combo almost all of the way through Energizer, and managed a full great combo up until the horrible part of Monolith. Not my highest score ever (screwed up a lot of Monolith :P), but still awesome.
Tuesday was board games at Patrick’s. Played lots of Malta! (which has been extremely well-received by everyone that has played it), some Wits and Wagers, and a new game called Crows (which I like a lot and will have to look into getting). The night ended (at like 12:30!) with some Hoopla, but limited to drawing. This resulted in such “obvious” things as these: (Answers as to what the things are are here.)
(I somehow missed getting a picture of the “Drag Queen” clue, which was a stick figure in a dress with a large…. bulge… drawn in the crotch area. No one understood what it was supposed to be. :P)
Last night was Inception in Schenley Park. Went with Keith, and was absorbed by the KGB group already there. The movie itself was excellent… I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.
Lunch yesterday was the garlic eggplant with shrimp from Orient Express. I think I’ve found a new favorite thing there… it’s spicy, it’s got eggplant, it’s got shrimp, and it’s got wood ear mushrooms in it. What’s not to love? :D
Tonight will be dinner and a movie at the Loft (tasty burgers, theoretically).
Yay for doing things and being social.
Walk and KoL
I seem to have gotten into the habit of posting at the beginning of months. Well, here’s continuing that trend.
Today Keith, Greg, and I walked from Bloomfield to Keith’s house in Ross Township for a total trip of about 19.4 miles. Hopefully the fact that things weren’t too bad (except for my shoes and socks interacting to make my toes blister) means I’ll be fine for the annual West Virginia walk this summer (almost 40 miles).
We had lunch at Joe’s Rusty Nail, and it was excellent. My $12 crab cake dinner had three huge (and meaty) crab cakes, a good-sized helping of pasta, and a generous side salad, and came with free bread and butter. Recommended if you’re in the area.
Haven’t done this in a while, so here’s a dump of photos from the hike.
It’s thinking Keith!
In non-walking news, I have finally ascended again in KoL after a hiatus of 4 years (most of it away from the game completely). The recent Valhalla revamp, prospect of doing a 100% run with this month’s new familiar (volleyball + fairy + item drops for a new area!), and the Bees Hate You path finally pushed me over the edge
And I’m glad, because the game is so much more interesting when you’re doing quests than when you’re stuck in aftercore trying to find ways to spend your 200+ adventures every day.
My first run in 4 years is a Turtle Tamer Hardcore “Bees Hate You” run with no clovers (setting up for a BM Kitty run) and 100% Li’l Xenomorph. Should prove to be interesting. Let’s see how long it takes me.
I can already say that my best investment thus far is the VIP Key, because full HP recovery (already have Tongue of the Walrus permed) from the hot tub, +muscle stats from the shower, MP regen from the pool table, and screambats from the fax machine have made the first two days so much better than they could have been. The Pen Pal kit has, thus far, been mostly useless (Box of Pokemann Band-Aids is useless in Beecore and the shield was only useful until I got a cola shield). My snowcones and candy hearts haven’t helped too much either (ran orange for extra stats and purple for some MP on day one, but would have been fine without them).
The Xenomorph has also been excellent. Got its equipment today, and the fairy aspect is proving very useful. The space area also provides good quality food and booze, which I otherwise have trouble acquiring (beers from Tavern are useless in Beecore, and I don’t have cocktail crafting permed due to my love of teet runs). The +stat buffs from the maps are also useful. I think tomorrow will finally get me up to reagent pasta (got some hellion cubes and knob mushrooms today), which will combine nicely with the pumpkin pie and fortune cookie.
So current status there is level 6 at the end of day 2, having completed through the level 5 quest with a reasonable stock of food. I think that’s the best I’ve done in *any* run (all of which were pre-NS13) but, more than that, the game has gotten much less annoying to play due to things like the VIP room and pumpkins. I suppose part of that is also the 100% run preventing me from having to mess with familiars (no He-Boulder anyway, so already have that working against me). Perhaps future runs will also be 100% runs.
Growing Up
It’s late and I’m musing about things.
It’s kind of fun, yet incredibly sad, how a lot of the people I knew and were close to have drifted off to different parts of the country and are now off doing their own thing. Even the people geographically close seem far more distant than I would have expected.
It means that we’re all off being successful in our own ways, but it also means I don’t get to talk to them as often. Many of them have also stopped using instant messenger (or are never at their computers when signed in) or LJ, which just leads to a deeper sense of… apartness, I guess. It’s weird relying on email and texts to keep in contact.
It’s also kind of scary how many members of my core friend group from middle school have gotten married or are engaged. And more surprising in many ways is how I hadn’t heard about many of them until browsing Facebook today. I guess it just goes to show how I’ve pretty much abandoned that group (or, I suppose, the group has abandoned me… or we’ve mutually abandoned each other). But meh. There’s a lot of things there that are crap, and I’m not one to easily (or, really, ever) forgive and forget.
Growing up, it always seemed that part of being grown up was having your primary “social group” be your family, with a couple friends you saw once every few months.
A lot of me (but not alot of me) is ready to go off and be that adult, but most of me isn’t, and is terrified by the thought. But, more and more, that’s how things seem to be turning out for me. I’m not really trying to isolate myself, it just seems that everyone is always busy and our schedules never seem to line up, and more casual groups (like KGB or the cluster) don’t have the same appeal they used to.
Also, on an unrelated topic, I’m not quite sure why this exists. But it’s kind of awesome, in a terrifying sort of way.
But this is lots of awesome. Good for her for poking fun at herself and doing so for a good cause. :)
Also also, on another completely unrelated topic, some of you may remember the Supernatural card game I had been working on. I decided to abandon that game (given that RPG Get! was the same game rules), and recently started on what will eventually be a new card game system featuring Supernatural. I’m calling it Investigations for now, and it’s a card game system (similar to RPG Get!) that can combine multiple universes into the same game. We’ll see how this goes.
Life life
I got a promotion, progress is being made on card games, and my dad is (finally) getting out of the hospital.
Things are looking up.