*Haven't heard from Rachel in a few weeks. This is par for the course, but our last conversation ended on not so good terms.

*Haven't heard from T. Don't expect to hear from T, but I figured I'd mention it because--[looks up at title]. Yeah.

*My advisor got back another draft of my manuscript. I can understand being obsessive about details, but this is fucking ridiculous. He's gone for 10 days this coming thursday and has a lot of work to do, so it looks like it won't be until early November--at the earliest--that we'll send my manuscript off. He's really dragged his ass on this whole process and it angers me. Hopefully this won't happen with future manuscripts.

*Brian has been gone the whole weekend, as well as most of this past week until the super early hours. So it's been like having my own place again. It's quiet, and peaceful, and kinda sad. I've been going to coffee shops for human company.

*I'm trying to lose about 5 pounds and work on muscle definition. My gauge of optimal fitness is if my hip bones peak out a little while standing. I haven't stuck to my running regimen and drinking too many energy drinks. So I'm going to cut down to one and try to do 3-4 days of running a few miles again. That's alongside the dancing at the Inferno.

*I'd say in general I'm 70% satisfied with how things are. The whole dating thing has been disappointing, true, and it saddens and frustrates me. But beyond that life is great. It's hard to appreciate that sometimes when you focus on what you don't have--which is not a good pattern.

Back about a week ago, I went to Chicago to visit Mari and help her play test a new edition of Kobolds Ate My Baby. I figured it'd be a fun way to re-experience all of the geeky weekends I had when I was in high school, when I visited the Game Zone way back when.

I decided on the no toll route, leading me through brilliant florid passages of tightly-packed oak trees, past endless canvases of quiet farmland, and the soft thrum of me shouting at drivers to get the fuck out of the way/speed up/fuck or drive, not both/etc.

I'm from Los Angeles. It's genetic.

Now one wrinkle in the back of my mind while travelling was that I'd forgotten my cell phone at home. Actually I remembered it 5 minutes from my house, but Brian had just gotten home, I'd just left a note for him, and for whatever reason I really didn't want to go back and reiterate my departure note. Dumb, I know. I also left my CD player. Dumb, yeah (although I can listen to very similar hard rock stations all the way there, so eh).

Why was leaving my cellphone dumb?

Well, I got to the general vicinity of Mari's place well and good and fine. The problem was that this wasn't an apartment complex. It was a townhouse complex. The important difference between the two is that apartments have speaker phones to get people's attention, which I'd been banking on. Townhouse complexes, I soon learned, are like unarmed fortresses. So there I was: 9:30 at night, slightly chilled, sitting at the doorstop of the right building reading some Alzheimer's research articles. Waiting. For what I wasn't quite sure.

I'd thought that I'd seen Mari in a window, so I tried waving. No luck. I then figured I could find an internet cafe, IM Mari, and have her wait outside for me. That involved a stop at a gas station, buying skittles, and deciding I'd just throw said skittles at the window that I thought was right.

No dice.

About an hour passed until, magically--thankfully--I was standing outside looking in and she happened by. She waved, I waved, and thus my stay commenced. I met her husband Martin and Lumpy (aka 'fucking Lumpy'), the cat. Lumpy reminded me of Gran's orange tom. Martin reminded me of a lot of geek guys I'd known: full beard, long hair, extensive knowledge of the geek sub-culture, and the ways of a wit about him. I liked the peoples immediately. Mari was in the process of hardcore baking. I cleaned dishes just 'cuz because no one else wanted to. We all talked, got to know one another, and I piece-meal read the sourcebook for the game on saturday. After Martin went to bed, Mari and I spoke for awhile about some stuff that bothered her. I'm not at liberty to say what, but I tried suggesting that things would get better, gave advice. You know how I roll on that shit.

Saturday was fantastic. We woke up, got naked, meandered into jets of hot water, and headed out to get coffee run errands and drive to the intended gaming location. Before we set up, though, Mari and I went to get sushi to bring back. I was amazed when she was willing to pay for my end of things, same with the coffee. Later on, after we'd discovered the intricacies of putting together a table with wings, the gaming folk started to come. I won't bore you with descriptions--this time around anyway.

The game itself lasted 6 hours or so. If you've never done a table-top role-playing game, it's hard to describe the experience. Partly it's one person, in this case called the 'Mayor,' directing people through a plotline of some kind and acting as all the characters that aren't represented by the players. The players, in turn, figure out how to deal with these situations, snack on snackables, and joke around in the meantime.

Given that this was a test run (I guess), there really wasn't any plot except for a bunch of random encounters based on the pretext of, well, stealing human babies to bring back for a giant kobold fondu party. People mostly died en masse and took up a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th new character as we launched ourselves into hopeless but amusing battles. Somehow I held onto my original character until we were all killed off at the end of the session. Mari had been concerned at times that I was bored, but in general I was amused and nostalgified by it all.

Several of the guys there noticed my thumbing through a Mage: The Awakening book. This prompted a continuing thread of conversation revolving around recruiting me into their fan organization. Fun thought. I do miss regularly doing the type of thing I did that saturday. Trouble is that while I have free time, I don't have THAT much free time. Still, it was a nice offer.

The game ended around 10 or so and we got back to Mari's apartment around 11. I figured it was a good idea to head back to Madison around then. Mari and I hugged near my car and we said goodbyes. I told her I'd visit in the future and that, no, she hadn't scared or horrified me. Truth be told I can count my close friends on one hand.

I got back around 1am after speeding like a bastard through that godforsaken fuckhole that they call I-94. Brian was surprised but chill, watching Slapshot and eating dorritos.

Good weekend, all in all.

So the first year symposium was this past friday, where newly 2nd year students present the research they did during their first year in grad school. One of the traditions is for the newly 3rd year students to make a 15 minute or so sketch that's entertaining. We also have to cater the reception after all the talks are done, but that's not nearly as much fun.

I'll get into the specifics of all the sketches, how they went over at the symposium, the ensuing drinking and hijinks on friday, and the yet more ensuing drinking on saturday.

Right now I need to continue reading for class. That and some of the events of this past weekend do hurt still, so I don't feel like getting into them while the day is still relatively middle-aged.

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