Summer Winds Down Well

Wednesday was a day of helping my friend move, and I don’t think he believed me when I said so, but it was really pretty fun. There’s a certain feeling of being alive that you get from hauling heavy shit around. Later that evening was our group’s weekly trip to the casino for $5 poker night, and everyone did pretty abominably. I was among the first out of the tournament, but this meant that I got to use my voucher for free food that I’d earned the week before – go in with pocket aces and lose and they give you a $10 meal card. Considering the tournament itself only costs half that much to enter, losing the hand is pretty much the better buy. 😉 I got the ‘Blackjack Combo,’ which was a ridiculously large platter of steak, shrimp, chicken fingers, and ribs, and everyone got a bit of the feast. Later that night we played Last Night on Earth at Kim and Louis’, but which was fun, but I hadn’t realized how absurdly dice-driven it is. Although the theme of players trying to outrun a town full of zombies is badass, you could basically play the game as such: ‘the human players flip two coins, the zombies flip three. Whoever gets heads the most wins.’ On the other hand, the guts of some games *coughWorldofWarcraftcough* are even simpler and still remarkably addicting.

Thursday was kickball, which is rapidly coming to encompass sizeable chunks of the English department. This time we actually had enough people on each team for pitchers, shortstops, catchers, and dedicated fielders! Not only that, but the scores of the games plunged as folks are starting to get pretty excellent at catching balls. The proceedings were hella fun, and I’m happy that we’ve done this enough that I wasn’t hobbling about after with sore limbs.

Tonight was a joint birthday party by friends James and Karen, who have closely nested birthdays. Much pizza was consumed, and plenty of general hanging out was… erm… hung? (darn passive voice) We’re pretty well obsessed with Werewolf/Mafia here, and we played some great rounds of it tonight. In the game I moderated, the wolves masterfully kept suspicion off themselves and didn’t bat an eye when they got handed a couple random surprises. I also got stuck as the werewolf in two others games and we won both times, which almost never happens. As a rule I’m a terrible liar (and thus a terrible wolf), but I managed to get people thinking I was nervous because I was a special beneficial role instead of a horrible, slavering monster.  We made sure that any ‘safe’ people were killed off so the village was in the dark, and then closed in for the kill.  Gruesomous.

The party went for a good long time, and after the ranks thinned, we Rock Banded for a while.  It’s been a particularly excellent week, and after having a little too much alone time, it’s been very cathartic to be spending such quality time with such good folks.

I continue to be pleasantly baffled at how I wound up somewhere with such a great cadre of people – Stillwater pretty much keeps providing new additions on ‘What I Really, Really Hope My Social Life is Like Once I Land a Professorship’