These Initial Shock Waves Can’t Last

They’re going to want to see the real love soon.

Things have been so busy recently that I’m actually feeling a little snowed in, even though most of the things I’ve been doing are all casual and fun things.

On the day of the Superbowl I went to the party at Buzan’s place, mostly because I heard tell that cutie Paige would be there. She was, so her and Alexis and I played more Land Before Time games. It all started on New Years when she decided that she was Littlefoot and that I was Grandma Long-neck and Alexis was Grandpa Long-neck. I suppose it might have been confusing to bystanders when I walked in that Sunday and Paige exclaimed “Grandma!”, but I find that hilarious. I also babysat Nathan that evening, which was good until he realized that his parents weren’t there anymore. The only thing that seemed to calm him down was holding him where he could see the pictures of himself on the wall and talking about them!

Then at youth it was my first time leading a bible study. I feel like it went surprisingly well. The last study I sat in on, it was a challenge getting the students to talk, and this time it was hard to get them to stop, or rather, hard to stay on topic. I guess that’s to be expected though, so I still deem that a success. Some of us went to Boston Pizza when it was done — cool, because I love Boston Pizza! The only thing though… I seem to have developed a tendency to say something markedly stupid every time I talk to Evan, and it is every time. This is fairly inconsequential. I only mention it because this isn’t the first time I’ve felt like I come off as deeply unintelligent, but only to one person. I wonder, why does that happen?

The next Saturday Mike and I went to the Conflux release at Great White. Wow, I sucked so hard. I only won one match. It was a good win though, Aaron was waiting for a Plains draw and I Banefired him for at least 9, maybe 10, and cycled Resounding Thunder for the first time in my life. So yes, fun stuff. After church I went to the Palomino with Andy and his friend Caleb. Some of Andy’s co-workers were playing there in a band so he wanted to go see them. They didn’t play until kind of late though so we didn’t actually hear them, but being at the Palomino was pretty interesting. We had a good chat too, so it was great.

The day after that I achieved a life-long (almost) dream, I saw Riley Armstrong in concert and he was awesome. We even got a picture of him and Kristen and I on her camera phone. Earlier that day we had a draft at our place so I was kind of tired that night.

The following Monday I secured my standing in the nerd world forever by playing D&D for the first time. My character is lovely; her name is Khali Winterborn and she’s a half-elf Ranger. I’d written her background earlier and I love it. I took some ideas and wording from one of my Moo characters Evey Raver, except she has three sisters instead of four, and a twin brother. Setting up the D&D character sheet is harder than it should be though, so that’s all we did.

Then the next evening I saw Jeff’s play Neuroses. It was good and I really liked the construction and storytelling of it. My only regret is that I had to miss wing night! The next day I went with Alex to watch The Unborn. It was everything a scary B Movie should be… jumpy with a sketchy plot. Love it! On Friday the youth event was going to the Dethmers’ house because they have an amazing sledding track build in their back yard. It was so much fun, I went down it lots of times together with Alexis and Leah. We had pizza and talked about movies and I played cards with Banu and Shailyn. All-round fantastic night.

Saturday, I went to Chiantis with my parents and Dave, although I should have been at a movie with Kim, but wasn’t, because I suck at reading. She did clearly say “Movie on Saturday” in her note but my brain read “Sunday”. Things like that make me feel so bad. I guess there’s something to be said in that regard for calling people to make plans.

After church we had an Iron Chef event and was I ever impressed at the cooking skill, wow. I chopped up tomatoes and cut hearts out of lemon rinds, so I suppose that’s the only advantage to having a graphic artist who can’t cook on your Iron Chef team.

On Sunday I had a great board game day with Kim and Andy, and Jeff and Dan. First Blokus, and Ticket to Ride, and we went to Pang Pang for supper. After that, Settlers and more Blokus. It was fun! Kim and Andy were sick though, them and Dan went home and Jeff stayed to watch MirrorMask with me. I love that movie!

Finally, yesterday, Alex came over and we watched part two of the Deathnote movie. She’s doing to be starting a Master’s soon, in Regina, so we need to hang out as much as possible before she leaves in May. I’m proud of her, very proud! But I’ll be sad to see her go. Things will seem kind of strange without her.

It was family day so we went to Ginger Beef together and had delicious Chinese food. After we got home I had a couple minutes of diary-writing before the boys came over for more D&D. We killed three monsters and ran down a secret passage, go us!

So that’s my last two and a half weeks. The rest of the month looks no less crazy!