Monday, July 28, 2008

Nerds, Tourism, and Random Objects

I'm finally catching up to myself... this entry is about events that happened only a few days past.

Today I continued my Monday tradition of going to the climbing gym, finding it closed, and returning home. Why Monday, climbing gym? Why close at all? Why can't I remember you're closed? No one will ever know.
So, instead of climbing, I'm here at Brock's house writing. Strengthening my mind instead of my body I suppose.

Onto the meat of this article.
1) Nerds. I think I mentioned Brock's internet friends already. We've all been having dinner on Mondays at one of their houses, and usually after dinner we play a board game -- either Settlers of Catan, or RoboRally. Both awesome games, both too complicated to explain here. Brock seems to hate playing these games, but I enjoy them very much. Two of his internet friends, Scott and Tim, sometimes play these games and more with a group of nerds that gathers every Saturday. I joined them this past weekend and we played games for 12 damned hours! It was awesome.
Probably most of the people reading this have had me strong arm them into playing games that they didn't really want to play, and I'll bet you've all gotten sick of my competitive nature, right? Well I played games for 12 hours, and neither of those things happened! Dave, the host of this marathon, owns probably 150 board games, maybe 3 of which I'd seen or heard of. When we walked in, we were greeted by 3 game tables, 6 or 7 waist-high stacks of games, and a few games already in progress.
Have you ever heard of Settlers of Catan? I hadn't, but it originated in Germany and it's apparently the 2nd most popular game in the world. We played a game of that. We also played Arkham Horror. It's based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu Mythos, and it's sort of a mix between an RPG and a board game (as were many of the games there). It's horribly complicated, but once I learned the rules, it was pretty fun. I think it might be boring to go into the games day much more, so I won't.


2) Tourism. Sunday, Brock and Katy and I again hung out in Seattle, this time as typical tourists. We went to Pike Place Market, which is apparently famous so you've probably heard of it. We watched fish throwers and bought Russian pastries that were filled with mushrooms and fish and other things that you wouldn't expect to find inside pastries. From there we walked to the old section of Seattle, which is called [something], and which is literally built on top of an even older section of Seattle. You can go on underground tours and see the ruined old buildings. Despite the idea of the day being tourism, none of us are really that interested in touristy stuff, so we skipped the underground.

Ok so while writing that paragraph I noticed a blue reflection in a glass that is sitting here next to me. Unable to immediately identify the source of the reflection, I stopped writing for a fully minute until I could find it. Why? Was I expecting to learn something important? I don't know, but I had to find it. Do any of you know any attractive girls who do things like that? Please tell them good things about me and then refer them here.

Tourism. Next we drove to Gas Works park, which we TOTALLY should have been allowed to climb all over. Granted, everything was brown with rust and probably structurally unsound, but come on - you can't just leave two story pipe jungles around and expect people not to demand climbing rights. Imagine the coolest playground ever, then double it, then triple that, and then put a big stupid fence around it. Luckily Gas Works park also had nice fields and trees and a hill and a cool sundial. We sat on the hill awhile and looked at the city center from across the water. Seattle is a beautiful city.


3) Random Objects. I don't have any pictures for Nerds or for Tourism, so I took these pictures of things around Brock's apartment.

Dehydrated cinnamon apples.
Brock got this food dehydrator from his parents and finally used it last night to make his apartment smell like cinnamon.


Beer a-brewing, and fruit. Lots of fruit. Those black ones are called Marion Berries, like the former mayor of D.C. The fruit is arranged for dramatic effect, NOT in order of tastiness, which is as follows: cherries (least), strawberries, rasberries, marion berries.


As per Kevin's request, here are the items I bought in Chicago. Also this pinecone that I acquired elsewhere (not to scale).

5 comments:

Kevin Cartwright said...

Wow Ben, that is a really keen tape player. I am really, really impressed with how cool that is.

Now, imagine I am an eight year old girl... Starting to make sense?

Soero said...

Ben... Embarrassed to ask you this. Shortly after you left, we lost the keys to the Glory MAESTRO. We searched for the spare set under your chair and came up a goose-egg. Any idea where they might be?

And, there's way too much headspace in that carboy. Hopefully, there will be beer at the end and not a terrible kitchen disaster.

Hope you're not missing Dulles at all and missing it just a little.

ben said...

Oh I hid those keys. You'll find them in the last place you look.

Thanks for the tip about the carboy. Brock's the brewmaster and I just assumed he knew what he was doing. I'll make sure to stand back and shield my face when it's bottling time.

I do miss Dulles a little, mostly when I'm not doing awesome stuff.

Lurkwell said...

I'm unimpressed by your character development.

needs more bold words and something in italics and more hidden objects.

On the plus side I found the amount of fruit to be appropriate for someone of your nature.

Is that really a tape player or just a cassette case with cassette? If it is then- Great Job!

Unknown said...

How come when you dehydrate fruit it gets wrinkly, but when you're in the bath tub too long, you get wrinkly too?!

Been enjoying the blog, btw. Funny how Kevin's past roommates seem to exhibit a strange tendency to sleep in living rooms for extended periods?