Weather

[marcmagus]

First, let me get this out of the way, "I hate New Jersey!", "Torrential downpours are a lot more fun when I'm not stuck out in them!", and "Summer would be a lot more fun if it weren't too hot to bear the idea of moving, let alone doing anything!"

A side note: I think I inherited from my father and his mother a tendency to complain about minor things to remind myself I'm alive, and maybe to remind myself that things are really pretty good.


My semi-spontaneous trip to the horror that is Jersey City, New Jersey to visit ladymondegreen et. al. was great. I got to meet some great people and spend enjoyable time with others I don't spend time with often enough. I say this up front before anybody gets the wrong idea. The travel, on the other hand...

Trip down took about a half-hour longer than my personal worst-case estimate, which meant I got there a half-hour later than I'd hoped to, and hour later than the time I'd been given, and more or less when I'd been expected. My talent for being a bit late, sometimes late enough to be annoying, but never late enough to be a real problem seems to continue. The most frustrating part was that I spent said half-hour within one or two miles of my destination, on a road which turned into a parking lot.

Trip back was difficult, and took a lot longer. *Somebody* decided to call a torrential downpour before I left. So I had to navigate unknown one-way streets when, between darkness, blinding rain, and my half-blindness because the effect of my lenses was fading (I didn't tell anybody about this one because I didn't want to worry them), and I had apparently, after carefully packing my glasses into my backpack, left my backpack at home. I already believed you, there was no need to show off.

Oh, and, of course, the State of New Jersey hasn't learned how to post signs which are useful as navigation aids, making boths trips a combination of directions, guesswork, and instinct. It's a minor miracle I never got lost getting there, and only took one wrong turn heading home.

Next time I brave the "wilds" of New Jersey for any purpose other than passing through, I'd like to try to arrange it so I meet up with all of my Jersey-based friends. Or, better yet, I meet up with people for dinner in NYC or some other, central, non-NJ location.

In case anybody doesn't read the cuts, the RAW weekend event was AWESOME!

This weekend was the big, long-awaited summer event for my Werewolf LARP. A weekend of camping and LARPy goodness, with a plot that was the climax to four years of game.

wylddelirium, our excellent HST, has pointed out that I probably shouldn't post spoilers for the people who weren't there and should learn what happened in character, so I won't talk about in-game events (If you're not a player and want to hear stories, feel free to contact me privately)

Unfortunately, of course, it was a weekend of camping in the rain. It varied between cloudy, lightly drizzly, and downpour all Friday night and through most of Saturday. Saturday night, we had just gotten the fire going to the point where it could dry wood and we were feeling pretty good about it when the sky opened up. After taking shelter in our cars/tents for about a half hour, Del called game. About two minutes later, there was a flash of lightning in the sky. Striking tents in the pouring rain, trudging through mud-puddles where the campground had been, was no fun, and doing it in leather moccasins and having to drive a half hour without changing didn't make it any more so. The one thing that did lighten my mood was that, after a half hour of steady downpour, we still had to scatter the ashes of the fire and pour water on it. Congratulations to all who were involved in the fire-building. I'm also proud of everybody for striking the campsite efficiently and safely -- either knowing what to do or responding well and quickly to instructions from those who did, and not just assuming that the rain would take care of the fire.

Of course, all this happened about one hour before the climax of the event, when the big bad evil thing we were getting ready to fight was going to show up and destroy us.

So, the slack_shack opened their doors to us, and we piled everybody into their living room. A change of clothes for most (and, again, many who had dry clothes readily available very kindly helped out by loaning them to those who did not. Many thanks to nickydapoof for his kilt, and Bec for her sweatshirt), and a quick offer from nickydapoof to run stuff through the dryer and a few minutes of relaxation followed. Pizza was ordered, and we decided to play and see if we could get up the energy to play all the way through. And play we did, until 4:30am. No details, so suffice it to say that it was excellent, and inspiring for where my character's going to go next. (No, I didn't die. That's all I'm going to say about what happened.) I hope all the other players feel the same way.


I fell into bed sometime Sunday morning. I had to drag myself out of be way to early to get to Grandma's birthday party. It was worth going, but man, was I exhausted. Driving on I-84 through Waterbury's traffic jam in the pouring rain was a joy. No, really. It was worth it, though, because Grandma appreciated my being there, and people are starting to worry that we may not have many more of these opportunities.

I transferred the (soaked, waterlogged, poorly folded) tent-of-doom to my brother's trunk so he can potentially take it on his road trip (in the pouring rain) after dinner, and then headed home (in the pouring rain). I was online for maybe an hour before I fell asleep. I awoke at around 6, put my lenses in, and then fell back asleep for many hours.


And awoke, in the late afternoon, to discover that it was fucking hot. If you haven't heard this yet, I define "fucking hot" as too hot to fuck, and that's what it is here today. It still is now, and the sun's been down for hours and my windows are open. I'm thinking of turning on the AC, noisome beast that it may be.

Plan for today was to clean the apartment and go out and do laundry before Origins. I haven't really done either. Apartment cleaning is essential, because apparently we're fumigating for roaches on Wednesday morning. I've never seen a roach in the building, but anybody want to bet on whether I will next week when I get home? So now I have way too much to do in way too little time, and it's too hot to move.

I hate the way temperature extremes make me lethargic, but especially heat. There's a hard limit to how many clothes I can take off.


Oh, and all this back and forth between rain and heat we've been having for the last couple weeks is *not* making my wrists happy.

In summation, I had a great weekend. It was wonderful to get out of the house and see real people, and I enjoyed myself tremendously.