Pete's Log: A (not so brief) summary of the past two weeks

Entry #401, (Life in General)
(posted when I was 22 years old.)

Downtime has affected regularity of log entries, but fear not, I've been keeping track of stuff in a "plain ol' text file" which has been kinda odd, but it works, i suppose. Due to the whole new "topic" concept, there will probably be several entries to follow, covering such fun topics as the reform party convention, anarchists, and mxpx.

Friday, August 11: Got an invitation from George Coppinger to play a game call Diplomacy at the house of a guy call Nathan. Brian got invited as well, but was busy, so I got picked up by George, taken to Nathan's place, and taught in the arts of diplomacy. Basically, you have a map of europe from around the turn of the century, seven powers, and a lot of territories. you move armies and fleets around, but you don't take turns, instead, everyone writes their moves down and they are then all executed at the same time. so to be able to figure anything out, you have to talk to other players. you can make any kind of deals, but there's nothing holding you to any of the deals, the rules of the game only dictate how troops move and attack, etc... it was a lot of fun. I decided to be nationalistic and be the FLELF (Flemish Liberation Forces) ... and so I took control of the german forces in order to be the Flemish empire. the first game we played was George, Tim, Nathan, and I, with me being the only newbie. That game lasted until others (Virgil, Meg, and Rebecca) showed up. By that point I had liberated belgium and annihilated france. the next game i was again germany (under control of the flemish), george was france, tim was turkey, nathan was russia, rachel (nathan's sister) was austria-hungary, virgil was italy, and meg and rebecca were england. i had a brief dispute with george over belgium, but he soon released it to my control in exchange for a non-aggression pact on the franco-german border. i then mainly stayed still, except for helping england take sweden from russia, and an attempt to take warsaw from russia that failed. it was a lot of fun... i ended up with five armies, which put me right about in the middle as far as ranking... we are considering starting up a long-term game in which we do maybe two turns a week (tonite each turn took about 30 minutes on average, since there was so much negotiating) which would be a lot of fun, i think. we also are making plans for anime at our place... tho i don't think brian will be here...

random thought from saturday, august 12: the ruling is officially in: sailor jupiter is my favorite sailor scout. cool webpage: tokyopop.com ... i can order a sailor jupiter scout guide from there... may do that sometime.

anime fest: saturday night. perk and anne arrived an hour early. we unloaded perk's stuff from anne's car, then had spaghetti. i then made waffles for the anime fest. at 7ish Meg and Virgil arrived, followed by Rebecca, who brought cherry pie and coke. we waited for quite some time for george, who was supposed to bring the vcr, before finally grabbing anne's vcr out of her car. once we got it hooked up and ranma started playing, george and tim appear, with dr. pepper and a vcr. so we watch the subtitled ranma 1/2 o.a.v. that i'd bought in berkeley, which was enjoyed. then we watched my dubbed ranma 1/2 tape with the catfu episode ... and then, being out of ranma, we watched my subtitled sailor moon movie, which was enjoyed by some and served only to frustrate others (Anne) ... a fun time. anne left the next morning. perk sleeps in my closet.

perk dyed my hair black. a subtle, but very non-trivial difference. unlike arun.

Monday, August 14. Mamie is scheduled to arrive at 5:20. Perk and I are on campus, my laptop isn't. We walk home, takes us 40 minutes, longer than anticipated. No sign of Mamie. Brian shows up with pork chops and corn. I cook up the pork chops while Brian and Perk take care of the corn. I throw some beer into the pan and after the chops are done, improvise a beer gravy of sorts that turns out pretty good. Finally Mamie shows up several hours late, but sporting a pokemon toy from burger king.

Thursday the OIT tells me my laptop showed up at the warehouse on wednesday. Friday they tell me it's not available yet, it's not yet been received. But Friday I did manage to get both enrolled and registered for classes.

Saturday, August 19th: leftovers... we've had one cooked porkchop sitting in the fridge since monday, and some baked beans from last saturday. time to do something about the situation: boil two cut up potatoes until somewhat tender, replace half of water with beck's beer, add cut up porkchop, salt, pepper, garlic powder. let boil until potatoes about done, add beans, mustard, tabasco, more salt & pepper, and sugar. wait a little longer, add milk & flower. serve with bread. turned out pretty good, tho i think next time i'd leave out the tabasco... it didn't really add much flavor... and it would've probably been better if i'd had more meat, not just one leftover porkchop... mmm... beer...

Monday: August 21. Still no laptop. Hate 'em. Kill 'em later. Get new student ID. First attempt fails: their machines are broken. blame oit again. Second attempt, no problem. Run into Matt Leblanc (i think that's his name) who informs me that Chris Araman has decided to stay at microsoft instead of returning to school.

Tuesday: first episode of advanced comp arch with Kogge. should be a fun class. I'm the only person taking the grad version of the class, there are four people taking the undergrad version. Bike arrives, woohoo! free food on quad, Ramzi Bualuan's band plays, arun and perk bring the hooka.

Wednesday: OIT confirms laptop has been received but is still at warehouse. I tell them (for the 295th time) not to install resnet on it since i'm wiping the hd anyway (and living offcampus to boot). This time they seem to have at least managed to not lose my phone number.

Thursday: woohoo! free food courtesy gsu.