Ye Olde Staging Point

Another weekend gone, another couple days closer to The Wedding. Woo hoo! Ahem. At any rate, this weekend turned out to be relatively interesting. Saturday was occupied with a LAN party at Ron's (Ron also photo-documented the party, as can be seen at his blog), which of course meant 7-8 hours of UT2k3. A truly amazing game. Mostly team games, mostly instagib (=one shot, one kill). I daresay most of us managed fairly decent showings; the only exception being that awkward time during a Capture the Flag match when one of the players (who shall remain nameless) broke down in tears and wouldn't come out of his hiding place with the flag for fear of getting shot at. It took a while but we coaxed him back into the game after he exacted promises from the rest of us that we would each give him a free shot at us before beginning any combat encounter with him, and that we wouldn't use any weapons more powerful than the pistol while fighting him. At any rate, much fun was had, for which I must thank the gracious host Ron and my fellow gamers. I was especially impressed by Ron's dramatic use of the supervillain phrase "Find him and kill him!" repeatedly throughout the game.

After the gaming session wound down, I went to a concert at Calvin at which the pianist Alon Goldstein performed a number of obscure but interesting pieces. He was simply amazing; and I have never seen a more expressive piano player--instead of sitting stonily on the piano bench while his fingers manuvered around the keyboard, he kept his entire body in motion throughout the pieces he was playing--wildly hammering the keys during dramatic moments, cautiously pecking at them during subdued passages, and emphatically mirroring the mood and tone of the music with facial expressions and movements. It was an enjoyable evening for which I have Jay to thank, although had his girlfriend Elizabeth been in town, I rather suspect I would not have been his first choice for the concert date. I did reflect briefly that while Mr. Goldstein had no doubt been practicing that afternoon in preparation for his marvelous demonstration of musical skill, I had probably been chortling at how funny it looked when you shoot at people with a rocket launcher and it blows them up real good in UT2k3. I'd risk a few reflections on the relative merit of our respective afternoon activities, but I suspect I'd just end up regretting it.

Which wraps up my weekend, more or less--about as good as a weekend could hope to get when it's already been fatally marred by the fact that it didn't include a visit with Michele. Hope your weekend was as enjoyable as mine was. Carry on then.