A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Melissa asked if I wanted to do dinner on Thursday, which I thought was pretty random, but it turns out that it was also pretense for her to present to me a little bag filled with orange, purple and blue Sculpy stones, all subtly sparkly. There were enough to serve as Zendo stones throughout our Arisia adventures.

We ate at the Diva Indian Bistro in Davis Square, where I actually hadn't eaten before. It was very good, and I knowingly had naan bread for the first time. Go eat there.

I finally called Melissa "Michelle" in front of her face at some point over the weekend (she and Noah dropped into Arisia together at least a couple of times). I knew this would happen sooner or later. So who is Michelle? I don't know, really, but I find the names very collision-prone. That's all.

Not an excuse, but an explanation to myself: I can't avoid writing mostly about friends and family this week, because that happens to be where I have sunk all my time since passing in that first draft. I claim to have totally ignored the holidays, and to this I now say: As if. It's all good.

So today I dropped in on Noah and Melissa in Boston. They and their friends are my Social Circle N, the one I thought would be my root when I moved here, since Noah, a former coworker, was my sole preregistered friend (he paid the $52 registration fee and everything), but which in fact turned out to be last I'd hook up with in 2001. (The first, not counting O'Reilly, were Circles D, J(s), and J(o), in that order. Deciphering the naming scheme is left as an exercise for the reader.) I do love these kids! Though they're very different sorts of people, they fit the same archetype my revered old Maine friends Chris and Lies filled, way back when: a bonded pair that just radiates comfort, and which I just like to be around for hours and hours, like a cat on an air vent. (Pardon the strange idiom. I looked around just now and saw FS sitting on an air vent. It seemed right.) So I didn't mind spending even more time playing games, as I have been all weekend. M had bought N a big ol' basket of new games, and I helped them break in a couple: Cheapass's U.S. Patent No. 1 (fun! though it might have the same pile-on endgame problem as Great Brain Robbery... I want to play it some more to see if the in-game fixes work) and Grave Robbers From Outer Space, a game of the growing genre of card games whose cards are all very funny to go through and read, and which might or might not actually work as a game. It seemed OK Or Better.

[Tangent: I realize that I have not mentioned Chris and Lies in this blog before, even though I remember writing about them in livejournal, deep in someone else's comments section. I am too lazy to go hunting for that. The main feature of my own bloggy software-in-development is user-definable glossaries, so I'd be able to make, for example, the first onscreen appearance of "Chris and Lies" a link to a separate glossary page that tells you all about them, with links back to blog entries where they are mentioned. Note to self: This is a cool project! Finish it sometime, OK?]

We also talked about the geek house idea, something stalled since that yucky move of mine last month. I would leave them feeling elated, since we made steps towards something that could almost be called planning, by going over what we'd all agree would be Neat Features for such a house. Not secret clubhouse fanatasies of shark pools and autogyros (though we'll probably give these a passing nod later) but practical issues like having a Hack Room and a decent-sized drawing (read: gaming) room. The side-effect was that I now won't feel bad about planning to move yet again, in with other people: it's not cuz I like group A better than group B, but because my current residence lacks features I'd like. And: it does, actually, because there's nothing approaching a living room here. I mean, I will attempt a generic game night here in January at least once, but the number of people we'll invite will be severely limited, since we have just one little room to use, the dining room, sandwiched between the kitchen and a bedroom. I dunno how or if it will actually work.

There's also something to be said for living with a tight group of handpicked friends after months of planning. Or so the theory goes, anyway. This leads into the issue of whom to invite, which might get thorny. Imagining the unlikely (I hope) scenario of everyone I know learning that I'm undertaking a geek house project, I immediately see two or more particular people -- needy, energy-vampire "friends", you know the type -- who'd glom onto me about it, and I would have to tell them: No, sorry, you are not cool enough, which I do not wish to do. All the cool people I know seem content where they are. To my surprise, M and N said they wouldn't consider anyone else in Circle N. Similar reasons to mine, I guess. Well, whatever... we're just starting to really think about this, and I'm sure we'll hit on one or two candidates. There's time, and I have plenty of unmined and potentially rich friend-making territory at my fingertips. (I really have to try getting to know any of the people in Circle D better than as fellow gamers. Sniff, sniff, is that a Resolution I smell?)

On Tuesday we're gonna meet for lunch and maybe I'll show them what Davis Square looks like. That area remains a goal -- Paris of the 90s and all that -- but truth be told I wouldn't mind living elsewhere in Cambridgeport, which they'll see when the game thingy occurs. It all works out.