Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Damn, I wish I'd had a friend to come back with every year. I've learned to put up with the bus, but this was so much better. Only five and a half hours, a roomy seat, only one stop, only chipping in gas money instead of buying a bus ticket...

My sister is now a freshman at Northeastern. So my mom and dad are living alone together for months at a time for the first time since I was born. So when my mom picked me up and we were driving home, I asked her how they were handling empty nest syndrome. Hah. When I got back I found a plastic gate at the top of the stairs, the kind that adults can easily open or step over but babies can't get by. Apparently it's their latest attempt at solving the incontinence problem a cat (or cats) has. I guess a litter box in the hall upstairs wasn't doing it. And they've come up with a complicated system involving a rubber band and a paint can to ensure that the cats can get to the cellar, where the litter box is, but Fiji the pug can't. "Empty nest" my ass.

On a sadder note, it looks like our poodle Felicia is failing fast pretty suddenly. She's 14, I think, and it's just a bunch of stuff adding up. Arthritis or something in her back legs, glaucoma, lots more... my parents say she might have to be put down this week.

Last night Katye and I were pretty much the only people left on the hall, so we hung out. I played Magic with her a few times. She won both games. I usually cut her a little slack because I've played a lot more than her and because they're my decks. Nothing big; just, in one game when I had two or three creatures out before she had any, I was only attacking with one and saving the other, even though I didn't really need to.

Come to think of it, that's how I lose a lot of games of strategy. Magic, Warcraft III, Starcraft... I'll almost never go for the quick and easy kill, waiting instead until I can launch some fancy or just big offensive. It just seems more fun that way, I guess. The Warcraft III analogy seems best - why would you ever send footmen to kill your opponent's peons, for example, when you could send knights and griffons to kill your opponent's wolf-riding orcs and shamen? Of course, the problem with that is that if you don't do the first, you usually don't get the chance to do the second. Oh well... it just looks so damn cool!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

that's right, the fact that I won 3 games has nothing to do with my skill and everything to do with you being generous. so egotistical.

Cyrus said...

Under other circumstances I'd get defensive and apologetic about it. However, at the time you yourself said that it couldn't possibly be your skill, so I'm disinclined to reconsider my phrasing. :)

Anonymous said...

No, I said the reason you were losing wasn't that I was "much better than" you, which you had suggested.

You should reconsider, if not your phrasing, then at least not being a smug jackass all the time. Stop saying you'll "allow" people's actions, in Magic or otherwise, because you do both. I don't care if it's a defense mechanism or not, acting like a smug jackass is no way to treat people.