I lead a double life. Not like a CIA agent, nothing that exciting. But the daytime, 9-5 me is an entirely different person than the evening and weekend me. I keep the two careful partitioned.
Evening and Weekend Me is much more exclusive in the company she keeps, mostly just the boys, the cats and the dog, and of course all of her Twitter friends. Daytime Me deals with co-workers, clients, extended family, neighbors and everyone else.
Daytime Me ducks the question of what-did-she-do-with-her-long-weekend by simply answering, "Oh, not much. Home repairs, ran errands, relaxed." Evening/Weekend Me would answer, "Holy cats, I had so much fun!", and she would list all the boardgames she played, the video game levels she conquered, how she got her steampunk cosplay hat just right. She would talk about painting wargame terrain and her plans for this year's zombie costume. But, Daytime Me knows that when these are the answers given, eyes glaze over and explanations are necessary.
"Oh, you play boardgames? Like Monopoly?" "Cosplay? That sounds weird." "Aren't you a little old for comic books?"
So Daytime Me gets to handle the day-to-day interactions. She has a different tone to her voice. She's more quiet and she rarely swears. Don't get me wrong - she's really good at what she does. I'd much rather have her handle the client meetings, with her firm handshake and direct eye contact. She's friendly. Daytime Me maintains the Facebook presence and sends out the Holiday cards.
Evening/Weekend Me gets to explore new content - new movies, new books and new games. She gets to fall in love with a new Anime and binge-watch until her eyeballs are full. She gets to make horrible jokes on Twitter. She swears like a sailor and gets to make mixed drinks. She gets excited about playing pen and paper RPG's. She's waiting for the just the right moment to book her hotel and get her tickets for the next convention. She gets to manage the blog. (You will note, she's nowhere near as organized as Daytime Me, as there are a whopping THREE entries in this thing after almost a year. Get on the ball, Evening/Weekend Me!)
This partitioning works for me. I used to be very open with pretty much everyone about what I do in my off hours. I got tired of the constant explanations and having no one understand what on Earth I'm talking about. I know Daytime Me isn't perfect cover - I'm still pretty obviously nerdy. But it helps in negotiating the World of The Normal if that's just simmering underneath.
So I've learned to deal with people. I know who I can geek out in front of and they're with me. The guy behind the counter at the GW store? I can absolutely talk about how stoked I am that Soulgrinder's been added to the Chaos army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The girl at the comic store? She and I can discuss how much we've enjoyed Sweet Tooth and how sad we are to see it end. I can chat with the folks at GameStop when I reserve something new. I know that when I buy the water gun that I'll mod for my cosplay, I'm probably not going to discuss it with the checker at Target, especially if I get that same lady who really didn't get that you can make cheese fondue with a fondue pot, not just chocolate.
I know better than to tell my mother that I'll be wearing a corset Out In Public with that steampunk cosplay. When she asks what I got for my birthday, I just tell her that I got a pretty, Victorian-looking window locket, omitting that it's got a gorgeous wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey motif on the interior.
I've learned to know my audience. Sometimes it's lonely, but Evening/Weekend Me has such an excellent time, and Daytime Me is getting really good at pre-screening who we can invite into the off hours circle. Thanks to the internet, that circle gets incrementally bigger, and it just makes me happy.
Daytime Me says thanks for taking the time to read this, and Evening/Weekend Me says smell ya later, and she promises to post more.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Last Weekend
This past weekend was a good one for games. Got a couple new tabletop games and tried those out, and managed to work in some Playstation time. Packed some good fun into two short days!
The first game we got out was Forbidden Island, by Gamewright. It's a cooperative game, with the players trying to work together to gather all four treasures from various locations on the island and escape before the island sinks. We've had mixed results with cooperative games - some of them, like Ghost Stories, are so challenging that we just end up frustrated. Others, like Pandemic, present enough of a challenge that they hold your interest, but they aren't un-winnable. Forbidden Island definitely falls into the second category. We had only a few tiles left when we grabbed the final treasure and lifted off, making for a very tense several turns. Players really have to work collaboratively to win the game, and there isn't a mechanic that determines a winner-within-the-winners, which is good. The rules are fairly concise, setup is quick & easy and the game itself plays pretty smoothly. I'd definitely recommend it.
The second game, though, nearly overshadowed the fun we'd had with Forbidden Island. Cards Against Humanity. Holy shit. It's like Apples To Apples, but for horrible, twisted, profane and sacriligious adults. So it was perfect for us! We played with the Rando Cardrissian variant rule, as personified by our giant black cat, Eldritch, who nearly won the game. If you have not played this before, go get it. Play it. Get the expansions. Be prepared to laugh yourself into unconsciousness.
Playstation time! Also known as Gaming While Intoxicated. We started out with some Borderlands 2, before the rum had time to really work. Have I mentioned how much I love this game? No? Good gods, I love this game. We've deviated from the basic storyline and are trying our hand at one of the DLC packs, Captain Scarlett's Pirate's Booty. So much fun. I will be one sad little gamer chick when we wrap this one up.
After that, when things were getting...blurrier, we opted to switch to Castle Crashers. This is normally a fun game, but we had an even better time playing it with our rum & Coke and rum & ginger beer. It probably took us a lot longer to finish levels than it should have, but damn, it was fun.
This week, we'll be playing 2 De Mayo, which should be a much crunchier game than the weekend's fare. I'll post how it goes.
What are you playing?
The first game we got out was Forbidden Island, by Gamewright. It's a cooperative game, with the players trying to work together to gather all four treasures from various locations on the island and escape before the island sinks. We've had mixed results with cooperative games - some of them, like Ghost Stories, are so challenging that we just end up frustrated. Others, like Pandemic, present enough of a challenge that they hold your interest, but they aren't un-winnable. Forbidden Island definitely falls into the second category. We had only a few tiles left when we grabbed the final treasure and lifted off, making for a very tense several turns. Players really have to work collaboratively to win the game, and there isn't a mechanic that determines a winner-within-the-winners, which is good. The rules are fairly concise, setup is quick & easy and the game itself plays pretty smoothly. I'd definitely recommend it.
The second game, though, nearly overshadowed the fun we'd had with Forbidden Island. Cards Against Humanity. Holy shit. It's like Apples To Apples, but for horrible, twisted, profane and sacriligious adults. So it was perfect for us! We played with the Rando Cardrissian variant rule, as personified by our giant black cat, Eldritch, who nearly won the game. If you have not played this before, go get it. Play it. Get the expansions. Be prepared to laugh yourself into unconsciousness.
Playstation time! Also known as Gaming While Intoxicated. We started out with some Borderlands 2, before the rum had time to really work. Have I mentioned how much I love this game? No? Good gods, I love this game. We've deviated from the basic storyline and are trying our hand at one of the DLC packs, Captain Scarlett's Pirate's Booty. So much fun. I will be one sad little gamer chick when we wrap this one up.
After that, when things were getting...blurrier, we opted to switch to Castle Crashers. This is normally a fun game, but we had an even better time playing it with our rum & Coke and rum & ginger beer. It probably took us a lot longer to finish levels than it should have, but damn, it was fun.
This week, we'll be playing 2 De Mayo, which should be a much crunchier game than the weekend's fare. I'll post how it goes.
What are you playing?
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
A short introductory paragraph.
So, we are a couple of geeks and this is our blog. We're a married couple that happens to love all sorts of geeky and nerdy things. D&D? Check. Video games? We're there. Board games, preferably the kind that leave your brain a little sizzly? Ohhh yeah. Scientific discovery? We dig it. Comic books? Every single week. Miniature games? Hell yes. Our plan, which we may or may not stick with, is to post about the things we love and sometimes about things that really bug us. We hope to post fairly frequently, but The Missus has ADD (not AD&D, which was awesome.), so we'll just have to see. That's it.
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