Hey, if anyone is planning on getting here all early on friday, then please let me know now, that way I can be expecting you, and let you in.

Or, "Where's my BooBooKitty, you villainous headborne claphole?"

In tradition of star trek, guaranteed to make you feel just like Princess Leah!

January 27-29 2006

The GCP continues its fine tradition with the latest nodermeet located in beautiful Florissant Missouri, which is a suburb of St. Louis. We should have fun, mayhem, malarkey and perhaps even an effective way.

Directions

If you already know St. Louis then you simply want to take 270 to Hanley/Graham, select "Graham" (which is a right if you just came over from Illinois, otherwise it is a left). Go down about a mile and make a left on Reeb Lane, which is directly after a laundrymat, if you make it all the way to a stoplight with a bar then you went too far. If you pass a McDonalds then you went the wrong way at the exit.

If you don't know St. Louis then you are going to want to use Mapquest. Address is 145 Reeb Lane, apartment 3, Florissant, MO 63031.

Contact information
/msg passport
email you don't need my email anymore.
Call Paige @ 314-number-outdated

Schedule

Friday January 27th

  • Arrive preferably early evening, but almost anytime is fine.

  • Carcassonne games should run constantly in room #2. We will be playing with a single set with expansion packs, and not multiple sets all dumped together into one box, so the games should go a lot faster.

  • 10PM - Official GCP Grilled Cheese Sandwich cookoff and buffet!!

  • Midnight - We will be showing Death Race 2000 on the main screen in the living room.

  • 2 AM. Attempt to begin reasonably quiet time.

Saturday January 28th

Sunday January 29th

"You're still here? It's over. Go home. Go."

Other actitivies

Apartment is equipped with wireless internet and several arcade games. We will be having a Ms. Pac-Man high score contest that will run all until midnight saturday, with a prize for the winner.

I assume there will be some drinking going on as well.

Rules

Try to be quiet after 2 AM, as I do have people that live below me, but they wake me up a lot with yelling, so I am not too terribly concerned about it.

I normally don't allow smoking in the apartment, but room 2 will be the designated smoking room for this event. Please keep it in that room, and restrict it to legal substances.

Transportation

There are several local noders, so picking people up from bus stations and the airport should not be a problem.

I will also list any carpool information here.

Carpools
  • eien_meru is going from Ada, OH and can take passengers, or pick people up along the way.
Lodging

My apartment will probably sleep 15 or 20 people by itself, but I would also encourage people to get rooms at the cheapo hotel down the street. I'll be adding the contact info for the place shortly, as it recently changed names and I can't remember what the new name is.

I am also asking if any local noders are willing to put people up for the night, if so then that information will appear here in the future.

What it is OK to bring
  1. Yourself
  2. your children and significant other
  3. food
  4. drinks
  5. games
  6. books (specifically I need about 4 linear feet of paperbacks with black spines, as I sort my books by color and right now the black shelf also has another color on it).
  7. presents
  8. grilled cheese
  9. I could seriously use another tabletop griddle or two for making grilled cheese.
  10. Other cool things
What it is NOT OK to bring
  1. Weapons
  2. drugs
  3. animals
Who will be there, and where shall they stay?

Please let me know if you plan on staying at my place or in a hotel.

  1. passport - apartment
  2. izubachi - apartment
  3. Wiccanpiper - hotel
  4. briarcub - hotel
  5. Liquid Rubber - his own house
  6. SciPhi and friends - Will stay somewhere else - I'll probably be there. But I am NOT making out with any dudes this time.
  7. Laura Bush - apartment - I loves teh nodermeets!!
  8. LaggedyAnne - own house?
  9. artman2003 - own house?
  10. Phyrkrakr - is ill and may or may not make it.
  11. chaotic_poet - my place
  12. hunt_05 - Should be here friday, might have to leave saturday night.
  13. eien_meru came to his senses and will be here.
  14. your name here
Who might be there?
  1. avalyn
  2. gwenllian is trying to talk apatrix into it.
  3. sauth might be making us King Cake.
  4. vandewal and wife AnnMarie might be coming.
  5. greth is trying to make it.
  6. Augustine will be there if his samurai duties allow for it.
Who won't be there?
  1. Pauly Shore
  2. craze - moved to florida.
  3. jclast has no money
  4. eien_meru - bad hobbittesses.
  5. wonko6942 has class in Houston
  6. joes3029 is on the incorrect side of the planet
  7. yclept is probably not going to be there, so we shouldn't get out hopes up. =(
  8. Heisenberg is on call that weekend and does not want to see us cavorting naked.
Usergroup information

I have co-opted my old (long dead) WAG usergroup for use with this meet, so join up to discuss the festivities.

But how's the grilled cheese? A GCP reunion and nodermeet in St. Louis,

AKA How do I till my field? You're going to need a hoe.

AKA If I knew you were coming, I'd have brought my beaver.


I seem to have a way of always being the first person to show up to nodermeets. So this time, I decided I wasn't going to leave until late so I could make sure some other people got there before I did.

I got into St. Louis around nine and had some trouble finding Passport's apartment. Well, I found the complex, but I couldn't figure out which building I should go into. So after walking around, guitar in hand, for a few moments, I finally looked up at one window that was almost completely blacked out....This must be the place.

Passport, Apatrix, SciPhi and eien_meru were chilling out on Passport's awesome grandma-style-retro couch. They had been expecting the Outies caravan to arrive before me until they got a call that Wiccanpiper and the gang were running a late thanks to bus mishap with Izubachi.

Laggedyanne, another St. Louisian, got there shortly after I did, and then the grilled cheese cooking began. Sciphi and Eien_meru had gone shopping earlier for the yum yums and even though Sciphi wanted to pick up some mayonnaise (are you serious?!?!) for the GC's, Eien talked him out of it. We did, however, enjoy pickles and tomatoes on our GC. The Outies caravan arrived right after the first sandwich was served to Apatrix.

The usual suspects, Wiccanpiper, Briarcub, and Izubachi piled into the room, along with an unfamiliar face, Choatic_Poet. Everyone got their share of grilled cheese and then the usual noder drinking began.

Turns were taken playing Mario Kart on Liquid Rubber's (who got their right after the outies caravan) gamecube while drinking and talking.

Liquid Rubber, Wiccanpiper and Briarcub disappeared into room 2 for a while for pipe smoking, but once Briarcub found Passport's awesome arcade system, (like every arcade game you could ever think of!) he and SciPhi went to work challenging each other for quite sometime.

I settled down in the corner with my guitar and got into the conversation. Somehow, I don't know how, we ended up writing a song about Helen Keller (lyrics below). Laggedyanne, Izubachi, Chaotic_Poet and Eien_Meru decided this is now the St. Louis nodermeet theme song. The usual talk was had-- who is doing what on E2, how funny/sad/good/bad nodes are.

Around three a.m. the front room people all quieted down. Sciphi was the first to sleep pass out, while Passport was making up a cure-all for the hang overs everyone was going to have the next day. Eien, perhaps the drunkest of all, was coached into eating some bread. Mmmm bread, he said, and I think he meant it. Laggedyanne headed for home and the rest of us all headed to bed as well.

Saturday morning saw Choatic_Poet up first and the return of Laggedyanne, who volunteered to cook breakfast for everyone. She made us some delicious scrambled eggs, with peppers and other veggies for those who wanted them.

Saturday afternoon the boys all disappeared into the back for a game of D&D, except Wiccanpiper, who stayed in the front room with Laggadyanne and I. The three of us decided a nice nap was in order so we all took one.

Sometime after somebody led someone else down in a cave and SciPhi dropped the rope, the D&D players came back out into the open and started in on the arcade games.

Artman2003, his wife, and his adorable son showed up right before the noders were all getting ready to go out to eat.

Unfortunately, Apatrix had to get back home to Gwenllian (who chose to go to Kentucky stay home and rest instead of coming to see us!) and I had to go to work, so we both had to leave before supper. Therefore ending my version of the nodermeet.

On the way home, I took I-64 in the pouring down rain and found a lady who had blown out a tire on the highway and helped her fix it. That may be the only non-devious thing I did this weekend.
Helen Keller
Helen Keller......
Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh
Meh Meh Meh Mmmmm Meh
(sign language) You make baby Jesus cry
Meh Meh Meh Meh Meh

Mackin' it in the Midwest

Okay, so while I love the University of Chicago and there's a lot of good things about Hyde Park (utopian-caliber diversity being a major one), it can be a bummer living on the South Side of Chicago. Especially when you're trying to get anywhere else than Hyde Park. I was taking a bus to Union Station to catch the train to Normal so I could bum a ride from Joe and I'd left relatively early to head off any delay-related disasters.

Didn't matter. The bus I was taking, packed to the brim with people, was apparently too volatile an environment for some, because two folks started a ruckus in the back. I didn't understand what was going on, but the driver stopped the bus, called the cops, and told us we all had to get off to wait for the next one. Which, of course, was also packed with people. End result, I missed my train, had to wait two hours for another, and delayed the Wiccanpiper carpool coterie's departure considerably.

Everything turned out fine though, as Wiccanpiper, his husband Briarcub, and nodermeet-newbie chaoticpoet didn't flay me or anything. We arrived in St. Louis around 11pm, when almost everyone had settled in at passport's place. There was LaggedyAnne, eien_meru, LiquidRubber, SciPhi, Apatrix and hunt05 already in attendance, which made for a nice, intimate party. Much more than that and I think the apartment would've cramped.

Passport's apartment, by the way, is decked out with video game machines. There was a cocktail mode sit-down module of some game I don't know, a Gamecube for his flatscreen TV, and a big cabinet with an emulator installed to play pretty much every classic arcade game in the US and Japan you could care to ring up. This provided considerable entertainment throughout the weekend of boozing and bantering as SciPhi and I developed a rivalry over video game prowess. It's been established that I kick his ass at fighting games, but he can definitely do me one over on anything tetris based. Also, bouncy 2D cartoon boobies are endlessly amusing after crossing certain levels of insobriety.

Gaming pretty much defined the weekend in one way or another. Briarcub ran a D&D campaign for which I did very little, but got to enjoy SciPhi's barbarian-lecher antics with the single female member of our party (played by passport) and LiquidRubber's admirable devotion to playing strongheaded and mildly suicidal characters ("Crawl into a hole in a cliff supposedly populated by dragons and enemy forces without any armor while my companions gamble for the right to gank my stuff after my inevitable dismemberment? Why don't mind if I do!").

I taught the group the one phrase in American Sign Language I learned from a good friend, namely "You make baby Jesus cry," which got incorporated into an epic ballad for the guitar composed by hunt05, a ballad whose other soul-stirring lyrics were "meh meh meh meh meh." Artman2003, accompanied by his adorable baby and wife, continued a precedent of paying me really extravagant compliments about my intelligence that I have no idea how to respond to except with gratitude. LaggedyAnne cooked us all some utteral scrumptious roasted chicken-fetus breakfast made to order and introduced me to a weird Haitian citrus fruit with an enormous rind and a taste like sweetened grapefruit whose name I don't remember because I killed a lot of brain cells this weekend.

Speaking of killing brain cells, I was feeling at my absolute degenerate prime by the end of Sunday evening when we started playing the punkrock awesome card game Pimp: The Backhanding. Not only did I get to mack colorfully drawn hoes, bitchslap rivals, and launder money, but there was so much smoke in the gaming room I decided I wanted in on this whole 'smokey treat' business and bummed a pair of coffin nails from SciPhi. So now I know why people are addicted to these things. That's quite a nice buzz.

The night ended with some really awful B-movie called The Brain that Wouldn't Die whose plot I couldn't understand due to plasteredness and a few sketchy memories of clips from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and saying goodbye to some noders before passing out entirely. Despite consuming probably the most alcohol I've ever ingested without vomiting, the hypothesis that izu doesn't get hangovers continues to hold. Yay.

The trip back involved Wiccanpiper geeking out about highway systems and his disturbingly extensive memory for where all of them go, some more conversation with chaoticpoet and Briarcub, and me finally getting my pillow and blanket that I've been going without since Children of the Corny in October because I forgot it. Mmm... actually blanket to sleep under. It's cuddlitastic!

Oh, and according to precedent, I left something behind in Wiccanpiper's car. Specifically, my jacket with my iPod and keys. But not my cellphone, thank goodness, so this time there were no consequences to my perpetual forgetfulness.

All in all, a wholy successful weekend. The rundown of the folks I remember, with first names. I'm guarenteed to have misremembered at least one person's:
  • Wiccanpiper/Joe: Fabulous as usual. Shared various Gay Fatherly Wisdom with chaoticpoet and me, being much younger outies than his married, old-fogey self. Took full advantage of Fatherly Wisdom to tease me relentlessly. That's okay though. I got to make fun of him trying to learn the controls for Mario Kart.
  • Briarcub/Tom: His cheery, geeky self. We've established that Tom is the chipper antidote to my emo, making for highly balanced road trips. Extremely helpful in coaching D&D newbies along in the campaign he hosted. Ninja-like skills at Q-bert and some weird game involving marbles.
  • Chaoticpoet/Robbie: Never met him before, apparently I was his introduction to E2 through my dramatastic LJ. Nice guy, very shy and a little tacitern at first, but he warmed to the company and fit in admirably with the noder crowd. It's interesting to see the reactions of someone new to nodermeets, as at this point I've gone to enough of them with the same folks that I've grown far more comfortable than I was back during my first one, in Stockholm, nearly two years ago.
  • hunt05/Em: Sharing the dark secrets of McDonalds managing and composing pop hits about Hellen Keller? Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Also, the only person besides passport who could beat me at Mario Kart. Though I still had the winning record. Ha.
  • LaggedyAnne/Tiffany: "Mom." Made me breakfast. Bubbly and bouncy. Pretty in pink. Peels her mysterious citrus fruit like an old Haitian woman.
  • LiquidRubber: Admirable devotion to keeping to character. Even Darwin-award deserving characters. Also quite fond of his pipe, which I have to admit was kind of funny seeing him smoke, as I totally associate pipes with my grandmother's very old geezer live-in boyfriend and he was very not old geezer.
  • SciPhi/Matt: Pugnacious, sweater-clad, philosophical, and drunk. All as I hoped he'd be. Was not at all in the slightest gloating like a madman when he kicked my ass at weird Japanese tetris with girls in sailor uniforms and wolves. The absolute model of an honorable winner. And, despite both getting trashed, we managed not to get half-naked and make out this time around. Hurray for denying you pervs a new set of embarrassing internet photos to snicker at.
  • SciPhi's friend whose name I forget: Introduced us to Pimp: The Backhanding. All hail.
  • eien_meru/Andy: Definitely did not get teased as much as I did this time around! No fair. Generally hobbit-like and mathematical, especially because he wore a cool hooded-cloak/blanket half the time.
  • Apatrix/Alex: Snark snark snark. Remembered for the awesome comment, "Yeah, the name of that wine translates into 'Miller Lite' in French." Drink the third river! It's not nearly so bad as pissing on the third rail!
  • artman2003/Jeremy + wife + kid: Stopped by only briefly, but had a nice conversation with me about geopolitics and the coming nuclear apocalypse or whatnot over buffet pizza. His wife asked me about my university and my major. His kid mouthed things and looked cutely perplexed.
  • passport/Paige: Our indubitable host, supplied us with booze, video games, and an entirely welcome environment. We totally trashed his place too, but he seemed to enjoy the whole time. I'm quite appreciative he hazarded the risk of inviting noders into one's abode to host the meet. Cheers!

"One thousand drowned goat farmers go 'Glug, glug, glug.' Just add water. - LaggedyAnne

Fresh blood attracts the sharks. That's often the advice I hear in my head when I try something new in a social context and exactly what I was thinking as I stepped through the red door of the second level apartment. I had spent the day already with wiccanpiper and Briarcub, who were kind enough to give me a ride from the halfway point between my current home of the Windy City and the alcove of St. Louis, Florrisant, that Passport resided in. Wiccanpiper and Briarcub were actually not the first noders I've seen in real life, though they were the first ones I met officially. The first noder I'd seen in real life was the fourth in the "Outies Caravan of Dooooooooom," izubachi, who I'd seen in Chicago one day from a distance. Unluckily, his bus to the train station had a fight erupt on it and it's delay left him looking for the next train out to Wiccanpiper's place.

You mean there are custom wired arcade machines? Sweeeet!

Having been on site for a few months at this point, I knew enough to know that I wouldn't know what to expect, you know? Although having spent the enjoyable day with WiccanPiper and Briarcub and the nice car ride with Izubachi, I was about to toss myself into the throws of a well established social dynamic in which I had no real context. As the red door gave way to a quaint buzzing interior, I realized that I was, most definitely, the newest noder there, and one of the youngest. The others in the "Outies Caravan of Doooom" swept inside and I was quickly introduced to hunt05, eien_meru, Apatrix, LaggedyAnne, SciPhi, and our kind host, passport, among the sizzle and fry of grilled cheese on the hot griddle. Names exchanged, hands shaken, gifts given, Liquid Rubber arrival, and my head was spinning. However, with fresh blood in the water, and no sharks to be seen, I settled down and lost myself in conversation, grilled cheese, and general geekery. The warmth of everyone broke through my unusually thick shyness and I actually felt rather at ease.

The entire thing had a timbre of friendship, immediate and undoubted, that left a smile on my face all night, helped a little with a few nice beers and a lot of nice people (who had a lot of nice beers). It was amusing watching the guys stumble about, playing on the modified arcade machine, and generally being themselves between bouts of vocal sparring, intelligent and not so, throughout the night. It only took a little while to get to used to everyone being referred to by the double names of online and real life. It was most interesting to watch the discussions concerning E2. There's a lot of history I don't know, and watching it's discussion in action made for a neat, and intimidating, lesson, in well, everything...

An Interlude and a feast

People started dropping off, some left and some stayed, but sleep was had by all, though, in my case, a little less than most as my natural clock had me up and about an hour or two before anyone else started twitching. Stretching out and grabbing my notebook, I spent the time chewing on the night before and guessing about the day ahead while hunt05 and izubachi slowly stirred from slumber and ended up online and chatting to each other, the former on her PSP, the latter on his laptop, via E2 across the darkened and sleeping room. The morning seeping in through the one open window brought with it little of the fear that the night before had started with. LaggedyAnne came back, shortly, with the makings of the morning's breakfast: omelettes. Geekery ensued for most of the boys, napping and MarioKart:Double Dash apparently for the girls and Wiccanpiper. I ended the game with more than a few kobold wounds, though alive, as did everyone. We drifted from apartment to pizza place, though Apatrix and hunt05 both drifted out of the scene for reality, and were replaced by Artman2003, wife, and version 2.0 of the parents, who was adorable and pocket-sized still. Between bites of pizza and snatches of conversation, I idly wondered what parenthood must be like. Artman2003's wife's tales of pre-med students, however, left me with a healthy fear of that class of person. Pizza was cheap, cheesy, and plentiful and the conversations were slung on all sides and I was never quite sure where to turn or listen to.

Artman2003 et al. parted with us post-pizza and our motley crew headed back for that apartment. The night brought the onset of a storytelling game, Once Upon A Time, and the stories we crafted were rather strange, but still, rather fun. The second night was more quiet then the last and things wound down to a quiet, but satisfying end, with a few incidents of galactic battles and ho slapping.

Sitting back, it still strikes me as almost movie like in my mind, and I'm not quite sure what happened. I do have to say that the warmth that everyone had was a refreshing and appreciated and I left with good thoughts about all...

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