"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...