Funspot

After having heard about it 'round the internets, I downloaded The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. C. and I watched it and were kind of blown away that competitively playing classic arcade video games can be people's whole lives. I guess I wasn't COMPLETELY surprised... but it watching a grown man videorecord himself playing a game as his child wails "Daddyyyyyy, stop playing Donkey Kong!" in the background was unexpectedly sobering.

I learned a lot from this documentary. I learned that classic video gaming is very high stakes, that there are heroes and villains among the well-known players... and that there are well-known players, period. These well-known players convene and compete in locations such as The American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot, in magical Laconia, NH. Right after watching the documentary, we turned to the internet for more information about this Funspot, and discovered that the 11th annual International Classic Videogame Tournament was coming right up. These days we need only the slightest nudge to get us moving on a roadtrip, but this information practically shoved us off a cliff.

We gently landed in New Hampshire, the first day of the tournament... and were changed forever. Our first glance around the parking lot at Funspot revealed vanity license plates which read "MAPPY," "DKONG," and "CNTIPD."

This vehicle had much Mountain Dew and generic cheese puffs in the back seat, I am not even kidding.

The arcade was not as busy as I'd expected, but still lively with challengers and onlookers. There were a lot of games, and a lot of people's hands all over the games... I yearned for Purell.

This fellow is filming himself playing Ms. Pac-Man, while wearing a special Pac-Man garment.

A game I don't know, being played by a guy wearing a "Power Glove" which is also something that exists I guess. That's me, bemused, in the background.

But enough about these random gamers - we met CELEBRITIES! We got our picture taken with Walter Day, the video game referee who is in charge of Twin Galaxies. We got our picture taken with some other unknown guy who wasn't in The King of Kong but kind of forced us to get our picture taken with him. We got our picture taken with BRIAN KUH, a man who quit his real job to move to New Hampshire to play games at Funspot ALL THE TIME!

One time he broke 16 world records in one day. That's a lot! One of them was Paperboy, which I tried to play, and it's pretty challenging.

Brian Kuh was actually kind of a toadie villain in The King of Kong. Without giving away any spoilers, I'll just say he basically committed a crime in order to make life harder for another gamer. I thought poorly of him for that, and had entertained fantasies of calling him out on poor sportsmanship if I were to meet him in real life. Then I did meet him, and he was so meek and modestly grateful that we had enjoyed the documentary... and for a moment I thought deeply on the fact that he quit his job and moved to New Hampshire to pursue gaming... and I decided it wasn't for me to judge.

We spent the rest of our time at Funspot collecting tickets on the kiddie games, like Skee-Ball and Wack-a-Mole. We were so rich with tickets by the end - our rewards were a Cookie Monster plushie, a little figurine of a dog taking a bath in a bucket, and a red Chinese finger trap. Funspot, I hope to be seeing you again soon.

I knit a sweater!

It occurred to me recently that almost all of my knitting has been for other people, so I decided to work on a project for myself - I chose this Owl Sweater that I saw on One Pretty Thing. I started working on this wool, cabled project right away because I figured it would take me a while to complete, but no - two weeks of knitting flew by, and then I had a sweater! Just in time for the heat and humidity of summer...

Great pattern for a first-time-sweater knitter. I managed to make my way through it with only minimal fuss, even though I had to do a good deal of math to convert this pattern (intended for chunky weight yarn) into something that could work with worsted Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool. This was also my first time working cables.


Rather than put eyes on all my owls, I decided to just give one lucky hooter the gift of sight, in the form of vintage pearly yellow button eyes.

Really quite pleased! This may be the first time I have ever eagerly awaited the return of sweater weather.

Virginia is for squatters

The situation right now is this: we are staying for a few days in the great state of Virginia (boo!)* in a tent (yay!) in a condo (what?). It is C's friend's uninhabited and unfurnished condo - as I look around the room right now, the only things in here are the two of us sitting on the floor with our respective Apple computers, my flip flops, and a promotional-sized box of cereal.

A little bit ago, I woke up and climbed out of the tent with no sense of what time it was. I heard some voices outside the door, and in a sleepy haze thought, "I hope that's not a realtor trying to show this place." Then the doorbell rang, because it was a realtor, trying to show this place. C. and I scrambled to put clothes on and put most of our belongings out of sight, and then we let the realtor and an unsuspecting couple in. Pretty sure all three of them thought we were squatters, or maybe just weirdos - tent in the bedroom, no furniture, random assortment of things. They left in under three minutes. The day is ours!

*Just kidding, Virginia. We are having a really good time in the loving arms of Old Dominion.

Engage!

C. and I have set out on a quest to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation in its entirety, which is five million episodes... or it FEELS like so many, since we are still on the first season and it hasn't quite picked up any steam yet. Cornwell tipped me off that I should stick with it and get through the first season "even though it is campy and unbearable," because it improves by the third season, "where they started getting a lot of money and all the actors took classes and shit." Hmm... At this point I'm mainly watching because I like the antics of Data, all trying to be a real boy. He's forever getting into crazy situations! And I like following up each episode with the recap by Wil Wheaton, who plays a kid who wore insane sweaters... in the Future!

Well, I've already run out of things to say about ST:TNG. To keep things interesting, we're going to be alternating seasons of that with seasons of Red Dwarf, which C. had never seen or heard of. Hooray for summer and idle pursuits!

Bee time!

Hey, what better way to revive my blog than with fresh, current material, such as... commentary on the Scripps National Spelling Bee! (This weekend is going to be live, y'all - just wait until you see my posts about Star Trek: The Next Generation, and The International Classic Arcade Game Championship. I'm serious.)

I had the idea to liveblog this event, and maybe play along by trying to spell the words... but they're like, really hard. I couldn't keep up with these kids! While I'm still trying to wrap my mind around whatever jibberish Dr. Jacques Bailly is saying, the kids are all... "H-Y-D-R-A-R-G-Y-R-U-M!" and "G-Y-A-S-C-U-T-U-S!"

Ooh - one of the words is "blancmange." Much like these Bee kids, I have known, and known how to spell, this word since middle school, but not because of studying and cramming. I learned it the same way I learned a lot of things about life - from Monty Python. "They mean to win Wimbledon!" (Part 1, part 2.)

Hmm there are only seven spellers left now, and only one of them is a homeschooled kid! This surprises me... I guess I was hoping to see more Rebecca Sealfons. There aren't too many characters among the spellers this year: a class clown, a really laid-back little dude, a bunch of sharp but otherwise ordinary kids. I don't have a favorite this year...

Now the spellers are dropping like flies! Who's going to win the ridiculously huge silver cup!?

"Menhir," there's another one I know. Thanks Asterix... or rather Asterix's friend and menhir delivery man, Obelix. So far I have been able to best middle school-aged children in the spelling of TWO whole words! And only because I knew the terms as pop culture references... yesssss I feel like a champion.

Hey, someone won! This year's competition was pretty sedate, so I'm finding it hard to muster up a great deal of enthusiasm. To steal a joke from C./Adam Sandler: "Phoresy"? More like boresy.

Tick tick tick...

People don't really get ticks where I'm from, unless maybe you're out camping in the wilderness, way off the grid somewhere. I've never actually heard of someone I know getting a tick on them, so to me it was just some jokey affliction, kind of like scurvy - no doubt real, but not really something to worry about. This is the modern age, after all!

Note that I said it WAS a joke to me. This weekend, C. and I walked along a nice, wide, maintained nature trail with some friends of ours, Matt and Miki. We went down a short side trail to the beach, and I probably brushed against some foliage ONCE... fast forward a few hours when I was washing up in our friends' bathroom. I looked in the mirror and had a train of thought something like this: "AHHH there's a spider on me - wait no it's just some bug, I'll brush it off - why won't it... come off... AHHHHHHH IT'S IN MY NECK!"

A tick was in my neck, feasting on my blood. I tried to telepathically communicate, "I NEED that blood, you jerk! I'm using it." The tick continued quietly sipping away.

First we tried unsuccessfully to drown it with rubbing alcohol. It wasn't working, so I lay on the couch feeling awkward while C. and Matt rushed to - The Internet! - for advice. Matt and Miki were optimistic about pulling it out with tweezers, while C. wanted to heat the bug up with a lighter. An open flame, next to my alcohol-soaked neck. Was I concerned my head would go up in flames? Yes.

But my neck had dried at that point, so I let C. get to work with the lighter. Based on Matt's narration of the events, I think he was having some success, but then the tick burned up and died. Tweezers were employed, and then I was tick free - until I went back to the bathroom to finish washing up, and I found ANOTHER ONE in my hair. I squished it before it could tap into me. NOW I was tick free.

So now I'm just waiting... 3 to 32 days after being bitten, to see if I have Lyme disease. Fingers crossed! Sometimes I feel like the Northeastern United States is out to get me. I've transplanted here, but I'm not taking, and am being rejected...

Sammie's Outdoor Adventure

My long Memorial Day weekend started out with Sammie running away! Spoiler alert: he came back. I was out on the back porch hanging laundry to dry (I'm trying to give up using the dryer as much as I can this summer - you're welcome, The Earth), and I had propped the screen door open, thinking that Sammie is too skittish about literally everything to want to venture out. I didn't even see him take off... but after a while we determined he was gone, and then C. and I had an anxious night of searching for him with flashlights. We went to bed, and there were no pointy little feet stepping on us, and it was sad.

We hung signs around the neighborhood the next day. I kept calling him from the back door throughout the day - mostly "Sammie," but "Samuel" too, so he would know I meant business. In the evening, after a whole day of roughing it in the out-of-doors, Sammie decided it was time to start meowing back when I called him. He's skittish, but he'll "talk" back to me, and is sometimes pretty chatty, which I'm glad for. And the promise of wet food helped to lure him back inside. I suspect he didn't leave the neighbor's backyard the whole time, hiding in an extensive pile of stuff.

Soon as we got him back, he suffered the indignity of a bath. As I poured water down his back and soaped him up, he tried talking to me again, this time with what sounded exactly like the word "Noooo!" wailed over and over. Sorry buddy, you smelled funky. So glad you are home!

Huuuugs!

Recipe for hilarity! Also, cookies.

Searching YouTube for the phrase "me singing [artist's name]" is a pretty rich source of comedy.

My current favorite is this one... it's not hilarious due to extreme amateurishness like you might expect, it's just kind of quietly amusing because of the guy's vaguely elfin qualities.

Say, you know that mumbling, la-la-laaa, don't-quite-know-all-the-words way that you sing a tune when you're just tooling around the house, doing chores or whatever, with no intention of having anyone record, let alone even HEAR you? This guy decided that rather than keep those moments private, he would share them... with the world!

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Onto the cookies... my new favorite cookie recipe is these Lime Meltaways from Martha Stewart. They are just all-around great - super tasty, easy to make, easy to modify if you prefer a different citrus flavor, and pleasant to look at in the mixing bowl, even.


I've made a ton of these in original lime, and also a few batches of tangerine, dipped in dark chocolate rather than powdered with sugar, and a few batches of lemon without zest - pretty good, but they'd be improved by the zest. The lime cookies are the ones I crave, however.

More like... farces

The new version of iPhoto (the photo organizing software on Macs) has a Faces feature that is supposed to automatically recognize people in your photos, which you can then label with names. Once you have tagged a few pictures of a person, iPhoto is supposed to “learn” who that person is, and suggests other photos that they are in. This works… sometimes.

Other times, it has been telling me that there are faces in or on inanimate objects, random unfocused things in the background, all kinds of crazy stuff. Here’s a list of people who I told iPhoto to look for, and the pictures it has recommended for them:

• Marcus = biscotti
• Former professor’s 8-year old daughter = Cup Noodles
• My white-haired aunt = Stu with yarn piled on his head
• Jake Gyllenhall = Mr. Bean mask
• Matt = picture of a picture of Kevin Bacon
• C's coworker George = George Washington from Mt. Rushmore
• Aubrey = closeup of a kitten’s eye

Well iPhoto… if there’s anyone that is the sparkle in a kitten’s eye, I would also say it’s Aubrey.

Hey Elena, what happened to your chin?: "Hilarious" "gag" answers!

- I cut myself shaving!

- I was misbehavin' and my man popped me one to put me in my place. (This gag ghostwritten by doting boyfriend)

- I did not look out for ice under the new-fallen snow. My feet lost the ground (mid-fall, a brief moment of clarity: "My reflexes have failed me.") - and my chin found it again.

I mentally regarded my condition, and determined I was fit enough to keep walking. The cold numbed and hid the aches I would later feel.

I physically regarded my chin, and a hand that came away bloody convinced me to turn home again.

Ha ha! Oh, me.