Day 53 - Nerd Day

Sunset from the Horseshoe bridge

May 31st, 2015

I was in the process of making plans for today when I was reminded that I actually already had plans! Damn, my organization is slipping. On meetup.com, I had committed to playing DnD with a group of guys once every fortnight for 6 hours on Sunday. It’s free, and I figure I’ll meet a couple people in the process of having some fun. French Alex has given me his SmartRider card that allows you to put money on it and swipe to get on the bus/train for 25% less. It costs $10 initial fee, so I wasn’t sure if it was worth it with the amount I use the transport. He bought a car and didn’t need it, so hey, sweet deal.

Iron Skirt

I walk to the train station, load up some money on it, and catch the train to Queens park suburb. My sister and I talk on the phone while I walk to the guy’s place. I arrive early, leaving me some freedom to let the conversation come to a more natural end.

Once inside, I meet Aussie Joel who is running the game. He helps me with my character, a human witch with a monkey familiar. I know this is super boring for a lot of people, so Fair Warning that I’m going to touch on the highlights of what actually happened in the game. Nerd Topic.

English Ben (Merman Knight), Canadian Ryan (Human Sorcerer), and Aussie Alex (Human Fighter) show up and the game begins. We find ourselves in this pirate-outpost-gone-trade-village.  Looming over the village is this ominous black cloud that makes all metal magnetic every so often. Neato. We’re hired by some guy to be the muscle for his gambling hall, as he used to be a crime lord and is trying to go legit after having enough of said underbelly. Giant snake attack! Black hail rains down and we save this girl from both the hail and hordes of rats! The cloud made everything magnetic, and a bunch of seagulls commit suicide over the bay, attracting vicious sea creatures! Help! The sailors need to clean that shit up, but are being destroyed by Barracudas! Land-faring barracudas! End of excessive exclamations. Seriously though, four of these barracudas crawled up out of the water and nearly destroyed us. Fish out of water nearly killed everyone.

Our boss had sent some money to pay off a chunk of his debt, but the person disappeared. The lender knows nothing about it, so we follow up on some leads to a bar full of orcs. They aren’t much help, but inform us about how shady our employer is. The plot thickens.

We take a break somewhere around here to eat the curry that Joel’s girlfriend had made, which was quite delicious. She threw in heaps of garlic to help fend off a cold she had, saying that she’d be disappointed if we got sick after eating that. One of the guy jokes about food poisoning, which she didn’t seem the most impressed by.

On leaving the bar, there’s another one of those magnetic storms, causing the sea to be stupid and toss up these poisonous crab/lobster things. Yet again, we have to save fishermen/dock workers. This time, they can’t swim. They can’t swim! What dock worker/sailor can’t swim! Might want to invest in some classes there, friends. Again, we’re nearly murdered by these lobsters, One dock worker is down! Life for them is hard; they get paid next to nothing, and constantly get torn to shreds by things in the water.

Water Conservation: A sink
that runs while the tank fills.

We end the game around here because it’s already about 10:20, and most of the guys have to be back home before their respective missus get mad. Alex gave me a ride into town because he was going in the same general direction. He's a rather stoic guy, and quite fit. The book I had read yesterday was “Small Talk” by Debrah Fine, in which she talks about how small talk is underrated. In her perspective, small talk deserves more respect because we view it as unimportant, but it is the talk that often leads to the big, more important talk. I keep up the small talk with Alex to find out that he was in a body building competition, and had gotten 2nd place a couple weeks back. He showed me pictures; he’s crazy shredded.

I arrive home around 11:30 and decide to not go out tonight. Upon writing this, I’m a little disappointed in myself for not doing it, especially since Sunday night of a long weekend is just as good as Saturday, while Monday night will be lacklustre. What’s done is done.