I figured Wednesday night was going to bring me more sleep than I'd ever before experienced. To my surprise when I arose the next day, having had a cat climb on me at least twice, it was half past eight in the morning. I felt fine though, so there was no problem accompanying Rod to the supermarket, going for a walk with the dog in the hills in the park near the house, or cruising around San Francisco on Rod's driving tour of the city for a few hours.
I'd arranged to meet up with a couple of guys I'd known from a mailing list on the Net, so having fine-tuned the details I got dropped off at the local BART station, Rockridge, where I'd meet up with a guy called Pete who'd show me the way to the gaming shop in Fremont where local gamers meet weekly. He'd missed the train he was supposed to be on, but I hung around in case that was what had happened and indeed met him unproblematically on the next one. We chatted a bit on the hour-long ride to Fremont - he's a thin quiet guy with long gamer hair-and-beard, whose mother had herself discharged from hospital the day before he was born so she could play in a Runequest game GMed by the guy who wrote the game. Never have I met somebody with gaming in his blood to this extent.
On arriving at Fremont station, the end of the line in the South Bay, he called Corey, who was at the shop (Scenario) already and would pick us up in his car and bring us over. I'd shot the breeze with Corey on the Net sometimes in the past, but had only the vaguest idea of what he looked like. When he arrived, he was a guy of about my (slightly above-average) height, but much stockier, and was friendly and chatty and said stuff like "So I gotta ask - what the hell are you doing here?". The drive to Scenario was mostly swapping of drinking stories, which the younger Pete unfortunately (perhaps fortunately for him) didn't have much to contribute to.
The games night was in the shop's back room, which had a bunch of tables laid out, some nice scenery in cupboards, and folks that knew each other greeting each other. I was introduced around, and they were a pleasant bunch. I didn't feel like playing Warhammer 40,000 because it's a real three-hour commitment, so Pete took Corey's Imperial Guard army up against a guy using the all-new Grey Knights army, and I watched Corey help a guy playtesting a set of rules this guy was writing himself. After a while I figured I'd take a look at the shop itself. I've never seen the like. It was much, much bigger than any gaming shop I've ever seen, and had a great selection of stock. Everything from cards to miniatures to RPGs to kites to kit models - I managed to restrain my purchases to a few out-of-print Heavy Gear books that I'd been searching Ebay for every day for the past year or so.
When I got back, Corey had to go do something else so I was given the playtest hotseat, and played the game and discussed rules ideas and what was good and bad with Jason, the guy who was writing them. It was a lot of fun, actually, and although he seemed suspicious at first (and had been telling Corey about the non-disclosure agreement he'd have to sign) when I displayed the fact that I was enthusiastic and had ideas that weren't moronic and had some wargaming knowledge to back up my opinions he warmed to my presence. By the end of the night he, myself and Corey were throwing about and debating the pros and cons of various amendments to the target-sighting rules.
When they closed the place up, Corey drove myself and Pete back to the BART station, and we sat in the car for quite a while chatting. Alas tiredness was catching up on me again, and I remained pretty quiet, but it was nice to be talking to the guys in real life. Eventually Corey pointed out that it was twenty to midnight and that the last train would leave at midnight, so we bid him farewell and got on the last BART northward. I fell asleep - or I must have, because it was one a.m. when we arrived in Rockridge. I thanked Pete for showing me around, and called Rod, who arrived shortly afterward to collect me.
Well, I sure slept last night. It was half eleven when I got up, and we're just about to head into Berkeley to do some shopping. Just what my wallet needs!
Friday, 11th April 2003, 17:50 PST, Rod & Ted's house in the hills over Oakland
A week ago I was sitting hunched over the kitchen table in Studio 54, with a long blue network cable joining my laptop to the spaghetti-like tangle of cabling that allowed three of us to share a single dial-up connection, where with thoughts of the ever-escalating phone bill in our heads we'd argue over who was hogging the bandwidth by typing too fast. Now I'm sitting on a comfy couch in the sitting room at the opposite end of the house from the hub, with no network cable, and myself and Rod sharing the DSL connection wirelessly. And if Ted were here he'd be using it too and nobody'd notice the difference. It's a different world, I'm telling you.
This morning after a breakfast of cereal that tasted remarkably good for something that didn't pride itself on how much sugar or chocolate it contains, myself and Rod headed out shopping. First target was a clothes shop that turned up little of interest for me. Next was the Apple Shop - an actual Apple Shop - that was very minimalist and sterile. I prefer shops selling electronics to be pokey and stuffed, modern-day equivalents of occult book shops. It was kinda sterile and creepy actually. But there I purchased an AirPort card, to allow me to avail of the wireless fun to be had in this house, and also apparently in coffee shops around the city and the like. No more getting out of bed for me, ever.
Next up was a trip to Japantown in San Francisco, where I sought out a prezzie for Britta, who I'll be staying with in Sydney. We trawled a lot of shops before stopping for some sushi (just two or three bits, I swore) in one of those places where the dishes go around the room on boats on a little canal and you pick off what you want. Well, by the time we'd tried one of everything that looked interesting, we were pretty damn full and had a stack of dishes about a foot high. It did however afford us the energy required to finally buy something. After that we called by the Disney shop to pick up something I wanted, and then hurried home to install the AirPort card. I took a bunch of photos of that... now that getting connected is so easy, I'll start putting photos up soon enough.