Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Geeks in the snow



Damn, that was a fun week. I decided to open up my house to any friends who could make it out to visit. I sent an evite early in the season, and responses began trickling in. It was looking like only a couple of people were going to make it out during the week I suggested, with others coming at various other times; but, as I hoped, people pulled together at the last minute and a good sized crew was soon on the way. Yip! The first one to arrive, JessB, came as a happy surprise. You see, we were IM'ing and she said she might come. The next day, on my way back from work, I got a call from her -- she was hanging out in the brew pub down the street and needed to be picked up. Cool. She acclimated pretty quickly to life here in the snow -- hiking and reading and playing and working on math problems -- then the rest of the crew showed up en mass a couple of days later.

Wow, what a difference it made to have a good bunch of friends around. Was great. And it turned what is normally my big empty house into a thriving den of geeks. Pretty much my ideal living situation -- friends getting together in the central areas to play and cook, but having their own spaces to retreat to when they felt like it. Between the socializing and playing, people would take breaks to check email and fondle their loved ones:

Heh -- yes, this is what a party of my friends often looks like. :) We were often either battling it out for bandwidth over the wireless link or swapping gigabytes of mp3's over cat5. Just in case the point isn't getting across, we spelled it out:

Yes, that's GEEK written in thirty foot letters, in the snow over a frozen lake. We also spelled it out with our bodies, but I couldn't figure out how to make a G. The snow hiking and skiing were fun. And I got to use my new skills as a snowboarding instructor to teach JessR how to ride without the traditional traumatic beginner crashes. But, crashes or no, the hot tub saw a lot of use:

There was much playing and hiking and eating of good food. And we even went down to Denver to pick up tOdd and see RoTK, which was spectacular. Paul, "The King of Fun," brought a whole box full of games, but the one that took over was the playing of Magic the Gathering:

I had been curious about it for quite a while, and once they taught me how to play I was addicted in a big way. Dang, if this game had been around when I was a kid... it would have been all I did from ages ten to fourteen. OK, I guess I'm still a kid, because it was really fun for the week.

All in all... well, it was just great to have so many friends around and have them enjoying the snow and my house. It did make me miss A quite a bit, since it was her kind of social scene, and she's good friends with Paul -- and it would have been good if she could have joined in, if she were talking to me. sigh.

And, for friends who read this, whether you made it out or not, I just want to say: you guys are great. :) I'm going to send out another evite for the spring so we can do it all again.

I put up a bunch of Paul's pictures from the week here:

Snow Place Like Home photo journal

And now back to my normally scheduled snowboarding and solitary physicizing.

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gar@lisi.com