The Answer Is 42
Hehe, I really struggle to find time for this place XD, not that I don't like it, I'm just, busy with a lot of stuff. That said, even if I did have more time, I don't think I'm the type to record stuff going on in my life unless it's somewhat significant, to me at least. That said, here comes something fairly meaningful to me!
OK, so, the weekend just gone, the 17th-18th (although this started on the Friday/16th), I went out of city to visit my friend Craig, or as I call him, Sythe (sic), in Northampton, which was awesome ^^. He's come down to see me once, and, I probably should have written something about that... The fact that I'm not 100% I didn't says something for my recollection :o. Anyway, in short, Sythe's a friend met through common interests online, and all around fun, nice guy, and moderately crazy, but, that goes without saying XD.
Hehehe, I used to go into insane trivial detail about these things, like when I visited Simi or Iesha, which, I really need to do again sometime; I think it was just an effect of enthusiasm. Not saying I'm not enthusiastic about this :D, I think I'm just a bit more aware of how one person's enthusiasm can be another person's nausea XD, so, I'll try to keep this a bit more concise than in the past 8).
OK, well, to begin, I have an early start on Friday; I know plenty of people have it worse, but I still think getting up at 7am sucks XD. It didn't help that I only got to bed about 3am the previous night, so I got all of 4 hours sleep, trivial I know, but this time it's worth remembering. Anyway, fought my way through the waking up thing, made it to university, managed to do the work in lesson, which isn't that hard, but still, I was proud 8). Next was a lecture, and here's where a number game comes in. My first lesson is 9-11am, on a Friday (and Monday, seriously, that's evil), so it was give or take, now 11am. I was supposed to meet my friend at 3pm at the train station in Northampton, and from what I gathered, the journey between cities wouldn't take much more than an hour maybe, plus half an hour perhaps getting to said train on the underground, so, we're looking at an outside maximum of 2 hours. So, the odds were I'd arrive if I set off now, somewhere coming up to 1pm. Now I know what you're thinking, why in the world arrive 2 entire hours early? Well, the fact is I had to kill those 2 hours somewhere (and I hadn't brought my book, I don't know what I was thinking there), and while sitting in a train station for 2 hours with little but my imagination and MP3 to amuse me isn't the most enthralling way to do it, as far as I'm concerned, it beats and rapes the Hell out of spending them in a lecture at university any given day XD.
So with some help from my uni buddy Joe, who's a great guy by the way, and like me couldn't be bothered with our next lecture XD, I fast-tracked to Euston station, where a train was all but waiting for me, and I was off! Call me immature, but I still really enjoy just, intercity travel on trains, I could list reasons and speculations on why, but basically the end result is, I really enjoy it ^^, so there XP.
I missed my book on the train, but on the other hand caught up a bit on sleep I missed the night before, although paranoia about missing my stop meant not too much lounging XD. I arrived without incident, or actually sleeping mind, just chilling out, and got a, no, make that like 6 missed calls from Sythe, guess I'm just fun to talk to :3, hehe, but yeah, basically we double-checked things, and I sat down to wait give or take buying snacks, and had an unusually good time listening to my music, was just in the mood :D.
Happily enough, Sythe showed up a whole lot earlier expected, like, 30-45 minutes after I did, not 2 hours, which was neat XD. We talked and caught up and stuff, and headed to this place. Up until now my idea of what was going on was sketchy, at best XD, but I just chilled and had faith. One part I was pretty certain of was, was that we were going to the place we were now, which was like a gamer's haven, basically. Something in the area of 20 PCs, all networked, and juiced up on tasty multiplayer games, hehehe XD. We were early, but we signed up for a year (only £15 and hey, I hope to visit a few more times in that time period), and got in some gaming before the others, who I didn't know, arrived. Or, that was the plan, my computer-jinx, which had been fairly docile for some time, made a grand comeback, and I spent a good half an hour trying to log in, despite repeated interventions by the guy who was in charge. I even managed to disconnect Sythe after he had logged in, just by sitting near him, do not doubt my jinxing powers XD!
Heheh, got to talk to the guy some though, which was nice. He's like 8th or something in the country at a game that I managed to forget the name of, but it's like, RLY popular, hehehe, that's a good thing about these places, the people who run it are at least as much, if not even more so enthusiasts than their customers 8). Anyway, so finally I get logged in, and me and Sythe do a bit of this and that for an hour or two while in bits and pieces (figuratively speaking XD) the others arrived, and greetings were exchanged :D.
The next part is sort of tricky to describe. I finally got a solid idea of the scale of our gaming venture somewhere around here. The plan was, we were going to spend the night in there, and I mean, spend the night, we didn't intend to leave until 8am XD. If I were to explain in precise detail and order what happened next, it would defeat the loose, easy if somewhat unorganised atmosphere of the whole thing, so as a summary, we basically gamed and gamed, sometimes in a pretty large group, sometimes in smaller groups (on the disorganised front, it might have been a bit more fun still if we'd managed to keep playing together more, but who needs perfection XP?). About 10pm we stopped for pizza, which was ordered for us by the staff, they really know their stuff 8), and that was yummy, then back to gaming, where we played, and played, and played XD. Keep in mind how little sleep I'd last gotten, 4 hours, it's an important detail ;), hehe. I don't know how much this will mean to people, but to list what games I played while there, Battlefield 2 and Call Of Duty 2 were the most popular, with Counter Strike: Source also getting good time, and a little bit of Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake 4. To the uninitiated, those are all first-person shooter games, which is in a nutshell running around trying to shoot each other, or sometimes blow each other up, and occasionally in Battlefield 2, driving or flying things with intent to shoot and/or run over each other. Diverse, no XD? Hehehe, Dawn Of War also got played a fair amount, an RTS, good one, too 8).
Some highlights of the night for me were the fact that every game with the exception of Counter Strike was totally new to me, which meant new pleasures, hehehe XD. I faired differently in each game, Dawn Of War threw me some tricky angles, but at the end of the morning, I was actually holding my own and causing problems for other people 8). FPS-wise, Battlefield 2 confused me when it came to actual objectives, but in terms of enjoying myself, helping people on my team to do whatever the heck they were trying to at the time, and achieving a bunch of things that might have contributed to a greater scheme like killing people on the other team, and taking back strategic points, I did well XD. Special mention to me for being mental enough to kamikaze a plane I was piloting on more than one occasion, the best being when I headbutted a chopper full of enemy troops out of the air right over the carrier it was taking off from, so our mutual wreckage was littered all over it. The amused cries that I was insane certainly helped me enjoy my martyrdom XD. In Call Of Duty 2 I got owned a fair bit, but still managed to get in my fair share of ass-kicking, out quick-drawing skilled players, grenading people to death and getting some decent final rankings, although I was suffering more than causing it in others XD, COD2 is a slower FPS with more emphasis on tactics, positioning and accuracy, and I'm not as skilled at those as I am at the faster kind where things like reflexes, innovation and evasive moves are more important. Quake 4 is such a game, and in the 15-20 minutes we played, despite joining late, I ended up tied for the lead and had held it on more than one occasion 8). As for Unreal, um, I spent half of that trying to figure out what was going on, and since I seemed to do better at that more than anyone else, there wasn't anything too noteworthy pulled off, although I had some neat rocket duels, and the tank had a way cool laser XD. Counter Strike was plenty of fun, from team duels where things went similar to COD2, to us verses the AI, where we did everything from getting swarmed by expert bots, to fighting swarms of them when they only had knives, proper Resident Evil, that was, trying to fend off hordes of enemies trying to tear us apart at close range with our firearms XD. Dawn Of War was also pretty fun, at times a pain, but mostly fun, and at the end before we ran out of time, I actually was kicking a fair bit of ass, which felt nice to achieve XD.
We left about 8am, at which point I had been up roughly 25 hours. Catching a bus, we went out to one of the guy's houses; Ed was his name, although so was Gibson, and he was affectionately called Gib half the time (trivia: "Gib" is a term for the little pieces that are left when, usually in a shooting game, you not only kill someone, but blow them to bits; fitting, for a skilled gamer like him XD). It took like half an hour to walk to, but once there, where Ed had two dogs, which would during our stay be alternatingly cute/fun, or loud/annoying XD, we chilled out :). I had been asked to bring my Pokémon movies, which is an endless source of amusement to me XD, and we watched the first one when more people arrived, generally enjoying movies, games and music as more people I, think I didn't know until then, I was kinda out of it, showed up and basically spent the whole day having fun like that. Most of Sythe's friends are into weed, and smoked casually throughout the day, which didn't bother me. Drugs aren't my thing, but it's their choice, and I've no problem with it, nor do I feel the need to look down on t hem for it; like I said to one of them, we're all going to die some day, it's all well and good living healthily, but a life of perfect health lived with no meaningful experiences is wasted, in, my humble opinion that is XD. Later on someone else showed up, and the drug use went up a notch, if anyone knows what a "shotty" is, yeah, it was that, hehe, but they handled it pretty well, they were being silly, but we were all being silly without the aid of drugs, it was like, a party, or something like it, we were there to have fun, not brood XD. Anyways I guess it was down to being experienced at being high, on their part, or perhaps they moderated how much they took. Hehe, I told my dad about my weekend, but I don't think I said anything about the drug-use, I can imagine how he'd react, he'd get all, perturbed and stuff XD, like if I spend enough time around people doing things I'm not, my sense of self will eventually evaporate, and I'll just give in and, try it. I wasn't even offered anything the whole time, I was asked if I did weed but that was it, and even if I was, no offence to anyone who's done this in the past, but... I mean, come on, peer pressure my ass XD. Also, with help from Sythe I organised dinner, and turned scraps into a 5-man feast 8).
So yeah, basically playing games, listening to music, watching some movies, joking around and socializing, eating of course, and smoking weed, although not for me, basically we spent our whole time doing this, and it was really, really fun ^^. It was like, about as much fun as things can get, without just being ridiculously fun, you know that kind of fun where you feel like you just have to do something, or you'll explode XD? It wasn't that good, but it was everything but, and heck, it was the first time, so no complaints :D.
Anyway, I finally went to bed somewhere after 1am, and since I had gotten up somewhere after 7am, the question which 42 is the answer to is, how many hours I stayed awake straight, not bad, huh XD? Heheh, and not to brag, but I had only had 4 hour's sleep before that, and I mainly went cus, although I was damn beat, I could have lasted longer, but I had to be up sometime that day, the day being Sunday now, to catch a bus on time, to catch a train on time, to get home at some semi-reasonable time XD. Gib let me sleep on his bed, complete with Power Ranger covers (people were smoking weed and watching Pokémon, don't forget XD), and damn that felt good. As it was though I got up like 10 hours later, and everyone but Sythe and Gib had left, so we chilled a bit more, played a little PC, a little Gears Of War on Xbox 360 (pretty fun, if a little annoying at times when the cover system won't obey), and, oh, oh yeah, and shared videos on YouTube, good times XD. About 4 I left with Sythe, and long story short, got home about 10 XD.
I have since been doing a healthy quantity of sleeping, after that forced-insomnia binge, and reports from Sythe are that they loved me, I am a "legend" (quoted), and they want me back as soon as possible ^^. Heheh, it's a shame I can't use some kind of emote, like a graphical one, cus, that's flattering, I know it's hardly, the biggest deal ever, or anything, but, truthfully, it means a lot to me ^^.
Hehehe, anyway, to anyone who reads, there you have it. Again, not the biggest deal ever, but, a fairly special event, for me, like :D.