Saturday

Why has LJ sucked so bad for the last couple of days?

Today I went out to my friend Doug's. We played games, mostly. We played Honor of the Samurai, with his brother and his girlfriend. That was fun. We played Magic: The Gathering. Sometimes fun, but mostly frustrating. We played a little Pente. I liked that. Listened to some music. Talked a little.

I'm not the best person to play games with. I enjoy good battles and close games. Wins are preferred, but not by that much. A long, drawn out loss is the worst. And even when I'm losing for ever and pull it out at the last second, that doesn't make me feel much better. And when I'm winning big, I feel like, what's the point? And I feel kind of bad for it. And then when things aren't going well for me I tend complain about it. Like say, "but I drew no vowels for three turns!" And I'm not in a good mood about it, so things aren't so fun for my opponent, either.

My motto is the only good loss is a quick loss. I tried online Scrabble. It didn't work out for me. It took forever. Cyn and I played for a week, before our game was lost. I spent half the week ahead and nervous, and half the week behind and upset. :-/ That's another thing. With a big game (like a long one, that therefore has a lot at stake) I get nervous when I'm winning. I'm like, can I really pull this off? Some games are more likely to do these things to me than others. Magic is one of the worst. Quick abstract games don't bother me that much.

Wreath

After it got warm a couple of weeks ago, my Christmas wreath started turning a little brown. Then last week it turned really brown. I guess I have to take it down now. Too bad, because it has been snowing again.

symphony

Since Cyn is out of town, I took my friend Steve to the symphony. I hadn't seen him in a while, so that was nice.

The program featured pieces by Glass, which was nice, and Mahler, which was excellent.

The audience featured some very noisy people. First, let me say that I am fairly tolerant of noisy people at the symphony. I would never shush someone who was whispering in the ear of the person next to them (which I've seen done). But someone talking in a merely low voice is too much. I glanced over at the guy, and he shut up. Then the girl started thumbing through her program. Noisily. (I think they were there as a requirement for a class.) After the break they moved elsewhere. Actually, quite a few people left. During the intermission, I noticed a guy who had a very small girl with him. Couldn't have been three years old. I thought that was rather brave of the guy to bring her. How could he keep her quiet? He couldn't. Even way down at the end of the row, I could hear her coughing and sniffing and talking and vocalizing and slapping and clapping. I don't know how the people around them put up with it. I would have said something to him or moved. Or both. After a while he moved to the end of another row. I saw her leaning down over the seat in front of her. Shortly thereafter, I heard a loud bang. She stood up into the railing. And it rattled the whole railing. It startled more than one person. And then she started crying. And he stayed right there. I thought it was pretty standard that you take a crying baby to the lobby. What a jerk. Fortunately, she fell asleep after that.