Saturday Mecca

Arcade and Lunch at the Mecca

Today was the actual arcade-visiting part of Mecca. I met everyone at SVGL (though not before going the wrong by second-guessing my memory of its location). I played two rounds of DDR Extreme -- 5 songs for $1, instead of 3 for $1 on the Supernova. I've played maybe once or twice in the past year, so I'm nowhere near as good as I once was. Even so, by the end of my second set I got back up to doing 7-footers (my comfort level when I was actively DDRing).

We eventually got tired of SVGL. Another Golfland in the area is MGL, which most of the group wanted to hit up as well. We decided to get lunch at a Red Robin in between SVGL and MGL. Highlights of the Mecca lunch:

• Waffles ordered a chicken teriyaki burger medium-rare. The waitress had to explain that the chicken teriyaki burger was in fact made of chicken, not beef, and so they couldn't prepare it undercooked for him. He defended himself by claiming the "burger" in the menu item's name overrode the "chicken" part, so he was expecting beef despite the name. Sure, Waffles, we believe you. ;)

• Forrest was telling me that Robert hadn't played WoW in over a year. (The year before that, he had failed a class because he couldn't stop playing WoW.) To confirm his statement, Forrest asked Robert, "You've been clean for a year now, right?" Robert immediately responded, "Yeah, I haven't played WoW for a year." I laughed that he knew exactly what Forrest was referring to. Robert explained, "Forrest and I had been talking about it a couple days ago. And it's the only thing I haven't done in a year." At which point we had no choice but to burst out laughing.

• Bottomless steak fries! Stolen from Forrest, of course.

Eating often makes me sleepy; since I didn't feel like going out to MGL anyway, I drove myself hope and took a nap.

Dropping By My Mom and Sister

I had talked to my mom on the phone earlier, and she and Thing 1 happened to be in Los Altos at Full Thread Ahead to attend the Yarn Harlot's book-signing. When I woke up from my nap, I headed over there to visit with them while they waited in line (for hours!).

My mom had just finished the custom bra she'd been making for me (with instructions from a local teacher and Beverly Johnson's book). She brought it with her to Los Altos so I could try it on (in the bathroom, hehe). It being the first fitting, there were of course some minor tweaks needed. Unfortunately, the local teacher won't have time for another appointment until after I leave for SLO. Grr.

While waiting around in the book-signing line, we chit-chatted with the woman in front of us. We first noticed her because she was wearing a pirate sweatshirt. (As you know, Bob, my mom's online personal is Pirate.) We got to chatting with the woman, who turned out to be wearing a "natural 20" shirt underneath her pirate sweatshirt.

When I complimented her on the shirt, too, she deduced that I must be a fellow gamer (of sorts, anyway). She dug through her bag and handed me a square decal with a white triangle on it. She said her friensd had printed up about 1,000 of these; they were meant to be "calling cards" for gamers, creating a "Go Play" secret society of gamers. I thought she and her friends were just being overly optimistic nerds... but then I just googled for it, and it turns out there's a Go Play site! (It does look pretty small-groupish, though. Also found a forum thread asking "What's with this Go-Play thing?" -- oh good lord, that thread's got 54 pages! Found the original creation thread, too.)

Anyway. So my sister finally got to the front of the line to get her two books signed. The Yarn Harlot (aka Stephanie) was very tired at this point and her hearing was none too good. She seemed to be having a great deal of trouble spelling my sister's name, even after we spelled it out twice. Stephanie said she'd initial the misspelling and correct it; she even misspelled her own name on the second book! And when we walked away and actually looked at the books, we realized what the problem had been. She'd thought my sister had said her name was Allison! At least has three letters in common... ;)

Categories: friends