Achievement Unlocked: New Apartment!

Hello, dear readers! I apologize for the three-week hiatus; the rumors of my internet have been greatly exaggerated. Remember my last post, where I declared myself off to apartment-hunt? Well. Turns out I am a professional apartment-hunter. I spent all day Wednesday researching like a mad grad student, and spent Thursday visiting a new apartment complex every hour on the hour. At 1 pm, I found my way to a place called The Links; by the end of the day, Randy and I had nabbed the last 2bd-2ba unit they had!

So one week of mad packing followed by a week of mad moving (half of which involved no internet access) finally ended and left me exhausted, drained, and in a GORGEOUSLY geeky apartment. We have a cactuar in the den, a gilt-framed map of Middle Earth in the bedroom, and the study is so swathed in geekiness that preppy kids burst into flames of confusion within twenty paces. We're quite proud.

Additionally, one of Bordwine's vanishing stoner roommates will be shuffling off the rental coil on Sunday, which means Vian and Tracy can start moving their junk the whole one block it takes to get them into the new place. Thus, our regularly scheduled geekiness should be back on track within a week or so!

In the meantime, to tide you over (and to make up for my absence!), here are my boys being dinosaurs.

I wish I could say this is an uncommon occurrence, but Bordwine's giddy raptor-dance occurs most any time he is within my apartment's walls ...

Later, readers!

Geeks Divided

Okay, dear readers, I come bearing some bummer-ish news. As of yesterday, the dream of the Geek Lair in its original inception finally died.

You have died.
Respawn?

We've done some house-hunting and some soul-searching lately, and finally reached a realization: due to financial and time constraints, we could not rent a house for the four of us without one of the two couples having to take a serious financial hit, and that wasn't fair to anyone. The Geek Lair, shining beacon of fandom that it was, had to fall.

But! It's not all bad news. With the couples pursuing their own housing options, Vian and Tracy are free to take over two open leases in Bordwine's house, sparing him a move, and Randy and I can find an apartment of our own. So now, rather than four geeks/one roof, it's gonna be five geeks/two separate roofs. And, although we won't be sharing living space, we'll still be around each other all the time; I see no need to quit blogging about the geekiness we get up to.

So fret not - the Geek Lair, while slightly different in concept, isn't going anywhere.

Additionally, I hope to be able to get some of the guys involved in blogging as well, to let them express themselves and (hopefully) contribute something useful to this blog. I'll have more details as they develop!

In the meantime, I'm off to hunt for an apartment. Wish me luck, readers!

Day in the Life: Best Birthday Ever?

So a while back, when I realized my birthday, April 19, fell on a Tuesday in 2011, I was kinda bummed. Not only was it going to be a weekday birthday - it was on a Tuesday. Nobody wants to celebrate in any real way on a mid-week basis. Additionally, my sole night class of the semester is Tuesday nights, so I knew rather than go out and spend time with friends, I'd be taking notes and clock-watching.

Thanks, Gabe.

Then I learned Portal 2's projected release date. And all was right with the world.

In case you guys haven't figured it out by now, I'm a bit of a Valve fangirl. The original Portal was my first foray into a Valve game and into Xbox360 gaming as a whole. Now I have a stuffed headcrab on my television, use L4D and L4D2 as stress-relief zombie-choppers, dressed up as the TF2 Scout for a con, and did my final project for a gaming and culture class on Half Life 2.

Portal may be one of the shortest and most self-contained of Valve's games, but thinking with portals has always hooked my interest and bent my brain in a totally unique way. I've been anticipating a sequel since the moment I liberated Chell from the guts of GLaDOS's chamber, nearly four years ago. I was so worried the release date might get moved (Valve time operating on something of a glacial scale and all), but Gabe was true to his word; thus, I spent the first minutes of being 24 filing into Gamestop, receipt in hand, ready to claim the copy Randy had reserved and paid off as a birthday gift (thanks, baby!).

I couldn't dive in as deeply as I wanted, seeing as I work this morning, but I managed to log a couple hours of gametime. Within 15 minutes, I was cracking up laughing, wide-eyed in amazement, and guilt-tripped so hard I might've become Catholic. GLaDOS's passive-aggressive hate has gone to staggering new levels, and I cannot wait to see what that mad construct throws at me next.

So, from the bottom of my heart: thank you, Valve, and thank you, Gabe. You guys gave me the perfect birthday gift. Now - let's discuss me seeing Half Life 3 by the time I'm 25, hmm?

Day in the Life: Whipped

So yesterday, I was awakened from a nap by a phone call from Tracy:

No, no, my geeks - not this.

Meg: *answering phone in sleepiest half-awake voice* "Hello?"
Tracy: "Hey Meg! Wanna help me with a class project?"
Meg: "Yeah, sure. What are we making?"
Tracy: "A cat'o'nine tails!"
Meg: "Ooh!"

THIS.

See, one of Tracy's classes this semester is stagecraft. And apparently, for this project, Tracy's making a stage-worthy cat'o'nine tails - essentially, for those of you less versed in S&M terminology, a big, knotted and braided nine-tailed whip. Nasty/naughty times, depending on what you've made it out of or braided into it.

So after some research (some of which I might NEVER scrub from my brain), we set out in search of whip-worthy materials. We debated the merits of a proper historical approach (rope, cotton cord, metal spikes, etc.), but finally decided none of them would show up properly onstage or be totally safe for actors' use. At last, we picked up a sizable bag of scrap leather that seemed like it might be suitable, and some keyrings to make it look metal-studded without being dangerous.

Coming soon to a medieval
fair near you.

We got home and I taught Tracy a basic braid; shortly thereafter, Bordwine showed up and completely one-upped me by braiding a perfect, professional herringbone braid out of our cheap leather. Turns out that Bordwine is uncommonly skilled with braids - better than me, even. Apparently having little sisters does that to you.

The finished product looked good - remarkably good, for an afternoon's work. Now Tracy and Bordwine are, quite seriously, discussing the prospect of refining, creating and selling cat'o'nine tails at the medieval fair next year. Be on the lookout for Sirrrrrr Tracy's Naughty Shop, next year at the Norman Medieval Fair.

-Meg, the Token Girl

Moving Sim-plified

Okay, so, is it bad if, in my free time, I'm considering loading up The Sims 3, constructing a rough model of the house we might be renting, and experimenting with furniture arrangements?

If you see me running around
with one of these overhead,
do not be alarmed.

Weird? A bit. Hear me out, though.

Moving into this house is going to be a bit unusual due to the odd amalgamation of possessions each of us is bringing to the table. Vian and Tracy have about half a household's worth of stuff; I have tons of decorations but, due to a pre-furnished apartment, no bed, desk, TV cabinet, or other minor (but vital!) furniture staples; Randy, who was in the Air Force this time last year, has a closet's worth of clothes, a bed and desk, and enough electronics to short-circuit a fuse box.

So on moving day, whenever that may ultimately be, it's going to be kind of like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without knowing for sure if we've got all the pieces or not. We may have enough furniture to fill every nook and cranny of the house; we may have some significantly missing elements - I'm already suspecting gaping holes where end tables should be. And re-arranging a house is a lot more challenging when it involves physically shuffling it all around, not a quick point-and-click. (Note: it has become clear that The Sims have given me hugely unrealistic expectations about this whole process.)

Consider it a microcosm sort of thing, a means to start figuring out what all else needs to be done/acquired before the day. Especially since I'm kind of stuck in house-hunting limbo right now, something like this might help me feel a bit more proactive about the process.

Or maybe I'm just letting the whole all-my-free-time-back thing go to my head. Either way. A little digital interior design might prove a supremely useful tool.

-Meg, the Token Girl

Day in the Life: INT Buff

So last night, Tracy's knowledge of Thundercats taglines proved an uncanny INT buff. Our friend Bordwine was chilling with us at Vian and Tracy's place, and had shown up with a bunch of fruit for smoothies. Smoothies-on-demand are an unexpected bonus of having a friend who works the produce section at Homeland.

In any event, Bordwine immediately set to flitting around the kitchen, paring strawberries and bananas like a pro, when he suddenly hit a snag. "Hey guys? Where the hell's the apple juice?"

A quick search of the kitchen proved, ironically, fruitless. Bordwine had somehow discorporated an entire 64 oz of apple juice within five minutes of arriving at Vian and Tracy's house. "Tracy!" Vian called. "Come help us look!"

Ho-ooooooh ...

Tracy, helpful individual that he is, came bounding into the kitchen, declaiming in his best resounding actor's voice, "Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight!"

Bordwine immediately found the juice.

I could not be more excited about having these guys as roommates.

-Meg, the Token Girl

Compromises

Okay readers, remember the house I said we were renting last week? Well, we're still only hypothetically renting this house ... the landlady has proven tricky to get in touch with. However, this has not stopped the boys and I from figuring out exactly how we plan to set up in this house: who gets what bedroom, what TV/console will be in what room, decorating schemes, etc.

The only real snag we've hit is in my boyfriend's computer set-up. Randy's custom-built, blue-LED'd, three-monitored beast of a rig takes up a lot of space and raises the temperature in the room by about ten degrees. And, since this house is 3-bd and not 4-bd, he and I don't have a formal office in which to install this marvel of modern engineering.

If Randy were to ever be unfaithful to me,
it would be with this device.

We've debated it endlessly - cram it into the living room? Put it in the breakfast nook instead of a table? We'd finally decided we would have to put it in our bedroom (with that blazing blue glow, I'd never sleep again), but yesterday I had a brainwave - the garage.

See, the house has a two-car garage, but only Randy really cares one way or the other about having a roof over his car. The rest of us have parked outside for years, and are okay with this trend. I proposed my new idea to the group, and surprisingly, Randy was 100% for it, as were Vian and Tracy.

So now, one stall of the garage will house Randy's car. The other will house his computer set-up, desk, chair, and all the anime wall scrolls he can hang. It solves the computer issue, will actually help with cooling his rig, and as a bonus, solves my problem of politely eschewing anime wall scrolls from our interior design scheme.

Compromise is tough, and with four of us in the same house it's going to become a facet of our daily lives. Fortunately, if this planning process is any indication, we'll be able to get by just fine. I hope.

-Meg, the Token Girl