In the temple of love: Shine like thunder

[dorchadas]

I did not sleep well last night at all. I picked up just a little bit of con crud from CONvergence, the kind that doesn't bother me when I'm awake but which kicks into high gear when I lie down and get ready to sleep. That's meant that I haven't gotten a lot of sleep lately, but it was particularly bad last night. I put on a Headspace sleep meditation, all of which are forty-five minutes long, and either I woke up right after it ended or I lay in bed trying to fall asleep after it ran out, because I distinctly remember being surprised by the sudden silence. And I woke up again during the night. Sigh.


I wasn't feeling well on Friday either and I hadn't had a lot of time to myself, so while I was originally thinking of either attending Shabbat on the Lake or going to services at Mishkan, and I waffled on it for hours before eventually deciding to light the candles at home and have a quiet evening in. It was the first quiet evening I've had at home since the Monday before last, and while I'm far more social than I used to, I still need those moments. So it's good that I got one.

Saturday, I had most of the day free because mutantur had cancelled our board game meetup, so instead lisekatevans came over for lunch and I made us Japanese breakfast. She had spent the morning at the funeral of a child who had lived in her condo building, fallen off the bed one night, hit their head, and never woken up. She didn't really know the family other than seeing them around, but what an unimaginable tragedy. We chatted for a bit before she had to leave to go do a Rocky training session at the Museum of Science and Industry stairs in preparation for her Grand Canyon trip, and I lounged around until it was time to leave to go out to the suburbs for a party.

The trip out took a while, since the Red Line was running very slowly due to someone being stabbed to death in Chinatown and, when I switched to the Brown Line, I got onto a train with no working aircon. 🥵 But eventually I made it out to RogueNire's sexy Nintendo character (Ninten-HO, if you will, and she did) birthday party.

No pictures for obvious reasons, but I went as a variant of Rehydrated Ganondorf inspired by the River City Girls trailer that I called "School delinquent rehydrated Ganondorf. RogueNire beat me in obscurity, though--she was the moray eel from Mario 64's Jolly Roger Bay level. Specifically the "Can the Eel Come Out to Play?" mission, because she also had a star attached to her butt. . Next-most-obscure was probably zbrund, who went as Geno from Super Mario RPG. Everyone else went as sexy version of Sonic, Mario, Waluigi, Peach, Link, and Pikachu, and so on, and as always, there were a couple people with no costumes.

There was less gaming than I expected from the party invite, which suggested we all bring our Switches and other paraphernalia, but I did get to play Snow Bros. with smtemp for a few minutes. I always used to play that game with my sister--we might even have beaten it--and once smtemp realized it's basically Bubble Bobble she got the hang of it. Though we only got 19 levels in, I blame the booze. Or maybe it's that I haven't played it in twenty years and smtemp had never played it. I also watched a lot of scrolling through the ROMS in the bootlegged NES Mini attached to the living room TV, most of which seemed to be bootlegged games with no instructions, no clear course of action, and no reason anyone would want to play them.

There was a reprise of Nic Cage juice there, because someone had brought tamarind liqueur and put it among the liquor selection. It tasted much better than the Nic Cage juice combination of terrible vodka and pulped tamarind.

seloy did not bring any of the books she said she'd let me borrow, but we did have a long discussion about Jacqueline Carrey's Kushiel books, which I can summarize with her saying that the Kushiel books were great, the Imriel books were good, and I might not like the Moirin books (though I own them all, so I'm sure I'll read them eventually). And I got to hear the scoop on Shadowbringers from momomanlove before she fell asleep upstairs, and I gave mabown a complex by being a few inches taller than him and thus usurping his position as Tallest Friend. The party died down around 2 a.m. and I took a Lyft back into the city. Props to the Lyft driver for being willing to transport me despite my Rehydrated Ganondorf costume.

Sunday most of what I did in the morning was recover from the previous night, but I felt better after lunch so I played more Bloodstained and then in the evening came another dinner meetup with lisekatevans, worldbshiny, and meowtima at Galit! I made the reservations last month and it took this long to have a dinner spot open, but the benefit of that is that we could all make it!

It was delicious but incredibly filling. We settled on a la carte instead of the prix fixe menu (creatively called "The Other Menu") when a couple people mentioned that their wallets were a little light and, honestly, that's probably for the best--we got maybe half of the food available on the prix fixe menu and we were all stuffed by the end of it. Hummus, salatim, carrots with feta and hazelnut, falafel with "funky mango", river trout with labneh, shakshukah, and we finished it all off with flourless chocolate cake with rosewater cream and tahini dessert cream, all accompanied by a ton of puffy fresh-from-the-oven pita. I explained the party I had gone to and what happened at CONvergence (Nic Cage juice!) and worldbshiny told us about butterfly yoga in an attempt to make sure her mornings are more structured:

worldbshiny: "I'm always on time to the second thing I have to do in a day."

We spent a chunk of the evening talking about the worst funeral home director ever (YouTube video, LA Times article) after meowtima told us that he had been watching the video and that it was worse than we could imagine--which is true, I never would have imagined a squad of bully-boys called "the boys" that might have tried to have rival funeral directors murdered. And meowtima had his own personal good news to celebrate too, so it was an extra-special dinner.

After dinner lisekatevans left to go to a comedy show with a theatre friend, but meowtima persuaded worldbshiny and me to join him at Jennivee's Bakery for even more dessert, so worldbshiny bought me a cupcake (I am now in dessert debt to her) and herself a cupcake, meowtima bought an ube cake slice, and we sat outside, watched the sunset, and told jokes and puns to each other. After an hour, when the last of the red had faded from the sky, we walked back to the L and went home.

It was a great weekend, but that plus CONvergence plus being sick is finally catching up with me. I feel pretty icky (that's the best way to describe it), and I've drunk my entire water bottle by 11:30 a.m. when it usually takes me until at least 2 p.m. Not sleeping well didn't help either, but I feel like I've had enough drinks and overeating for a bit. I'm making baked salmon with asparagus and rice tonight, with cucumbers and hummus on the side, and I have goat cheese and spinach ravioli for later in the week. I'm going to clean my apartment today, and do my laundry, and try to get back onto an even keel. I might go to the Neo Reunion at the Metro this weekend, but dancing is healthy! Which is also good, because I feel unhealthy to the point that it's affecting me now.

Looking forward to the week ahead!

Comments

[acoustic_sister]

Sucks that you're sick. :( I hope get well and that you sleep better! *hugs*

It's official: you are the gaming queen. I don't know anyone who does it as much as you do. :D

Switches seem really cool; my niece has one...I own her old 2DS, though....along with all her games, and so, with the ones I own, it's over 30 or so games. I have this feeling that you have more. ^___^ Also, most of her old cartridges have the color pink feature on the artwork, so that should say something. XD Oh, well, the five Pokemon games made up from ending up with Pinkie Pie and Rapunzel.

I used to play some N64 ROMs on one of my dead computers(now in some random trash dump). It never liked my computer, or any of them to tell the truth. I wasn't doing something right. Even my computer illiterate dad had to point out how the screen was flickering and that I should fix it. (I always had to "fix" his computer from nothing wrong with it) -__-

[dorchadas]

And I don't even game that much anymore! It's taken me a month to play 23 hours of Bloodstained because I keep getting distracted by other stuff. Stuff like hanging out with people and going to conventions. Maybe "distracted" is the wrong word for it.

I actually don't have nearly that many Switch games! I do most of my gaming on PC. People talk about the Switch's portability as a huge selling point, and I get that, but if I'm away from my apartment I'm usually reading rather than playing games.

It never liked my computer, or any of them to tell the truth. I wasn't doing something right.

I had enough trouble with N64 emulators when I was playing through the Legend of Zelda games that I eventually gave up trying to get it to work and tracked down a copy of the Japanese Zelda Collector's Edition so I could get Majora's Mask to play on the GameCube. So I don't know if it's you, or if it was the emulator just not being that great.