LAN party this past weekend. Well, not technically a LAN party. This was a “warm-up” for one that’s overtaking my loft in two weeks. My partner’s co-workers will be the guests of honor, and they talked some smack, so we want to be ready for them. Pwn. One of my friends was ranked 1st in UT (original) CTF at one point, and the rest of us have had to make some pretty drastic improvements to even have a chance against him. We haven’t had a LAN party in months and we’re rusty, so a weekend-long practice spree was practically necessary.

As always, the UT 2004 was sublime. Sadly, we’re down to playing against adept bots, but if we marathon again over the coming weekend we might be able to step it back up. I didn’t get as much practice as I might have liked, but I was otherwise occupied. Those co-workers really could have picked a better time to question our manhood (well, metaphorically). It will be a lot of fun to kick down some arrogant geeks who will, without a doubt, underestimate me. Still, I sigh over the necessity of it all. I have things to do! On the bright side, I ended high, and was never last in the standings. I greatly enjoy having stopped before my illusion of superiority was destroyed.

Above, there, I mentioned that I was “otherwise occupied” and didn’t practice the entire weekend. To be fair, though, I wasn’t the only one. What could have been a crazy practice eventually devolved into terrified chaos. The reason? Well, a long-awaited and thoroughly mocked Doom3 came out and put the naysayers, myself included, in our place. As ridiculous as those little demon heads on spider legs look in screenshots, they do an applause-worthy job of scaring the bejeezus out of everyone when they’re actually coming for you. Understand, if you will, that I couldn’t get through the first half hour of Half-Life because I got too freaked out (I know. “Girl.” Say it, it’s ok.), so in lieu of tempting fate I watched over twitchy shoulders and chewed my fingernails off. The advances made in technology and overall gaming sadomasochism are really impressive. I’m glad I didn’t try playing… I might have suffered from sudden and irreversible heart conditions within a minute.

Jinx