I've been back in the US for about 7 months now. And I've been trying to stay busy.
The biggest news, I think, is that I've launched my game/experience design company and website. Since I'm not posting on this blog any longer, please do take a look at the website for new information (there's even a big of a blog over there too!) www.caseworkproductions.com
Casework is launching its first big, American based game on June 9th and 10th at Figment, an interactive arts festival in NYC. The festival is a free, family friendly festival that has invited over 200 artists to create and bring something to the festival. Tapestry, the game I've designed, is prepared to have 2,000 players. (The festival is expecting over 30,000 people this year.)
The game is a community oriented, story collecting project. It involves arts and crafts, talking to new people, and grateful sharing.
When I was 16 I volunteered at Teen-Link, a crisis line for teenagers to call into and get a listening ear or helpful resources. We dealt with calls about sexual assault, homelessness, and familial abuse. You know, light and airy topics. It was tough and draining work, but also incredibly satisfying. I bring this up because when I was applying for the position and going through the extensive interview process I remember answering the question, "Why do you want to work here?" I thought for a moment and then said, "Well. I just really like hearing people's stories."
The stories that come out of Tapestry are nowhere near as heavy as some of the stories that I heard while volunteering at Teen Link. But some of them have a similar quality to them, "here- I don't know you, but you've just asked me for a story about love (or adventure or food or whatever), let me give you this honest little bit of myself."
The privilege and honor that I felt when entrusted with people's stories at Teen-Link is the same thing I feel when a profound story shows up in Tapestry. Sure, a lot of the stories are silly or throwaway, but some are heart breaking, and some make you light up, and some can only be responded to with a belly deep, "awwww"
So. That's Tapestry. And I'm raising money to fund the project (materials, transportation, snacks and water for my volunteer crew) through Kickstarter. If you'd like to be involved (and I'd love it if you were!) please follow the link and pledge whatever you feel willing and able to. Even $5 helps! Thank you so much.
If you're in the Seattle area this Sunday (the 3rd) please stop by and play! At 1:30, I'll be running Tapestry in the field next to Wedgwood Presbyterian Church at 35th and 80th NE
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Friday, June 1, 2012
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Schooner or Later
On Thursday evening there was the last Sandpit of the year. The Haberdashery (sometimes formerly known as 'Casework,' formerly known as 'Capricious,' sometimes referred to as 'La Louche'), our new game design collective, ran 'Schooner or Later' (formerly 'The East India Company Game') again and it went really well.
Next time we're hoping for fewer name changes.
Do you remember how the game works?
Let me remind you: It's a trading game based on the East India Company. Everyone has to give up their bags as collateral and in exchange are given the rental of a company boat (their hands, cupped together. We take their bags so that they don't have more carrying capacity.)
There are three countries involved in this particular trade triangle: India, China, and Great Britain.
Britain will buy most things at a very good price, but due to the trade monopoly agreement it has with the EIC, if you trade there you have to take British made goods with you- a whole heap of wool (cotton balls!). No one will buy the wool, but sometimes India and China can be persuaded to take some for a fee. Mostly it just fills up your boat.
India sells pepper (pepper corns!), and also grows opium. (balloons! hard to hide! easy to pop!)
China sells tea (tea bags) and will, angrily, accept opium. As a reward for getting the opium (un-popped balloon with your name on it) into China and helping to disrupt the economy and therefore drive down the price of tea, the EIC will give you a £200 bonus at the end of the game for each load of opium you smuggle into China.
Smugglers need to be wary of the roving coast guards, but above board traders have nothing to fear. All of this takes place in as wide and varied a playing area as we can manage to get. In this case? Most of the ground floor of the National Maritime Museum.
We had about 35 people playing and some of them made trade agreements with each other and convoys and official distraction people while others did the opium running. It was kind of great. One man in a tricornered hat (the whole evening was shipping themed) decided to collect the cotton wool balls and place them in his hat. I decided he was a floating "America" and secretly hoped he would start making crafts out of them to re-sell to England.
At one point, due to a mis-calculation by one of our port representatives, for £50 one of our players was sold *all the tea in China*
Excellent. Also, that's a ridiculous price.
Figuring out what to use for currency in the game was a challenge since last time a limiting factor was that there simply wasn't enough money. Turns out that plastic coins were prohibitively expensive in the quantities we needed, so the cheapest option (we weren't allowed to use food, so spray painted beans were out of the question) was pennies.
Do you know how heavy 2,000 pennies are? REALLY, REALLY HEAVY.
Fortunately Josh took them home. They're no longer my problem.
(ps. Do you know how weirdly bank tellers will look at you when you ask for £20 in pennies?? £13 cleared out one bank's supply, so I actually had to go to two different banks to get it all. "Do you want some 2p coins?" Nope.)
(pps. Josh is threatening not to let me name games any more since the two the The Haberdashery put on at the NNM were named "Schooner or Later" and "Unlimited Port-ential" and that was 90% my fault.)
Next time we're hoping for fewer name changes.
Do you remember how the game works?
Let me remind you: It's a trading game based on the East India Company. Everyone has to give up their bags as collateral and in exchange are given the rental of a company boat (their hands, cupped together. We take their bags so that they don't have more carrying capacity.)
There are three countries involved in this particular trade triangle: India, China, and Great Britain.
Britain will buy most things at a very good price, but due to the trade monopoly agreement it has with the EIC, if you trade there you have to take British made goods with you- a whole heap of wool (cotton balls!). No one will buy the wool, but sometimes India and China can be persuaded to take some for a fee. Mostly it just fills up your boat.
India sells pepper (pepper corns!), and also grows opium. (balloons! hard to hide! easy to pop!)
China sells tea (tea bags) and will, angrily, accept opium. As a reward for getting the opium (un-popped balloon with your name on it) into China and helping to disrupt the economy and therefore drive down the price of tea, the EIC will give you a £200 bonus at the end of the game for each load of opium you smuggle into China.
Smugglers need to be wary of the roving coast guards, but above board traders have nothing to fear. All of this takes place in as wide and varied a playing area as we can manage to get. In this case? Most of the ground floor of the National Maritime Museum.
We had about 35 people playing and some of them made trade agreements with each other and convoys and official distraction people while others did the opium running. It was kind of great. One man in a tricornered hat (the whole evening was shipping themed) decided to collect the cotton wool balls and place them in his hat. I decided he was a floating "America" and secretly hoped he would start making crafts out of them to re-sell to England.
At one point, due to a mis-calculation by one of our port representatives, for £50 one of our players was sold *all the tea in China*
Excellent. Also, that's a ridiculous price.
Figuring out what to use for currency in the game was a challenge since last time a limiting factor was that there simply wasn't enough money. Turns out that plastic coins were prohibitively expensive in the quantities we needed, so the cheapest option (we weren't allowed to use food, so spray painted beans were out of the question) was pennies.
Do you know how heavy 2,000 pennies are? REALLY, REALLY HEAVY.
Fortunately Josh took them home. They're no longer my problem.
(ps. Do you know how weirdly bank tellers will look at you when you ask for £20 in pennies?? £13 cleared out one bank's supply, so I actually had to go to two different banks to get it all. "Do you want some 2p coins?" Nope.)
(pps. Josh is threatening not to let me name games any more since the two the The Haberdashery put on at the NNM were named "Schooner or Later" and "Unlimited Port-ential" and that was 90% my fault.)
Friday, September 2, 2011
Things I do with my time.
I've been collecting suitcases of games recently.
That makes it sound like I am collecting ridiculous quantities of marbles or jacks or chess pieces or something like that. This is not at all what I mean.
What I mean is that I have a suitcase full of The Fox Hunt (Hide & Seek), I have a suitcase full of Apocalypse Games (fire-hazard), and because at this point I've run out of wheely suitcases and a tank of helium is kind of hard to pack neatly in a bag: a pile of Baba Yaga (Casework).
Oh, and I totally forgot I also have a bag full of The East India Company Game (Capricious) which desperately needs a new title and is just in a tote bag so is easy to forget.
I spent yesterday working long into the night. (Must remember to never drink tea after 3pm. I can't handle my caffeine.) And while some of what I did was invite people to my events, get writing and emails done, sort out scheduling, have a meeting with some of my collaborators, etc. Another thing I did was cover my entire hallway in a cling film maze that blocked every single door to every single room (and the outside world) and inflate a single cow patterned helium balloon.
May every night be as eventful.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Fox. Pictures. Fox.
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| Map of the Magical Fox Territory |
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| Fox Parkour! |
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| Tom, our Fox Poo Man. |
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| A Young Fox With A Rules Sheet |
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| Fox Tail Construction |
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| Talking To The Magical Fox! Oooooh. |
I should mention that the lovely fox costumes in the parkour photo and the one of the girl holding the information sheet came from The Fox Project, a charity devoted to helping and rehabilitating foxes in the area. If you want to go check them out they can be found here.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Foxes, the game.
Most of Hide & Seek is up in Edinburgh right now for a big project for the fringe, but they've got a game on Saturday for the Hayward Gallery- so I've been brought in to run it. (I can't tell you how thrilled that makes me.) The game is for some unspecified number of families (or adults, but probably families) in the afternoon. I'm preparing for somewhere between 50 and 80 groups with the option to expand significantly if we need to.
The game is a sort of naturalist fox hunt. There is a fox who magically can turn into a human somewhere in the Southbank centre. We know what the boundaries of his territory are, but we're not quite sure where is earth (den) is. Can you help us? Foxes mark their territory with scent and faeces markers. They also mark important landmarks within their territory. Find some poo and dissect it, hopefully what they have been eating will give us some clues as to where they are currently. Oh, and his foot prints look like this...off you go.
Today I needed to pick up quite a lot of odds and ends for what has turned out to be rather a crafty game set up. It was great fun, and quite a lot like a treasure hunt looking for all the things I need. (still don't have fake flowers...will continue to hunt tomorrow.)
Something it would have been good to keep in mind:
Meters and Yards are quite significantly different. I now have three METERS of orangey brown fake fur...This is a ridiculous quantity.
At the end of the game when the earth has been found there will be a craft table with supplies for making fox tails to take home with you. It turns out that construction paper is difficult to find in London, particularly if you want only one specific colour and not a rainbow. So I was delighted when, after dejectedly finding absolutely nothing of use in the craft store, I went to the bookstore next door and found a bin filled with rolled up pieces of thick, brown packing paper. Which is perfect for what I need. And totally unexpected. Also, they had sidewalk chalk. Best store ever. Also, what? You're a bookstore!
In addition to making fox tails, players will need to dissect the fox poo that they find. (In order to discover what the fox has been eating to aid in locating them....this totally makes sense. Go with it.) So that means that A) I had to make quite a lot of salt dough to be used as fox poo and B) I had to figure out how to make it brown.
You know what people don't seem to sell? Brown food colouring. So I bought, along with 5 kilos of flour and bunch of salt: cocoa powder, soy sauce, onion gravy granules, and instant coffee. It's been exciting discovering what sorts of weird chemical reactions happen when you try to combine all of that together. So far the best in terms of colour has been cocoa powder mixed with a bit of oil and then kneaded into salt dough which has been made with coffee instead of water. It's a perfect colour, but unfortunately REALLY difficult to knead. Which I'm not particularly interested in considering how much of this I'm making. More experimentation proceeds apace.
My hands are currently covered in the lingering smells of soy sauce and cocoa powder with a just a slight hint of onion gravy.
It's gross.
The game is a sort of naturalist fox hunt. There is a fox who magically can turn into a human somewhere in the Southbank centre. We know what the boundaries of his territory are, but we're not quite sure where is earth (den) is. Can you help us? Foxes mark their territory with scent and faeces markers. They also mark important landmarks within their territory. Find some poo and dissect it, hopefully what they have been eating will give us some clues as to where they are currently. Oh, and his foot prints look like this...off you go.
Today I needed to pick up quite a lot of odds and ends for what has turned out to be rather a crafty game set up. It was great fun, and quite a lot like a treasure hunt looking for all the things I need. (still don't have fake flowers...will continue to hunt tomorrow.)
Something it would have been good to keep in mind:
Meters and Yards are quite significantly different. I now have three METERS of orangey brown fake fur...This is a ridiculous quantity.
At the end of the game when the earth has been found there will be a craft table with supplies for making fox tails to take home with you. It turns out that construction paper is difficult to find in London, particularly if you want only one specific colour and not a rainbow. So I was delighted when, after dejectedly finding absolutely nothing of use in the craft store, I went to the bookstore next door and found a bin filled with rolled up pieces of thick, brown packing paper. Which is perfect for what I need. And totally unexpected. Also, they had sidewalk chalk. Best store ever. Also, what? You're a bookstore!
In addition to making fox tails, players will need to dissect the fox poo that they find. (In order to discover what the fox has been eating to aid in locating them....this totally makes sense. Go with it.) So that means that A) I had to make quite a lot of salt dough to be used as fox poo and B) I had to figure out how to make it brown.
You know what people don't seem to sell? Brown food colouring. So I bought, along with 5 kilos of flour and bunch of salt: cocoa powder, soy sauce, onion gravy granules, and instant coffee. It's been exciting discovering what sorts of weird chemical reactions happen when you try to combine all of that together. So far the best in terms of colour has been cocoa powder mixed with a bit of oil and then kneaded into salt dough which has been made with coffee instead of water. It's a perfect colour, but unfortunately REALLY difficult to knead. Which I'm not particularly interested in considering how much of this I'm making. More experimentation proceeds apace.
My hands are currently covered in the lingering smells of soy sauce and cocoa powder with a just a slight hint of onion gravy.
It's gross.
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| Best Shopping Trip Ever |
Friday, July 8, 2011
Birthday Week!: Grammy Edition
This week is birthday week, where about 50% of my family officially gets older. My grandmother Ruthe is the only one to have her birthday on a day that is not divisible by 3. Forewarning: I am *exhausted* and likely to be rambly....here goes!
Have I told you about the theatre project I'm doing? It's a site specific devised theatre piece/game for the opening festival of a new youth arts venue near Finsbury Park. We're working with a bunch of teenagers from the neighboring estate. It's a fun project in a lot of ways, but particularly exciting for me because I am listed in all the programmes and flyers as a game designer. Or games consultant, or something like that. It makes me feel hip and cool and like I seem like I know what I'm talking about.
Last month I went to Bristol for igFest (The Interesting Games Festival) it was pretty spectacular and involved a three hour long chase game through the centre of town on a Saturday night where you had to avoid getting eaten by zombies (or crashing into the truly remarkable number of becostumed hen and stag nights wandering the town and getting into fights).
The pièce de résistance was running away from zombies in an empty mall. I had an epic moment where I was climbing backwards up a down escalator in order to stay in once place because I needed to avoid the zombies milling around both the bottom and the top of the escalator. I eventually got caught about 20 meters away from the final safe zone, which was excellent because it meant that I got to have a face full of zombie makeup for the after party.
I also helped to run two games- one for fire-hazard and one for hide & seek. Fire-hazard's game involved having a map and codes stickered to the players' front and back. The players snuck around the city centre using their maps to find small, hidden stickers with codes to text in for points while avoiding guards who would text in the players chest plate codes to take away points. It is our most tech heavy game and it went off surprisingly well. We ran it twice; the first day I was a guard and the second day I bossed people around. (The pictures are of me bossing people around.) The running of the game mostly involves tracking the course of the game in order to recalibrate it half way through if needed, so I spent the 45 minutes or so that it was running after everyone had their stickers and their texts all set up hunkered down in the corner of an alleyway that led to a lovely covered market, staring at the computer and clicking "refresh." I think I prefer the bossing people around aspect.
Hide & Seek's game was about ceilidhs and involved dancing, trading ribbons, and running away from "Evil Morris Dancers." My role there was mostly to be bossy (yay!) and instruct people in how to weave between each other while doing the dance. It was a great deal of fun and also involved a pair of bemused musicians who remained reticent when asked whether this was the weirdest gig they'd ever done.
On the last day of the festival (I make it sound like this big thing, but it was just a weekend) there was a game designers brunch to discuss questions about what we do. Er, they do. I wanted to go, but wasn't sure if it was really something I was part of (Casey, you were there with TWO games companies. Shut up) but having crashed in my friend Holly's hotel room after the zombie game (I needed a shower and the person I was staying with was heavily pregnant and far away and it was very late and oh my gosh the water flowed pink from all of the fake blood/zombie makeup) she and I went to the brunch together.
At first I stayed quiet, listening carefully to other people. Then someone asked about fire-hazard and I wasn't sure if I should really answer the question or not because it isn't *my* company and I'm not 100% privy to Gwyn's plans for it. But blah blah blah by the end of the meeting I was yabbering away like a talkative macaw.
At some point recently Gwyn and I were planning/hanging out and recalled a rumor that Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken had a chapter about our friend Kevan, so we tried to get an ebook copy to see if we could find it, but that was kind of a pain and whatever system for reading ebooks that Gwyn had downloaded didn't have a search function so we were just randomly scrolling through the book. This was remarkably ineffectual in terms of finding Kevan, but did mean that I noticed a picture of a bunch of people jumping down some stairs,
"Hey, Gwyn?"
"Yeah?"
"Isn't that you over on the right?"
With two fire-hazard members now confirmed as being in the book; we decided that Gwyn would buy the book, send it to me, and I would mark it all up and then report back. The first three steps of that process happened...Sorry, Gwyn.
I've just noticed that on the last page I've written and underlined, "Superfly" which I think is a good shorthand for how I feel about this book. Some of the pages aren't underlined! I got chatty in the margins and circled a lot of things.
My friend Josh and I have teamed up to design some games for Hide & Seek's next 'sandpit' game testing session in a week's time. We've worked on about 5, only one of which is going to be used for this Sandpit, but hopefully more of them will see the light of day in August.
So the point: starting with the second day of Bristol and the brunch and developing through working with Josh and getting hired to be a game designer/consultant for the theatre project and continuing to work with both Holly and Gwyn...I'm starting to feel like this is something I can say I do.
Have I told you about the theatre project I'm doing? It's a site specific devised theatre piece/game for the opening festival of a new youth arts venue near Finsbury Park. We're working with a bunch of teenagers from the neighboring estate. It's a fun project in a lot of ways, but particularly exciting for me because I am listed in all the programmes and flyers as a game designer. Or games consultant, or something like that. It makes me feel hip and cool and like I seem like I know what I'm talking about.
Last month I went to Bristol for igFest (The Interesting Games Festival) it was pretty spectacular and involved a three hour long chase game through the centre of town on a Saturday night where you had to avoid getting eaten by zombies (or crashing into the truly remarkable number of becostumed hen and stag nights wandering the town and getting into fights).
The pièce de résistance was running away from zombies in an empty mall. I had an epic moment where I was climbing backwards up a down escalator in order to stay in once place because I needed to avoid the zombies milling around both the bottom and the top of the escalator. I eventually got caught about 20 meters away from the final safe zone, which was excellent because it meant that I got to have a face full of zombie makeup for the after party.
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| City Dash |
Hide & Seek's game was about ceilidhs and involved dancing, trading ribbons, and running away from "Evil Morris Dancers." My role there was mostly to be bossy (yay!) and instruct people in how to weave between each other while doing the dance. It was a great deal of fun and also involved a pair of bemused musicians who remained reticent when asked whether this was the weirdest gig they'd ever done.
On the last day of the festival (I make it sound like this big thing, but it was just a weekend) there was a game designers brunch to discuss questions about what we do. Er, they do. I wanted to go, but wasn't sure if it was really something I was part of (Casey, you were there with TWO games companies. Shut up) but having crashed in my friend Holly's hotel room after the zombie game (I needed a shower and the person I was staying with was heavily pregnant and far away and it was very late and oh my gosh the water flowed pink from all of the fake blood/zombie makeup) she and I went to the brunch together.
At first I stayed quiet, listening carefully to other people. Then someone asked about fire-hazard and I wasn't sure if I should really answer the question or not because it isn't *my* company and I'm not 100% privy to Gwyn's plans for it. But blah blah blah by the end of the meeting I was yabbering away like a talkative macaw.
At some point recently Gwyn and I were planning/hanging out and recalled a rumor that Jane McGonigal's book Reality is Broken had a chapter about our friend Kevan, so we tried to get an ebook copy to see if we could find it, but that was kind of a pain and whatever system for reading ebooks that Gwyn had downloaded didn't have a search function so we were just randomly scrolling through the book. This was remarkably ineffectual in terms of finding Kevan, but did mean that I noticed a picture of a bunch of people jumping down some stairs,
"Hey, Gwyn?"
"Yeah?"
"Isn't that you over on the right?"
With two fire-hazard members now confirmed as being in the book; we decided that Gwyn would buy the book, send it to me, and I would mark it all up and then report back. The first three steps of that process happened...Sorry, Gwyn.
I've just noticed that on the last page I've written and underlined, "Superfly" which I think is a good shorthand for how I feel about this book. Some of the pages aren't underlined! I got chatty in the margins and circled a lot of things.
My friend Josh and I have teamed up to design some games for Hide & Seek's next 'sandpit' game testing session in a week's time. We've worked on about 5, only one of which is going to be used for this Sandpit, but hopefully more of them will see the light of day in August.
So the point: starting with the second day of Bristol and the brunch and developing through working with Josh and getting hired to be a game designer/consultant for the theatre project and continuing to work with both Holly and Gwyn...I'm starting to feel like this is something I can say I do.
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| Bossing people with my hands full |
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| Bossing people with a ridiculous expression on my face |
Monday, December 13, 2010
Things To Catch Up On! (Again)
I've been neglecting you! I'm so sorry! Things have been happening!
Here, let me tell you about some of them:
1. *Ages* ago we had our second impro show! And it went really, really, really well! The group that we had this term managed to gel in an excellent sort of way that meant that for our show we were all on it and all managed to elevate everyone's performances.
It was particularly exciting for me because I had my first ever monologue. I got a comment after the show telling me that I had looked completely relaxed while I had been performing by myself. I thought about it and yes, I had been completely relaxed, but also? I've got something like 16 years worth of performance experience. Yeah, sure, it's music performance and not acting- but I don't get nervous or shaky while I'm on stage. (Afterwards? Yes. My whole body collapses and starts quivering as soon as the show is over...I think that's weird.)
Four of us ended up at the end of the show with perfect scores (and everyone else had been trailing us only very slightly- seriously, it was an amazing show) and so as a tie breaker the directors had us do impressions...Yeah. I'm not good at that. (I'm not actually good at acting- I only have one character and she is me.) So I turned to Alistair who was sat next to me and asked if he'd be willing to do an impression with me. Nick was up first with an excellent Gordon Brown, Guy was next with a dead on Tony Blair, and then Alistair and I followed as a pair of rocks...Alistair ended up going up against Nick's Gordon Brown for the championship due to his stronger commitment to the Rock-ness of his rock. Mine was undergoing a "gentle earthquake" due to the fact that I couldn't stop giggling....
Our group was so strong and so good together that we've decided to keep meeting outside of the classes to continue working together over the winter. We had our first meeting last week and it was excellent. Only 5 of us made it in the end, but the space we have to work in is awesome and seriously, I love that group of people.
2. The vegetable box continues to be like Christmas every week. This week we got Jerusalem artichokes which I think may be my new favourite root vegetable. Oooh, but parsnips...it's too tough. Don't make me decide.
3. I found a discarded branch from the bottom of a Christmas tree outside of a pub. I rescued it and now have it hanging on our living room wall complete with red ribbons and one lonely Santa Claus ornament. See? I decorated!
4. Christmas plans are continuing apace- I'll be up in Cumbria with Ella and her family for Christmas and then down/over to Newcastle/Durham with Nik for New Years. 50% of the train tickets have been purchased, which means that I'm *almost* on top of these plans. (So close.)
5. This weekend we have a new version of Heist with Fire-Hazard. Heist was my first Fire-Hazard game, so it's kind of exciting to be on the other side of it this time. Instead of a warehouse, for this run we have found an old Police Station that has been turned into artists studios. The cells are still there however, which should add a fun bit of....realism? Eh, fun obstacles to the whole thing. We've got a whole weekend worth of runs for it, I expect to be exhausted at the end.
Here, let me tell you about some of them:
1. *Ages* ago we had our second impro show! And it went really, really, really well! The group that we had this term managed to gel in an excellent sort of way that meant that for our show we were all on it and all managed to elevate everyone's performances.
It was particularly exciting for me because I had my first ever monologue. I got a comment after the show telling me that I had looked completely relaxed while I had been performing by myself. I thought about it and yes, I had been completely relaxed, but also? I've got something like 16 years worth of performance experience. Yeah, sure, it's music performance and not acting- but I don't get nervous or shaky while I'm on stage. (Afterwards? Yes. My whole body collapses and starts quivering as soon as the show is over...I think that's weird.)
Four of us ended up at the end of the show with perfect scores (and everyone else had been trailing us only very slightly- seriously, it was an amazing show) and so as a tie breaker the directors had us do impressions...Yeah. I'm not good at that. (I'm not actually good at acting- I only have one character and she is me.) So I turned to Alistair who was sat next to me and asked if he'd be willing to do an impression with me. Nick was up first with an excellent Gordon Brown, Guy was next with a dead on Tony Blair, and then Alistair and I followed as a pair of rocks...Alistair ended up going up against Nick's Gordon Brown for the championship due to his stronger commitment to the Rock-ness of his rock. Mine was undergoing a "gentle earthquake" due to the fact that I couldn't stop giggling....
Our group was so strong and so good together that we've decided to keep meeting outside of the classes to continue working together over the winter. We had our first meeting last week and it was excellent. Only 5 of us made it in the end, but the space we have to work in is awesome and seriously, I love that group of people.
2. The vegetable box continues to be like Christmas every week. This week we got Jerusalem artichokes which I think may be my new favourite root vegetable. Oooh, but parsnips...it's too tough. Don't make me decide.
3. I found a discarded branch from the bottom of a Christmas tree outside of a pub. I rescued it and now have it hanging on our living room wall complete with red ribbons and one lonely Santa Claus ornament. See? I decorated!
4. Christmas plans are continuing apace- I'll be up in Cumbria with Ella and her family for Christmas and then down/over to Newcastle/Durham with Nik for New Years. 50% of the train tickets have been purchased, which means that I'm *almost* on top of these plans. (So close.)
5. This weekend we have a new version of Heist with Fire-Hazard. Heist was my first Fire-Hazard game, so it's kind of exciting to be on the other side of it this time. Instead of a warehouse, for this run we have found an old Police Station that has been turned into artists studios. The cells are still there however, which should add a fun bit of....realism? Eh, fun obstacles to the whole thing. We've got a whole weekend worth of runs for it, I expect to be exhausted at the end.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Bouncy Castle Goodness or I need a new camera
I finally had my birthday party! It ended up being a joint birthday with my friends Lyn and Jon, and I would post pictures so you could see how cool it was...but none were taken. Sorry.
FORTUNATELY
I can still tell you all about it.
The party was sort of epic. We hired out two tunnels at T47 which is an indoor football (soccer) pitch underneath London Bridge Station. Fire-Hazard runs Survivor Sports there, which is how I knew about it. The neat thing about T47 is not only do they have space to let us run fun games, they also have a bouncy castle that they rent out. So in one tunnel we ran glow in the dark tag, dodge ball, red light/green light, and a game wherein you have 1 minute to throw as many glowing objects on to the other team's side as possible. In the other tunnel we had music, food, general chatting, and a massive bouncy castle.
I think about 28 people showed up. Everyone was really helpful (if a little confused when I made them all put on glow stick bracelets. Had I not explained that part before? Oops.) We ran a bunch of the games from Survivor Sports, though in a less focused way. We didn't run Riot Ball (a.k.a. indoor glow in the dark Circle Rules Football) because people were so wiped out from the bouncy castle. Instead we improved on Red light/green light/grandmother's footsteps/night stalker: usually it is played in a small area that is difficult to get as dark as the main pitch and with only half the group while the other half is tearing each other up in Riot Ball. This time we had the whole group playing at the very back of the pitch where it is the darkest. And because we couldn't find a laser that worked (in order to let people know they'd been seen moving) we used a flash light. So the combination of being periodically blinded by the flash light (torch, whatever) combined with the fact that if you were It the only thing you could see was an ever encroaching line of disembodied coloured lights, meant that the whole game was a lot creepier. In a good way.
In running these games I discovered that while I love talking to players after the fact, getting feedback, thinking about long term strategy for the organization, and the general planning-ness of game running- what I don't love is being the figure head/spear head/main leader. I can do it, but I tend to forget half the rules, ignore the back story, and fail to consistently referee. I'll get to know you as a player and improve the running of the games, but I don't want to be the head zombie unless I have to.
FORTUNATELY
I have friends who like ref-ing, so we were set. Then at the end we played a big game of pass the parcel which was nice to get everyone together. I think I had 8 different social groups represented and then with Lyn and Jon that bumped things up to about 11 different groups (if not more) and everyone got along! It was really lovely. We were only supposed to have the space until 9, but I left with a group to go get some supper just before 10 and the bouncy castle was still going strong and they hadn't kicked us out. Thanks, T47!
FORTUNATELY
I can still tell you all about it.
The party was sort of epic. We hired out two tunnels at T47 which is an indoor football (soccer) pitch underneath London Bridge Station. Fire-Hazard runs Survivor Sports there, which is how I knew about it. The neat thing about T47 is not only do they have space to let us run fun games, they also have a bouncy castle that they rent out. So in one tunnel we ran glow in the dark tag, dodge ball, red light/green light, and a game wherein you have 1 minute to throw as many glowing objects on to the other team's side as possible. In the other tunnel we had music, food, general chatting, and a massive bouncy castle.
I think about 28 people showed up. Everyone was really helpful (if a little confused when I made them all put on glow stick bracelets. Had I not explained that part before? Oops.) We ran a bunch of the games from Survivor Sports, though in a less focused way. We didn't run Riot Ball (a.k.a. indoor glow in the dark Circle Rules Football) because people were so wiped out from the bouncy castle. Instead we improved on Red light/green light/grandmother's footsteps/night stalker: usually it is played in a small area that is difficult to get as dark as the main pitch and with only half the group while the other half is tearing each other up in Riot Ball. This time we had the whole group playing at the very back of the pitch where it is the darkest. And because we couldn't find a laser that worked (in order to let people know they'd been seen moving) we used a flash light. So the combination of being periodically blinded by the flash light (torch, whatever) combined with the fact that if you were It the only thing you could see was an ever encroaching line of disembodied coloured lights, meant that the whole game was a lot creepier. In a good way.
In running these games I discovered that while I love talking to players after the fact, getting feedback, thinking about long term strategy for the organization, and the general planning-ness of game running- what I don't love is being the figure head/spear head/main leader. I can do it, but I tend to forget half the rules, ignore the back story, and fail to consistently referee. I'll get to know you as a player and improve the running of the games, but I don't want to be the head zombie unless I have to.
FORTUNATELY
I have friends who like ref-ing, so we were set. Then at the end we played a big game of pass the parcel which was nice to get everyone together. I think I had 8 different social groups represented and then with Lyn and Jon that bumped things up to about 11 different groups (if not more) and everyone got along! It was really lovely. We were only supposed to have the space until 9, but I left with a group to go get some supper just before 10 and the bouncy castle was still going strong and they hadn't kicked us out. Thanks, T47!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Games! Games! Games!
Oh Sandpit. I love you. For those of you who don't know, Sandpit is a monthly (more or less) event put on by an organization called Hide & Seek, and it is a testing ground for pervasive games. If you search for a definition of pervasive games on Wikipedia it redirects to location-based games which I'm not totally sure I agree with, but close enough. Point being, FUN! and PEOPLE MY AGE! and WHEEE! I love Sandpits because to me they feel like a networking event at a convention for interesting people doing interesting things. Case in point, on Wednesday I met this guy, who was getting spooked because so many people were recognizing him on the internet. I also had some great conversations with a pair of people who do satirical theatre events in North London, a tourist from LA who was stoked that he chose this time to come visit the ICA gallery (where this month's sandpit was based), and one of the people who run The Fun Fed. And those are just the *new* people I met, I'm already friendly with about, maybe 10%? of the folks who show up to these things.
So the way it is organized is that you show up and you are given a schedule and description of the games being played that night. Then you choose which one's you want to play and you go to the reception table thing and get stickers for 2 games. They've been having trouble at the last few events because there have been way too many people for the number of games planned. So this month they beefed up their offerings and overshot a little bit. This doesn't bother me because it meant that I ended up getting to play 5 games. Well, except that the last one was oversubscribed again (people were just showing up without having stickers) so we split the group in two and instead of playing I ended up leading the second group.
I remember what I played because I've still got the row of stickers attached to my T-shirt:
7:00-7:30: Fun Fed - outdoor games that basically boil down to "warm up activities for workshops" and/or "team building exercises." (My favourites.) There were only four of us who managed to get out there for the first time slot so that was lovely but then I had to leave early to get to...
7:30-8:00: Pavement Wars- one team was on lines and the other on cement squares. Each team had a "king" surrounded by the other team and though we could only move one person 2 spaces (lines or cement squares) each turn we had to get to reach the king and have the whole team hold hands at once.
8:30-9:00: Sangre Y Patatas- run by a guy who has developed this game as an iPhone app we were in a black box theatre with bells hung from the ceiling. Everyone had their eyes closed and whenever you bumped into someone you had to say "patatas" if you were a benign potato or "sangre" if you were the monster. Every time the potatoes bumped into the monster the potato died loudly and dramatically. (or quietly saying "oh, crap.") This was actually hilarious and amazing. Our group was so big that after the first free for all we were broken up into three mini sessions and timed to see which monster could get the potatoes out fastest.
9:00-9:30: Fun Fed- I went back again but this time there were more people and it was awesome.
10:00: Werewolf- this one is a tradition at Sandpit events. I gather that they keep trying to not do it but then get yelled at so they keep putting it on. It is "Mafia" but where the evil creatures are werewolves instead. At the planning meetings for Montreat in 2001/2002 we played this every night, so I'm familiar with it. Basically you get a group in a circle and give everyone a secret role- werewolf, villager, seer, or healer. Then each night (everyone puts their heads down) the werewolves decide who to kill, the healer decided who to save, and the seer gets to find out which players are werewolves. Then when everyone wakes up (opens eyes) they are told who was brutally eaten by werewolves and then get to start wildly accusing/defending the other players until they eventually decide on one person to lynch. (This game is rather violent, isn't it?) If the werewolves are convincing enough they can win, if the villagers are clever enough and figure it out- they win.
So that was the games. It was well good.
Monday, June 7, 2010
My feet are filthy
There has been a lovely stretch of gorgeous weather this week. Doubly nice as it has been half term this week so other people also had time off and there were activities going on. On Saturday I was down in Brockley with some of the fire-hazard folks to run games at the summer fete/festival they had going on. Perfect weather for a community festival. And for running around barefoot in the grass.
Fire-hazard's target audience is usually young professionals without kids who are looking for something unusual, active, and somewhat silly to do. The festival? Was filled with toddlers and adults who were just chilling out and listening to the music. Not a lot of adults looking to run around (did I mention it's been hot? It was hot) and many of the children were far too small to be involved either.
Giving it a go anyway, we set up an obstacle course with bits of rug, cones, a handy bench, and three big yoga balls. The idea was that you had to get through the course without touching the grass (it was lava you see), get to the inflatable sword at the end of the course, and then get back again all without being hit by the roving lava balls (yoga balls) or the rock giant (one of the team with an inflatable axe). It was pretty fun and we were having a good time with it.
Every once in a while we'd get a curious kid staring at us or starting to do the course and then I would try to corral the other children who kept stealing the yoga balls to roll them towards the runner. I think we only had three people who weren't from fire-hazard run the course.
There started to be some trouble with the yoga ball stealing children throwing the yoga balls too hard at passing strangers, so being the responsible adult that I am and the only member of the team that was not actively afraid of children I hollered at them all and made a big circle out of red cones and codified the game that they were already playing- which is to say "tag" where whoever was "it" was running away and you tried to hit them with the giant rubber balls so that you could be "it" next. No throwing, only rolling, and no going outside of the cones. Harumph.
We played that for quite a while (me and the kids; the rest of the fire-hazard team was refining the lava game) and then I was losing them and the balls again so we played something called "Manhunt" which is hide and seek and tag combined into one game. I made the other fire-hazard folks put up a boundary perimeter of cones that included a big area to run in and some trees for cover. Each of the kids got a neon yellow arm band and 10 seconds to run and hide. At which point I sauntered over to the one place that they actually could hide and managed to get three of them before they could run away. When you got tagged you gave up your yellow arm band and started running after the others. Last one with the arm band still on wins.
After that game ended we packed up and went off to enjoy the rest of the festival figuring that we had dispensed with our duty. It would help next time if we all had fire-hazard T-shirts and if there were some official looking signs. In spite of the announcement from the stage I think one of the big problems was that people couldn't tell if we were part of the festival or just a bunch of people having a silly looking picnic.
We played manhunt again with just the five of us later that afternoon. It was fun figuring out how to hide in a huge group of people and how to get away without running and freaking out the rest of the people innocently hanging out at the festival. (Most importantly- I won. Remember how everyone else is freaked out by kids? I found the highest concentration of children that I could and so spent most of the game making things out of pipe cleaners in the crafts tent and keeping an eye on where the rest of the players were out of the corner of my eye. They never even looked for me there.)
Monday, March 29, 2010
Late Night at the V&A
This Friday was a late night event at the V&A, which is cool enough in of itself, but what made this one SUPER DUPER special, is that it was run by the Sandpit folks and was full of games! How excellent is that?! Seriously, check out the line up.
Even more excellent was the fact that due to the large number of mailing lists I've put myself on to, I managed to get the opportunity to volunteer during the evening and ended up being one of the judges for a massive scavenger hunt. Oh, it was so. much. fun!
Even more excellent was the fact that due to the large number of mailing lists I've put myself on to, I managed to get the opportunity to volunteer during the evening and ended up being one of the judges for a massive scavenger hunt. Oh, it was so. much. fun!
Interestingly a lot of the things they had to do/find involved a camera- which wasn't a problem, because between digital cameras and pretty much every one's phone these days- every team had a number of cameras at their disposal.
My favourite tasks were the ones where the answers involved a performance: namely reciting an original limerick about the V&A, singing a song about balloons for at least 20 seconds (though that one got old because there is only so many times you can listen to "99 red balloons" get butchered before that gets really old), and do a line dance with at least three people.
Each time a team got an answer right they got a stamp on their sheet and a 1 meter long piece of ribbon to tie to their balloon. The first team to get 15 questions/items right (and therefore their balloon 15 meters in to the air= the same height as the museum) won.
The first round we weren't really sure what to do with the winners other than just cheer a lot for them. The second time round we judges decided to see how far they would let us go- namely, would they let us stamp the middle of their foreheads? (About halfway through the first game I had taken to stamping people's wrists when they gave me a particularly good answer or were disappointed that the game was already full and they couldn't play).
The answer: yes! And then the 2nd place winners let us stamp both cheeks! 3rd place was on the wrist and from then on out it was a bit of a free for all- "you got 15 meters! YAY! Where can I stamp you?!"
I had a marvelous time. Though the stamp on my hand took two days to wash off...sorry first place winners.
update: I just found this video of the evening. Gives you a taste of what it was like. Uncomfirmed estimates have the number of attendees that night at 5,500. Woah.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
More Games
I've been hanging out with the Fire-Hazard folks recently. The organization is run by a man named Gwyn and since I've been involved in a number of his games, seen him at other events, and been very vocal about my desire to help out- on Friday he asked if I wanted to be and extra helper for Survivor Sports- a set of glow in the dark games at a sports centre by London Bridge. Heck yes I did, so I threw on some tennis shoes and got myself down there were I proceeded to pop a number of glow sticks (oops) and hang black cloth over the entrance way to get rid of a bit more of the ambient light.
One of the things that Gwyn has been hoping for is some footage of Survivor Sports, because wouldn't a video of a bunch of people in the dark throwing glow sticks at each other look cool? It would. But unfortunately the video camera that we had available really, really didn't pick up any of the light from the glow sticks. I ended up taking about 10 minutes of footage over the course of the event and none of it looks like anything other than a blank, black screen with screaming and hollering on the audio track.
The whole night went very smoothly and afterward we managed to find a quiet pub on a Friday night. It was most impressive and we had a great time chatting and getting pysched up for Saturday which was when Gwyn and his team were running four sessions of Heist a game wherein 15 people try to break into a warehouse and steal six toolboxes without getting caught by the guards- you have to disable pressure sensors and motion sensors, pick locks, keep track of what has been taken and what hasn't, and get people out of the holding area when they get caught. It's way super fun.
In my team on Saturday I was in charge of DECEPTION which meant that I had to deliver a package, prop a door open, and keep the guards talking to me as long as possible so that there were fewer guards wandering around inside to catch the rest of my team. This job involved quite a lot of talking random nonsense which, for some reason, everyone on my team who had met me before (even if briefly at a previous game) thought I would be good at...
Other roles included LOCK PICKING, STRONG MAN (one of the boxes was very heavy), SOCIAL ENGINEERING (a lot of how we knew what to do next was done by text message- how high tech!), HACKING (there was computer that we had to get codes off of, I don't remember why.), and COMBAT (they had a nerf dart "stun gun" that would take out a guard for two minutes assuming it properly fired.)
Does this all sound ridiculous? It was, but oh so very much fun.
One of the things that Gwyn has been hoping for is some footage of Survivor Sports, because wouldn't a video of a bunch of people in the dark throwing glow sticks at each other look cool? It would. But unfortunately the video camera that we had available really, really didn't pick up any of the light from the glow sticks. I ended up taking about 10 minutes of footage over the course of the event and none of it looks like anything other than a blank, black screen with screaming and hollering on the audio track.
The whole night went very smoothly and afterward we managed to find a quiet pub on a Friday night. It was most impressive and we had a great time chatting and getting pysched up for Saturday which was when Gwyn and his team were running four sessions of Heist a game wherein 15 people try to break into a warehouse and steal six toolboxes without getting caught by the guards- you have to disable pressure sensors and motion sensors, pick locks, keep track of what has been taken and what hasn't, and get people out of the holding area when they get caught. It's way super fun.
In my team on Saturday I was in charge of DECEPTION which meant that I had to deliver a package, prop a door open, and keep the guards talking to me as long as possible so that there were fewer guards wandering around inside to catch the rest of my team. This job involved quite a lot of talking random nonsense which, for some reason, everyone on my team who had met me before (even if briefly at a previous game) thought I would be good at...
Other roles included LOCK PICKING, STRONG MAN (one of the boxes was very heavy), SOCIAL ENGINEERING (a lot of how we knew what to do next was done by text message- how high tech!), HACKING (there was computer that we had to get codes off of, I don't remember why.), and COMBAT (they had a nerf dart "stun gun" that would take out a guard for two minutes assuming it properly fired.)
Does this all sound ridiculous? It was, but oh so very much fun.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Bright Colors/Busy and Social
I have been SO busy recently. I don't think I've been at home for an evening in two weeks- though of course, going to Scotland helped with that...So I want to tell you about some of what I've been up to.
That being said, the real reason I decided to start blogging right now is because of the incredibly bright colors I happen to be wearing- red hoodie, pink yoga pants, and my delightfully warm rainbow patterned knit socks from Andy and Nancy. I think I may be a little bit blinding in this outfit.
Last night I went to the Science Museum for one of their late night events-this is the second one I have been to and this time the theme was "music" which was, as you may have guessed, right up my alley. In addition to having their regular exhibits open (and free from small children, so you get to play with all the toys too!) they also have all sorts of special events to do with their theme. My favorites from last night were the silent disco where everyone is given a pair of wireless headphones and you choose from two competing DJs, KaraUke, and kazoo making with clothes pins and rubber bands.
Silent disco is hilarious to walk by because you can't hear anything anyone is listening to because it is all through headphones and half the group is bopping around to a completely different beat than the other half. It's especially great when the two DJs have chosen music that encourages very different styles of movement- like reggae on one channel and a Ramones remix on the other.
KaraUke is karaoke with a ukulele backing band. It was ridiculous and *awesome.* I am going to go to some more of their gigs because...well, do I really need a reason? My life will not be complete until I have sung Eye of the Tiger with them.
On Monday Ella and I went to the South Bank Centre for Hide and Seek: Sandpit which is a "monthly" pervasive gaming testing ground. It's getting to the point where I've now been to enough events like this that I am recognizing a lot of people. Am I turning into a groupie a little? Yes. In addition to playing an intense version of "Mafia" I also ran into my friends Emma and Will whom I haven't seen in six months since they left on a train trip through Russia and the rest of Europe and then moved to Bristol. What were they doing in London? Clearly they showed up for the express purpose of catching up with me...
On Tuesday I went to Gwen and Rob's friend's album launch which Rob was doing the sound for. Gwen and I also spent Tuesday afternoon talking to an accountant friend of hers about how to do taxes in the UK. He was incredibly generous with his time and we both feel both more relaxed about the whole tax situation and far more knowledgeable.
On Friday I took Meredith to a game run by Fire-Hazard called "Survivor Sports" which basically boils down to dodge ball in the dark with glow sticks. It was totally sweaty and fun.
Saturday was another Jezebel meet up followed by scrabble with Rob and Gwen. (I lost, not as badly as possible, but still. Gwen won. AND made cool words. Go Gwen!)
Sunday I went to the lamest Chinese New Year celebration ever with Linda, my tiny tykes co-worker. Man, they really needed a stage manager. The event was in Trafalgar square, and to be fair it had been raining, but really- don't have 5 minutes of down time followed by 15 minutes of random people painting the eyes of the dragon that no one in the audience can see, followed by really lame audience participation (clue- if the giant crowd isn't cheering for you and hasn't yet done so at all- don't heckle us. It doesn't create goodwill between the audience and you. It creates quite a lot of ill-will actually.) Linda and I were out in the rain for over an hour and they finally started doing a dragon dance for 2 minutes but cut that short to do another photo call, so we left. But we had a really nice time chatting! So it wasn't a total wash!
Sunday night we found out that Rob had finally gotten a job! So Gwen and Rob and I celebrated- which was bunches of fun. (Who finds out they've been hired on a Sunday? Isn't that weird?) We ended up at this delicious Belgian restaurant that I don't remember the name of. They had long, sort of communal tables, so we ended up talking to the guy next to us who is a buyer for some sort of knock off fashion house in America. He travels all the time and ended up buying us drinks because he felt so bad for us that eating at this restaurant was a treat rather than just a matter of course. He left his billfold on the table at one point and it was full of $100 bills. We were like "....right. Different world."
That being said, the real reason I decided to start blogging right now is because of the incredibly bright colors I happen to be wearing- red hoodie, pink yoga pants, and my delightfully warm rainbow patterned knit socks from Andy and Nancy. I think I may be a little bit blinding in this outfit.
Last night I went to the Science Museum for one of their late night events-this is the second one I have been to and this time the theme was "music" which was, as you may have guessed, right up my alley. In addition to having their regular exhibits open (and free from small children, so you get to play with all the toys too!) they also have all sorts of special events to do with their theme. My favorites from last night were the silent disco where everyone is given a pair of wireless headphones and you choose from two competing DJs, KaraUke, and kazoo making with clothes pins and rubber bands.
Silent disco is hilarious to walk by because you can't hear anything anyone is listening to because it is all through headphones and half the group is bopping around to a completely different beat than the other half. It's especially great when the two DJs have chosen music that encourages very different styles of movement- like reggae on one channel and a Ramones remix on the other.
KaraUke is karaoke with a ukulele backing band. It was ridiculous and *awesome.* I am going to go to some more of their gigs because...well, do I really need a reason? My life will not be complete until I have sung Eye of the Tiger with them.
On Monday Ella and I went to the South Bank Centre for Hide and Seek: Sandpit which is a "monthly" pervasive gaming testing ground. It's getting to the point where I've now been to enough events like this that I am recognizing a lot of people. Am I turning into a groupie a little? Yes. In addition to playing an intense version of "Mafia" I also ran into my friends Emma and Will whom I haven't seen in six months since they left on a train trip through Russia and the rest of Europe and then moved to Bristol. What were they doing in London? Clearly they showed up for the express purpose of catching up with me...
On Tuesday I went to Gwen and Rob's friend's album launch which Rob was doing the sound for. Gwen and I also spent Tuesday afternoon talking to an accountant friend of hers about how to do taxes in the UK. He was incredibly generous with his time and we both feel both more relaxed about the whole tax situation and far more knowledgeable.
On Friday I took Meredith to a game run by Fire-Hazard called "Survivor Sports" which basically boils down to dodge ball in the dark with glow sticks. It was totally sweaty and fun.
Saturday was another Jezebel meet up followed by scrabble with Rob and Gwen. (I lost, not as badly as possible, but still. Gwen won. AND made cool words. Go Gwen!)
Sunday I went to the lamest Chinese New Year celebration ever with Linda, my tiny tykes co-worker. Man, they really needed a stage manager. The event was in Trafalgar square, and to be fair it had been raining, but really- don't have 5 minutes of down time followed by 15 minutes of random people painting the eyes of the dragon that no one in the audience can see, followed by really lame audience participation (clue- if the giant crowd isn't cheering for you and hasn't yet done so at all- don't heckle us. It doesn't create goodwill between the audience and you. It creates quite a lot of ill-will actually.) Linda and I were out in the rain for over an hour and they finally started doing a dragon dance for 2 minutes but cut that short to do another photo call, so we left. But we had a really nice time chatting! So it wasn't a total wash!
Sunday night we found out that Rob had finally gotten a job! So Gwen and Rob and I celebrated- which was bunches of fun. (Who finds out they've been hired on a Sunday? Isn't that weird?) We ended up at this delicious Belgian restaurant that I don't remember the name of. They had long, sort of communal tables, so we ended up talking to the guy next to us who is a buyer for some sort of knock off fashion house in America. He travels all the time and ended up buying us drinks because he felt so bad for us that eating at this restaurant was a treat rather than just a matter of course. He left his billfold on the table at one point and it was full of $100 bills. We were like "....right. Different world."
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