February 4, 2001 — Drop

If you were to total up the hours I spent playing Risk, Backgammon, and pinball today, you'd stop being able to count on one hand and you'd realize that I really annhilated any chance of making something of my day. But that's not to say it was a total loss: I won both games of Risk, both games of Backgammon, and I got a replay in pinball. So if my existence were made up entirely of board games and pinball, today would most definitely have been the best day of my life. And then some. But alas, there are apparently other things to deal with, and having finished the final game of Risk only 40 minutes ago, I'm going to be up fairly late dealing with the real world.

And you thought yesterday was waste of time.

It all started out so innocently. Jeff had brought his Risk board to Toronto from Oshawa yesterday, but was without dice. So today at lunch, we decided that I'd head out and buy some dice at the local toy store. If I'd known that inflationary forces had increased the price of dice to $0.75 each, I may have thought twice about buying six of them, but it was too late by the time I'd consulted the sales staff, making me feel obligated to buy their high-class dice. (Instead of little dots for us to count, they number's actually punched on! Ooh!) $4.50 poorer, it was only a matter of waiting for Nathan and Johnston to return from the "Anarchist's Free Space" (which turned out to be a bunch of people smoking weed instead of the punk show they'd been hoping for) so that we could start our first game, as broadcast live over the nifty new webcam.

For those who didn't catch the show (or who couldn't tell the difference between the black and green pieces since there basically wasn't one according to the webcam), I managed to win the first game by sweeping through Africa and Europe, and the second by taking Australia and Asia first. There was much cursing of dice and of Jeff's random decisions to pick fights in whichever country looked like it would pose a solid challenge, but that had a glimmer of hope for his victory. In the end, I think I could last a few days without wanting to play Risk again. It's stolen too much of my life already.

In between Risk and Backgammon and pinball, I managed to mostly clean my half of the room (and yes, even a vaccuum was involved), to pay the phone bill (early this time; maybe that'll cancel out the late fee from last time?), and to send someone an MP3 that I'd promised him about three or four months ago. So I at least got some things done, but even they (with emphasis on the third one) make me feel like a bad person. So it still doesn't add up to a day that I'm all that proud of.

Under normal circumstances, I'd've just gone to bed and spared you this extremely tedious journal. But I'm trying to be consistent by posting one everyday, so I'll be damned if I can't find a journal worth of material out of Risk, the most frustrating combination of luck and strategy to ever grace the earth. And that I just noticed split infinitives in both of the last two paragraphs is an excellent sign that I should've just gone to bed. But can you spot them? Take the antigreg challenge... and so forth.