My visa has been approved, my tickets are here, and I am leaving New Jersey early Friday morning, arriving in Yantai on Saturday night (Chinese time!). I just told my school’s headmistress what I look like so we can find each other at the airport.
My next post will be from China!
Modern Yarn, a shop in my lovely hometown, is hosting a knitters’ party this weekend. To make thongs. From licorice.
Stick just sent me a link to this MSN dating article, in which a girlfriend writes for advice on dealing with her computer game-addicted boy. In the spirit of Dear Abby’s Wastebasket, I’ve written a different answer.
Dear Tired,
Did you notice your boy’s fixation with videogames before shacking up? I mean, you must have dated him for at least a little while before moving in. Did he spend every waking moment playing City of Heroes or EverCrack then? You didn’t expect him to change because you moved in, did you?
Consider cultivating your own hobbies. What are you doing in the evenings while Boyfriend is slaying Defias Bandits? I mean besides sighing loudly and writing to Break Up Girl. You must have done something for fun before Boyfriend came along, try doing it again.
How about asking your boy to teach you to play too? MMORPGs are a fun way to bond with your boy. When you’re playing a multi-player game, you have to work as a team, solve problems together, deal with failure and share successes. So his gaming skills are pretty important relationship skills too. World of WarCraft and Guild Wars are very girl-friendly online games to get you started.
But if your boyfriend doesn’t realize that dinner time and plans with you come first, even though his teammates need a defender to get them through Perez Park, then he’s not a gamer, he’s a jerk.
Meg
Sidenote to Lynn Harris:
I thought BreakUpGirl was the coolest superhero and I was so sad when you stopped updating! But you really let me down when you suggested that those who play videogames aren’t mature enough for a real relationship.
Sidenote to Stick:
Why were you reading “my SO plays too many videogames” advice letters? Are you trying to tell me something?
Today is the first day of Chinese New Year. There is a tradition that whatever you do today, you will continue to do all year. So children aren’t scolded or spanked today, because if they cry, they will cry all year. You’re also not supposed to wash your hair or sweep today because you could be getting rid of your good fortune for the next year.
Today is also the day I left Massachusetts, and more importantly, Stick, to go to my parents’ house before leaving for China, so I wasn’t exactly partying like it’s 4704.
I found out that I make this weird noise when I cry, which sounds a little like something Squeaky does on turns. I have also developed a fixation on our last events, like some kind of crazed anti-memorybook. Our Last WarCraft Night. Our Last Diner Trip. I feel like one of the Sex and the City girls, destoying a perfectly fine night with my relationship neurosis, until Stick practically holds a filibuster on what to eat for Our Last Order-In And Play Computer Games Night.
I finally said goodbye to Stick and I drove to New Jersey, on my Last Trip in Squeaky, the two of us making the same noises.
This weekend Stick and I went to Steph and Jeff’s house for a boardgame sleepover. We played some party games like Taboo and led into more gamer-ish games like Betrayal At The House On The Hill. I usually think of Avalon Hill games as a bridge between family games like Life or Battleship and hardcore strategy games. There’s usually some strategy involved, but not so intense and complicated that you can’t chat and play at the same time.
Stick and I were the Cranium masters!!! If you haven’t played Cranium, you should definately check it out. Cranium is the Mensa love-child of Trivia Pursuit, charades, Pictionary and Scrabble, with simple rules and lots of ridiculous questions. Although Stick seemed to think we were playing full-contact charades, which was extra amusing when he tried to convey the concept of “missionary”. It is a testament to how well I was raised that I did NOT pick up on it.
I got a call from my employment agency in China today. On the plus side, they’ve done this a million times before and are totally confident. Unfortunately, I haven’t and I’m not. So he’s saying things like “Z-visa” and I’m thinking things like What if I can’t get flavored chapsticks in China? I wonder if my mom would ship them to me… Maybe there’s a Chinese Bonne Bell and they come in lychee and green tea flavors. It is this kind of maturity which makes me an excellent teacher candidate for any high school.
Stick, Hugo, Diana and I spent today recoving for last night and watching The Dark Crystal, which prompted Stick to come up with one of his greatest songs ever:
I’m too Skeski for this shard, too Skeski for this shard, too Skeski by far.
I think he is a genius. And now he’s redeemed himself for singing “Fat bottomed Megs, you make my rocking world go round” the other day.
And there’s a Dark Crystal Sequel in production!
My parents just got a new dog from a sheltie rescue place. He’s a little bizarre, he only walks in clockwise circles and he’s scared of almost everything. He came to us named Lucky, which my parents say they would never have picked. Although after my grandfather called his dog Kitty Kitty Kitty, and my mom called the turtle Dylan after a Janis Joplin song, I think my entire family should be banned from naming pets.
Anyway, when my folks had their Christmannukah-New Years party, one of my mom’s friends was petting the new dog and asked her, “So when did you get Lucky?”
My mom laughed and said “Last night!”
So I did what every mature adult daughter would do — I covered my ears and shouted “La la la la la! I can’t hear you!”
But thanks for not calling me Moon Unit, Mom.
On Christmas Eve, I got up and showered and went to the jewelry store with my semi-brother Scep to pick up an engagement ring! No, not for me, it’s a gorgeous ring, but not nice enough to make me put up with Scep forever. Actually, I probably will be putting up with him forever but not in the way poor Katie has to now. But I’m messing up my whole story.
Anyway, Scep called to say that he was going to the jewelry store and I have to get up and get ready right now to come with him! Scep’s engagement is on the short list of things which get me out of bed in a hurry so I said good morning and goodbye to my family and assorted exchange students who were having breakfast downstairs, and we set off.
Scep isn’t really my brother, but we’ve been friends for so long that I can barely remember when we weren’t. We’ve spent enough time at each other’s houses that we can correct any family trivia the comes up at dinner at either house, especially the stories that involve childhood injury or teenage embarrassment. (By the way, remind me to tell you about Scep’s first car accident, and the Mac which met a sad end). Over the years, Scep’s listened to a lot of boy-related drama from me, and I would totally return the favor for him, but then he met Katie and I didn’t have to.
On the way to the jewelry store, I extracted a promise that the wedding would not take place until I am back from China and tried to get a promise that I would not have to wear anything stupid or juggle or perform any ritual that would make me cringe at the pictures later. He said “that’s all up to Katie” which is probably boy-speak for “we’re getting married in Hawaii and you’re wearing a hula skirt.” Oh well. I suppose I owe it to them.
“Hi Mom! We got the ring! Can I borrow a Tupperware?” I shouted when we got back. My mom looked up, told us to help ourselves, and went back to decorating for Christmas. We turned the the clear plastic container into a fake geocache by filling it with old McDonald’s toys, colored birthday candles, little plastic charms you get from playing Skeeball, and The Ring. Geocaching is for Katie and Scep what Romans are for Stick and me, or roses and champagne are for a normal couple.
We took the fake geocache up to one of the hiking trails at the reservation and hid it in a fallen log. Scep punched the co-ordinates into his GPS, which I guess makes it a real geocache.
Then Scep dropped me off and went home to tell Katie that there was a new cache up at the reservation and since it’s so warm and uncrowded, they should do it today. Now, in fact!
I don’t really know what happened next, but later this afternoon Katie and Scep came over to show my family a certain piece of new jewelry and there was a lot of crying and hugging. There was so much going on that I couldn’t actually pin them to the no-hula-skirts promise.
Yesterday I was studying for my Latin final with Paula and Jared in the Davis Room. None of us had the foresight to print out the reveiw sheet from the class website, or remember the URL, so we googled our prof’s name.
It turns out that our Latin teacher shares her full name with an adult film star. Googling for her name, plus “classics” gave us a gallery of the specialty actress’ most-loved videos. Adding “Latin” didn’t exactly help either. Let’s just say she wasn’t tutoring all those guys in the uses of the subjunctive.
I won’t tell you which adult actress, not to protect my teacher’s identity or anything considerate like that, but because super-smart search engine robots are crawling this page right now. Posting about the hot coffee mod a few months ago increased my hits almost instantly. (I wonder if my text-related Google links are still PG?) I’m carefully avoiding typing a certain four-letter word, that starts with a P and rhymes with horn, in the hopes that my blog won’t be censored by the Chinese government.
Maybe I shouldn’t have typed that.
