So I’m back, after a ten-day vacation with a group of geeks. During that time, we hardly went out of the house, playing at least two RPG sessions a day. Between sessions, I cooked, while the guys “rested”, with a book, or in front of the TV. Which is to say, they turned into couch potatoes… 🙂
I was the producer for our PTA season, which was a great experience for me, and made me appreciate a little more all the different GMs I’ ve played with over the years. A heartfelt “thank you” to all of them and their hard work. 🙂
Now for a few war stories of my life in Geekdom… 🙂
We arrived there late at night, so we got into the house, assigned rooms, made the beds, and that was it for the day. The next day, after lunch, we decided to go to the local café and find out where we could buy some amenities, in the village. Note that we haven’t played a session yet.
As soon as we stepped outside the front door, my husband enthusiastic exclames, “Hexs!”. I looked at him, half worried that I had lost him to the geek side of life for good, reality having been turned into a mere nuisance. He smiles at me and points to the ground. I could have hit him when I saw the hexagonal tiles! 🙂
Then there was the trip to the supermarket. It started out OK, with me running around between ailes, getting what we needed and three geeks pushing a cart behind me, while they talked in two languages inaccessible to mere mortals: bitish (the language of bits and bytes) and gamish (the language of games, be it RPG, boardgames or computer games). That´s when I made a big mistake. We needed some things from the deli counter and I decided to save some time, so I left my husband at the counter to order some ham, while I got the rest of the things we needed from the aisles. I left them there with a tingling sense of dred, but I brushed the feeling off, as I walked away, having confidence in my hubby’s inteligence to make any decision needed. 🙂
A while later, that nagging feeling came back, as I watched him walk in my direction, with a self-satisfied grin on his face and a pack of ham in his hand. Sure enough, it was the wrong kind. According to him, he asked the lady at the counter exactly what I told him too. But then, she presented him with… options. So now, he had to choose. Unable to do so, he kept answering “I don’t know.” to every question she posed. Finally, the lady gave up and chose for herself, giving him the cheapest kind of ham, in an effort to keep him out of trouble with me. She succeeded, in a way. When he told me his tale, I couldn’t stop laughing, so he got away with it. 🙂
Before we headed out, one of the participants in the trip had asked me to hover around me in the kitchen, so that he could pick up some tricks. I agreed, a bit surprised that any of them would show any interest in anything as prosaic as cooking. And sure enough he did so… exactly once. He started asking me what I was doing, so I kept describing the different steps of preparing the dish, as I was doing them. Until I looked at him and saw the most utterly complete blank face I ever saw in a man. I would have kept going, nonetheless, but I couldn’t stop laughing. 🙂
I’ve got loads of other stories about this retreat, and I’ll keep writing them in the future. But for now, this post is already long. My husband said he would post an in-game account of the retreat, for those of you who would like to know more about it, so take a peek at his blog. If it isn’t there already, it will be soon.