Another day another update

It's been a really long time and a lot has happened.

After I busted my butt to write all those essays, and not to mention working when not applying to all of those grad schools, I just wanted to vegg out and decided to relax for a change.

Oh, it was so nice to not have responsibilities for a change. All I had to do was go to work. That left a lot of other time to do some mindless activities. So for the first time in three months I turned on the XBOX and played Forza Motorsport 3 and raced around in it. I must have done that for hours. While I'm racing in video game land my mind can wander and often does.

I feel like a huge weight just fell off my shoulders and I want to enjoy my carefree moment (however brief, because I know when the schools start responding to my requests I will be going back to school for a couple years and be very busy again, if I get accepted. So this may be the last good goof-off time I have for awhile.)

It was much needed after applying to grad school. I played other games, read some books and I even participated in some heavy-nerd activities!

One of my room mates has a girl friend, just recently she moved in with us (quartering the rent, wahoo!) and asked if I wanted to join them in a vampire/werewolf role playing table top game called the world of darkness. My initial reaction was negative, but deep below the surface of my psyche, my inner nerd stirred. I said maybe and slept on it. The next day a premise was posited to me from nowhere, insisting that because I had no obligations I could join them in the game, and if it wasn't fun it could be just the once. So I joined the game as a cage fighting, dumb tough guy that would, some how, transform into a werewolf at some time. We were playing humans first, and role playing the transformation for dramatic effect. (side note, vampires don't do anything for me; Werewolves on the other hand interest me quite a bit. I like the monster lurking beneath the surface idea, and prefer ferocious beast-type monsters to uppity, aristocratic, humanoids with pointy teeth and pale skin. However Bram Stoker's Dracula is a favorite story of mine, and the only book to scare me)

Anyway the role playing table top game was a lot of fun, but it reminded me of all the years I spent playing Dungeons and Dragons and others with my friends growing up. It made me very nostalgic because it was a favored weekend activity, and on several occasions it prevented my other friends from partaking in illegal activities like drug dealing. Role Playing Games satisfy some deep level of the psyche, something that can override desires to make money illegally, or go to parties or get drunk or a bunch of other things. Anyway, after the world of darkness game I started talking about Rifts, a futuristic role playing games with magic, robots, supernatural and stuff. They seemed interested so on a whim I offered to lead a game of Rifts for all of them to play in. They happily agreed and we played it the other night. It went pretty well, but it was all new to them so I had to lead them by the hand, so to speak and let them get a feel for the game mechanics. So now that that has been done, session # 2 will be a lot better, and after that it will be character driven.

Wow, what a nerdy outburst. I have to watch what my inner nerd says sometimes, he will talk forever, just to talk--which reminds me:

I saw some episodes of a show called Big Bang Theory about a bunch of nerd geniuses and a hot blond girl. I think it makes the obvious mistake with the stereotype about geniuses being unable to function socially, or with basic things like tying shoes and the like. I know plenty of brilliant people, some of them geniuses, and they are not socially awkward, quite the contrary, they are often speaking at huge public forums or writing formal papers. I realize that some people are awkward socially, and when they see girls and stuff, but the writers seem to go out of their way to make simple things complicated simply by inflating the language to chemistry or physics jargon. Sometimes it's cute, and sometimes it's annoying. Mainly because I understand and follow what they are saying in their complicated science talk.

That reminds me, I been watching a lot of the show Bones, and there are times when Bones will say something really complicated and Boothe doesn't understand what she says and says something like, "She, must have known him?" And Bones says, "Yeah, I just said that." I was watching it with some of my roommates friends, and it occurred to me that they are with Boothe and his inability to follow the science talk, and they have to wait for Boothe to 'translate' the science talk so they can understand it. I'm not trying to say I'm smart to brag or something, just observing that the two world perspectives we must have are vastly different.

Rambling now, time to go.