nlanza
3981
We got about 4" of snow overnight and it’s still coming down, so we took Ray out in the back yard to see his first snow:
It appears to have been a success:
Rimbo
3982
Snow? In Pittsburgh? Fack no, you joke me.
nlanza
3983
I know, it’s an almost-Christmas miracle.
Raife
3984
I need to get me one of those bear sleeper jumpsuit things.
No snow, really. A small dusting.
I really want it too.
So, last night, after the snow had basically ended (or was very light), I noticed a fire truck pulling up just down the street from us. It then honked its horn, as though announcing its presence to the neighborhood. So I call down to my wife, thinking something was up. She comes to the upstairs window, and we are looking when Santa steps out of the truck. He and a fireman then proceed to walk all the way down to the end of our cul-de-sac and then all the way back up to the truck. They then walked down the other dead end near us. Then they got back in the truck and drove away.
I have NO idea. Perhaps they were there in case kids wanted to run out and see Santa? I didn’t get any announcement. It was a bit odd, obviously. My wife posted it on facebook, only to have one of my coworkers report back that Santa was now in front of HER house, doing the same thing. So apparently they went around our village walking down the streets.
Santa had to prove that it was not a fire hazard to have reindeer on rooftops. I guess he needed to show examples.
Clearly, they’re casing the joint. Make sure the milk and cookies are laced with arsenic!
The best part? Those guys are on the clock!
Two interesting game-related experiences. I’ll spread them across two posts:
- I’ve been playing a particular on-line game regularly (probably too regularly) for several years. I was chatting tonight with another regular who I often play. We’re both ranked in the top 200 overall by the game’s ranking system, and he’s one of 35 people on my buddy list in the game (I wouldn’t say he’s a real on-line friend (or not), but a guy who’s often on-line and playing at the same time I am - we’ve played each other many times).
BTW, this game is most heavily played by Europeans - the community of regular top on-line U.S. players (who tend to play around the same time of night I mainly do) is fairly small, most of my frequent opponents are on that buddy list of 35.
Anyways, we’re chatting about the DC snowfall, I make a comment about snowfall in Charlottesville when I used to live there (somewhat close to DC), and from there, we deduce that we went to the same university (Charlottesville is a university town), over the same years, in the same sub-school in our later years (Commerce). I’ve got one more PM in to him to confirm the year (EDIT - CONFIRMED), but I think we were in the same first-year dorm (dorms were fairly small - about 150 students), though on different floors and different ends.
So playing an internet game mainly played by Europeans, I bump into an American who (if the years match * EDIT - I CONFIRMED - THEY DO) I lived ~300 feet from 22 years ago. FWIW, I didn’t really recognize his name or picture when I looked it up in a yearbook - he said he recognized me - we weren’t in the same circle back then, but our circles weren’t very far apart either.
===
Prior to this, perhaps my most interesting acquaintance in this game was a woman from Idaho who was a big baseball fan of the St. Louis Cardinals (I live in St. Louis County and am a big Cardinals fan). But she was not quite an ordinary fan - her brother is Clay Mortensen, who, at the time we discovered our mutual interest (last winter, IIRC), was a reasonably promising AAA pitching prospect for the Cardinals. It was neat to have a special interest in following Clay’s progress, especially when he was called up to the big-leagues mid-season. Unfortunately, he only made one appearance, which went poorly - he went back down to the minors, and a bit later was traded to Oakland as part of the Matt Holliday deal. Oh well. My distant connection to a real life Cardinals baseball player/prospect ™ fizzled, but it was entertaining…
- I made a very rare trip to a local mall on Saturday looking to pick up a Christmas present board game and maybe one or two other things. At the game store, there were a bunch of tables in the back for a game club/meetup. On one table, folks had set up the old game 1830, and were just getting started (had just drawn for position in the opening auction, I think). 1830 is an oldie but a goodie - I don’t think I’d played a face-to-face game of it in at least 15 years. I wormed my way into the game, and a planned 30-60 minutes at the mall turned into several hours of nostalgic boardgaming for me.
It was my first boardgaming in a club setting like that in a looooong time (many years), and I enjoyed it heartily. I’m pretty sure I’ve been on the e-mailing list for this group for some time but hadn’t been to any actual gaming get-togethers. I might make it a semi-regular habit, though. It was nice to experience face-to-face boardgaming with fellow game geeks. I think I was the youngest player in our 4 player 1830 game, and I’m 40…
Ticket to Ride online (PC/Mac version, not console version).
Nice weekend at the gun range. I missed winning the 3-gun match by hitting a single penalty target with my rifle. We do run n’ gun stages due to lack of space, and this was a target about a yard away. At that range, the bullet hasn’t had a chance to start its arc so the distance between the rifle bore and sight axis makes a huge difference, and I didn’t compensate enough. Hard lesson to learn.
The next day I took my little sister to the Steel Challenge event. Shooting steel is always more fun, but I forgot how challenging it was.
It was cold but we warmed up nicely in the sun by mid-morning. I would laugh at you snowed-in suckers, but I would like some snow for Christmas too!
You use a rifle to shoot at a target ~3 feet away? I would think that’s not terribly safe (and kinda weird in general). Then again, I’m no gun expert.
Houngan
3996
Paper, not solid. Minimum approved distance for steel targets is 10 yards, and that’s just for pistol.
h.
Definitely weird, but again we don’t have much room here on the east coast and the stages can be goofy. It was behind a barricade you had to lean around, so there was at least some challenge hitting it.
I got engaged this weekend. I think that’s pretty interesting.
Nothing fancy. Ring presented, question popped, teary nods yes, hot hot engagement sex. Pretty standard, really.
