Holes In Thoughts

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Neuroses

I've come up with a new game, suitable for parties of all ages.

All you really need is a bulletin board or some other large writing surface. This is how it works:

A person, presumably the host of the party, creates a rule. Everyone takes turns making a rule every ten minutes or so. It can be most anything, but the idea of the game is to create a lot of little neuroses (rules) that everyone has to follow. If a person is seen breaking the rule, whoever caught them gets to shout, "busted!" (or similar), and assign that person a rule of their own.

I would encourage the rules to be very small, but noticeable behavioral tics such as not walking on cracks in tile, only eating unsplit peanuts, talking only when your hand is on your neck, touching an object when entering a room, and so on.

After a few hours of this, everyone will have about a dozen neuroses, and will be eyeing each other to try to catch someone else. Any rule that is excessively difficult, unfair, or otherwise unpopular can be undone by a majority vote.

Labels: games, party, random

posted by Steve @ 4:47 PM 0 comments

Friday, September 14, 2007

Parties & Progression into Perfection

Last weekend, Rachel and I hosted a party.

When we were in college, we had a house shared with a few other people and it really was the perfect party house: huge living room, a pool, decent kitchen, and a patio. We didn't have any money at all, so our preparations were always sparse, but people brought alcohol and we had cards and a stereo system.

As far as parties go, they were fun, but Rachel and I were never really big into drinking -- and she always cheats at cards.

Now we have an awesome little place of our own that's not unlike the place we used to have, expect of course that it's a one-bedroom instead of 3. Naturally, after an absurd amount of clean-up, we wanted to have a housewarming party.

We didn't quite finish cleaning, and I jumped the gun a bit probably since the party was scheduled a week before Rachel's vacation (she had to work the day after a party; that was my bad).

~-----~

We invited most of Bookman's and all our friends. We had few people come, though: Sami, her friend Camille, Nyssa (briefly), and Sean. Sean's friend Justin and his wife made a brief appearance in which we watched their wedding video - and Sean's best-man speech. It was very good and included this memorable line (paraphrased from memory):

"[Justin's parents] have nothing to worry about from this guy. He'll take good care of your daughter his whole life until he's dead. After that, I can't promise anything."

~-----~

I'm actually quite glad that the party was small. It was made more enjoyable, and fit our style. We had S'mores, even though the fire was a bit smoky. We played 2-on-2 basketball. Sami beat up Sean like a boxer. Sean was surprisingly nimble. Camille was a regular baller. I was much worse under pressure than I should've been, given all the practice I've had lately.

We played some video games - Rachel and Sami were playing a lot of Mortal Kombat, and we hardly touched the absurd amount of alcohol Sean and I split. I do however have a pretty awesome alcohol cabinet all of a sudden:

Blue Sapphire gin
1200 Silver Tequila
Bailey's Irish Cream
Kahlua coffee liquer
Captain Morgan dark rum
Bacardi light rum
Finlandia vodka
Triple Sec
Grenadine
Lime juice

~-----~

The party culminated in a pretty intense girls-versus-boys water gun fight. Thankfully Sean and I realized that the first place one should go when starting a water gun fight is the hose, and we fought off the girls' attacks in general. Eventually they (with 3-on-2 odds) managed to raid and wrestle control of the hose, and by the end it was a big, drippy mess.

It was awesome.

The survivors - Sean, Camille, Sami and I - went to Grill afterwards. It was certainly memorable, and I'm hoping to throw that kind of celebration more often.

Labels: friends, house, party

posted by Steve @ 10:26 AM 0 comments

Friday, August 10, 2007

No, really, next week. I swear.

This week's been pretty productive on the settling-in front, so maybe, just maybe, next week I can settle into the 'routine' Rachel and I agreed on - not to bore with the details, but it allows time for me to work on regular work, freelance work, working out, and working on my album. A lot of work, but it's all gotta get done.

So far, it has been foiled by school, summer school, the truck, and moving - formidable forces, really.

Of course, now we have the party (parties) we're planning, and the place isn't really finished - it's just inhabitable. But it's now or never, really...

I've also just about finished consolidating all of my old MySpace blogs onto here. Once they've been reformatted and updated, I'll link to my old Okinawa journals on my homepage as well. Most of my 'let's update the homepage' boredom/energy has been directed towards back-filling this blog, so hopefully I'll make my photo gallery on the homepage next

Labels: basketball, house, Ignition, life, party, photography

posted by Steve @ 1:30 AM 0 comments

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Endings and Beginnings

I had a lovely 27th birthday party, and have come to understand that my favorite kind of get-together/party involves about 3-10 of my friends. I'll have to remember that when we have our housewarming party in about 3 weeks.

A beginning: our time here in this apartment is coming to an end, and we're doing it the right way: giving ourselves a week and a half to move. The new place is a duplex with covered parking right outside the door, and enough room for a basketball hoop and a garden in the back yard. It also has laundry machines, thank God.

An end: I picked up the seventh and final Harry Potter book at midnight on my birthday. I didn't go to sleep - I stayed up until about 10am reading, slept for four hours, and woke up to finish the book. I'm still recovering, a bit, but my impression is favorable. Before judging it properly, though, I'm going to re-read the entire series once we've moved (the other books are packed up already).

A beginning: I bought an expensive PDA/phone, the Treo 755p. It replaces my old phone, a Sanyo SCO-7200, which I will honestly miss (still have to donate it to a recycling service). It was a beast, and survived more falls than I care to think about. I'll have to be much more careful with my new phone. The idea with the new phone is that I will be able to keep myself organized, and also have directions on me while traveling (it has Google maps).

An end: we're not slackin' anymore, and finally starting to keep proper records. We're going to take an inventory of everything we have for our insurance. Believe me, it's amazing how much stuff one has, especially all the ancillary stuff. Imagine how much it would cost to replace just the stuff you use in the bathroom (razors, shampoo, scrubber, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc.). This also involves keeping track of important receipts and warranties.

A beginning: I'm about halfway through organizing my photo archive. Once I'm finished, I'll be posting them onto various stock photo websites and hopefully I'll make a couple bucks here and there.

An ending: the process of getting the truck all fixed up is basically over, now that it's re-wired, if Saguaro Auto gets the thing to pass emissions (we'll find out tomorrow). At this point, we've pretty much redone everything. Of course, there's a lot of glaring problems: the passenger door doesn't lock, the dash is completely torn apart, and it needs to have the rust blasted out of the bed. But these things don't have any effect on how it runs, and that makes me very happy. Or it will, if it passes emissions...

A beginning: Rachel and I now have full insurance (dental, visual, medical) and an active 401k from Bookman's. It's the first time I've had that since I was a military dependent, and even then, because I had no car, I never took advantage of it because I couldn't get clear across town. I'll be getting a physical soon, and go to the first dental appointment I've had in ages.

Labels: apartments, birthday, friends, Harry Potter, insurance, moving, party, photography, slacking, Treo, truck

posted by Steve @ 11:26 PM 0 comments

About Me

Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
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