We had our first, actual game of the season recently. We lost but it was a good game.

For those in doubt: softballs are NOT soft.

Wii bowling is a lot cheaper (and a lot more fun) than regular bowling. You don’t need to drive out anywhere and put down money for a lane and smelly bowling shoes. There are no grimy balls that hundreds of people before you have laid their sweaty hands on. All you have are a couple of controllers (which only a couple dozen people have handled) and a bit of open space.

Drew taught me how to Wii bowl several months ago when he was in need of someone to play against. That was back in the day when he actually had periods of dead time. What’s interesting is that while it’s very much a video game, Wii bowling is similar enough to the real thing that my form is practically the same as in real bowling.

With actual bowling, because the ball was heavy, I would lean down and release low. Despite the awkwardness of that move, more often than not I’d knock down a decent number of pins. I rarely got strikes but even so, I could consistently break 100. In Wii bowling, I adopt the same style though the controller is ridiculously light. The difference is that I get strikes more often. Whatever works, right?

Last week, it was fun to pick up the controller again after months of Wii-less activity. TKW saw me hovering around the Wii (which was strangely abandoned that night) so he sighed and told me he might as well play as he had nothing better to do that eve. I immediately brightened (that Harry Potter Wii game I was eying looked too complicated) and set him up with his own Mii so we could play properly. By the time he finished customizing his avatar, JJT had showed up out of no where with a bottle of booze in his hand. When we decided to bowl, JJT joined in too, which was just as well because I’d forgotten how to use the controller.

After learning the basics, TKW and I initially sucked. TKW kept changing his position and hook, while I sloooowly learned my style again. Towards the end, I’d remembered enough to throw some strikes and win the game. Being competitive, JJT demanded a rematch that I won again (mwahaha!) Into our 3rd round, CD (one of the pro-bowlers) showed up, talked smack to JJT, and entered the 4th round in result. CD won that one, as expected, but surprisingly his game went way down in succeeding rounds as he focused on coaching TKW from bowling an 87 to a high of a 200+ game.

The rest of the evening was entertaining. JJT showed me some yoga moves and gawked over the way my arm bent slightly outwards. Two of the ladies watched the action as they sipped some red beverages and later one of them joined in when TKW left. An engineer who was working late took a break to bike around the office but was stopped by a phone call midway through his ride. JJT made three attempts to attack CD from behind (twice CD had a glass in his hand) and was either out-wrestled or let go on a stalemate each time.

Much to my regret, I had no video capturing device with which to YouTube the last two incidents. Nothing like stark digital footage to blackmail– err, share with the participants.

TL and I got taken out for lunch one day for two occasions - a birthday and a promotion. We went to a popular Thai restaurant and ate family-style on teeny square plates the size of a square napkin. We ordered all sorts of stuff - from wasabi steak rolls to the usual chicken pad thai. Everything was pretty good, all the more because our director oh so kindly paid for it. Not sure if that’s what made it taste better - I’d been to the restaurant once before with an old classmate and I hadn’t liked the pad thai at all.

The drinks were yummy. HC and I sipped our fruity shakes out of really tall glasses with equally tall straws. My banana strawberry shake tasted dangerously too sweet. Methinks they overdid it with the strawberry syrup. I shouldn’t complain though. It’s lucky we got any food at all - the waiters were too cool for us. When TL and my boss and I first arrived in the restaurant, the receiver basically wanted us to wait until the rest of our party arrived, even if we already had a reservation. My boss talked him into letting us sit, provided that we order immediately. Thing was, we couldn’t flag down a server to give our orders to. TL said we should all close our menus to indicate we were ready (he’s had lots of practice getting service after a full life of being a consultant with a big budget) but that didn’t help. It was a full ten minutes after the rest of our party arrived before a waitress deigned to get our orders. She was very nice once we got her attention, though.

During the meal we talked about various things, from wondering about Thunder Dome and what our director did exactly at the event (”Do they fight in cages?” TL pondered. He was later disappointed when he learned they used foam weapons.) to everyone’s age. SB absolutely would not reveal her age, whereas us younger ones didn’t care. HC did say she’d stop saying what her age was after she hit 25 this month. Personally, I intend to stop aging at 29. It’s still in the twenties!

I noticed I was getting hits for Josh Verdes’ “Save Me” lyrics, so I’ve edited my previous YouTube entry to include them. Josh Verdes = squee!

I talked to BFM who was mourning over the usual thing you mourn over when you’re this old and aren’t attached yet. I tried to console him with vague theories.

AP: Maybe she’s shy.
BFM: She reads in front of 200 people. How could she be shy?!
AP: Girls are weird, remember?
BFM: Girls suck, big time.
AP: Hey, I resent that comment!

I can only concede so much.

Tamale was dealing with something today that was sorely trying his patience. He decided to eat lunch while doing it so he could get mad enough to go to the gym, where he’d blow off the steam. We at the lunch table missed him and his outrageous comments.

WC: Where’s Tamale?
SP: Over there, in the angry dome.

I now call his and HC’s room the Angry Dome. It just fits. Except sometimes it’s fun too. Should it be the Angry Fun Dome?

It’s been a long, mixed day. I spent the first half temporarily docking in Tamale’s office of outrageousness so I could be there if he had any questions. While I love my cube and its walls, the change of scenery did me good. The Grass room is great fun to be in, but the Outrageous room is great to be a part of. It takes a while to get used to the randomness, afterwhich you just start spouting it too.

SB hunted me down in the Outrageous room to swat me with some — flowers! Flowers aren’t everything to me, but the gesture was sweet all the same. Even better that the flowers were real and not Frankensteined with chemicals to keep them “fresh” longer. SP came in and saw the flowers so I felt it was my duty to tell him where they came from.

SP: I prefer that you let me make up my own explanations for why you might have flowers! Then I can incite scandal and gossip.
Me: No!! This is why i am pre-empting you! Because you make stuff up.
SP: I do. It is my specialty.

The “make stuff up” is related to this shirt he often wears, “I make stuff up”. That’s the thing about engineers and ops - they tend to wear plain shirts with witty sayings on them. It’s so common that seeing an op without that type of shirt is unusual. In fact, this evening, the CEO stopped Op GM and said, “Someone get a marker. We need to write something on GM’s shirt. This isn’t right, he’s wearing a plain shirt!”

GM replied, “You can just write it on my forehead.”

Later, I left work late for (hopefully) the last Friday and spent a lot of time waiting for public transportation. In result, I’m extremely tired. Definitely need to catch up on rest on Saturday because the upcoming week is going to be challenging without my boss to call the shots. Also, our first game is on Monday. Here’s to hoping we break our losing streak!

Tamale: I hate it when weird stuff touches me!
WC: I find it invigorating when weird stuff touches me.
Op SP: Oooo, tell me more, WC, tell me more!

This weekend has been tiring but great. I obtained a copy of the last Harry Potter book on Friday night (technically, early Saturday morning). I have to admit that it was not worth waiting in line for 2 hours and twenty minutes because when I got home, all I wanted to do was sleep. I managed to read one chapter but then my eyes said “No more!” and drooped closed.

As much as I really wanted to read the book the next morning, I put it off to get a pair of cleats which are incredibly hard to find for women. Thank goodness for Sports Authority.

Though I was tired from having gotten home late on Friday, I spent the rest of Saturday reading 700+ pages. Normally one should take the time to savor books but as I knew I couldn’t read it on Sunday owing to practice, I finished it off at once. All I can say is that of the 7 books, the last is the best. Rowling certainly has gotten better. The plot made sense, the motives were strong and the characters were actually multi-layered. She pulled off that multi-layered bit really well, I might add.

One thing that may piss off fans is how Rowling sets the main characters’ futures in stone with an epilogue that went, “19 years later”. I honestly believe she wrote that to prevent any fans from trying to mess with her romantic pairings, as fanboys and fangirls are wont to do. (You know, on the 1 in a million chance I wrote a book series, I’d forbid fanfics until the series was over. Fanfics can seriously ruin your view of the canon material in the books. It skewed my perception, for sure.) I’m disturbed by how all of the children were named after dead people, though. It was seriously confusing to me.

All in all, I am a satisfied Harry Potter reader. It’s over. At last!

As for Sunday practice, I’m delighted to report that I have improved on batting since the last practice, though to contrast, I’m now worse on catching. Those balls can go high up. It’s very scary to attempt to catch them. I could catch it with my face, you see, and I don’t think that would really improve my features. Also, I got sunburned and am red right now. It should lighten into brown by tomorrow morning but still, I can’t keep getting sunburned. Think of the skin cancer! Think of the pre-mature aging! So I’ll have to wear a hat, which I haven’t done yet because I hate hats, I do, I do, but if it must be done, it will be.

Finally, I’m home. Stayed late in the office once again but hopefully it’s for the last time. Plus I wasn’t lonely coz I could hear two guys Wii bowling away while I worked (JTT and CD also made a bunch of wise cracks about me at one point. Grr!) During a bowling lull, JTT was thoughtful enough to stop by my cube and chuck a bunch of paperboard coasters at me. Of course, I had to retaliate with a few of my own. The final result was coasters strewn all over the floor. Fun stuff. JTT had the best “score” with three hits in a row. A “turkey”, CD commented.

After I inhale my dinner, I’m going to drive thirty minutes to the nearest bookstore and see how long the line is. If it looks reasonable, I may just get the last ever Harry Potter book tonight! Wooo!