http://whereiswaldo.mit.edu

etc.

Well, this week has been exciting. It's the last week of classes next week, so all of our last assignments were due this week. Joyous. The only major thing was an essay rewrite, though, so it wasn't terrible. Debate is over for a little while, so I actually got to be home on a Friday night! The excitement! I went to a party at tEp, the one cool fraternity at MIT. They have all sorts of amazing things there: a self-programmed and wired light show for their dance floor, a giant net hanging from the ceiling in one room (it was designed to transport marine mammals originally), and all sorts of amazing nerd creations. My favorite one that I saw on this visit was a wall clock that had been repainted with fractional increments of pi, to accurately describe each possible angle. It was AMAZING. Little Adam was there too--he's one of their pelges (yes, this is what they call their new children--I don't know why). It was a fun evening, filled with mirth and hilarity. Many 5E people were there, too, so I knew many people. tEp is a fascinating place.

Saturday night was Packet Patrol. Patrol is the weekly SIK game where everyone runs around on the first floor of building 36 trying to shoot one another with dart guns--one hit kills you, and you have to go respawn in one of the stairwells by climbing up to the second floor. You also have a brightly colored headband on, to show what team you're on. Usually there are about 3-4 people on a team, and maybe 25 people at the beginning of the game. Some of the old, crufty Guild members are absolutely terrifyingly deadly. This week, though, we didn't play with dart guns; we played with little fabric packets filled with rice (I think--it's hard to tell!), which tend to represent special weapons in other Guild games (i.e., powerful magical spells or giant flaming death rockets). It was fun. I slayed many and was slain in return. And now I have bruises all over my legs from diving to the floor to avoid shots.

Incidentally, young ones: if you find yourselves bored, check out kingdomofloathing.com . It's a more-addictive-than-it-should-be online game which doesn't appear to be inappropriate, as far as I can tell, and automatically limits the amount of time you can play per day. Charming website. Yay.

The tournament went well. The SIK game was excellent. Every muscle in my body, however, is complaining about the 6 hours of simulated combat. Ow...
I learned stuff about pretending to shoot people, though, which made it worthwhile.

The MIT debate tournament is today and tomorrow. Lots of judging and tabbing (keeping track of results) for Kathleen. Yay!
And tomorrow afternoon is training for the SIK (Society for Interative Killing) game on Sunday. And tomorrow night is a party on 5E. And Sunday is OCS, the SIK game wherein I get to shoot at people lots and probably get shot at even more.

It's going to be a full weekend. On the bright side, my room is squeaky clean, because I'm housing debaters tonight. Joy and rapture...