Stuicide

Another restless night. It’s hard to get a good night’s sleep when everyone in the room snores, especially after drinking.

However, I manage to snag enough shut eye to be functional the next day. Saturday morning. LAN time. Luckily I didn’t sign up for Set up at 6 a.m., that would have been murder. We had plenty of warm bodies sign up to help with set up. I just don’t have it in me to be down there that early.

I make it down around 10. The room has been set up. It’s beautiful. 6 projectors line one wall, Another 10 stations make a corner opposite of the projectors. There’s a lone Rockband corner with flat screen. The far side of the room has the Schwag table. 50 Halo action figures greet us. L askan did very well. Not only did he find a box of goodies, but 5 of them. Demag0gue kindly had two Reclaimer comics framed and printed out. Very cool.

As I walk in, people have already begun to game. The sound of BR fire across the room is a welcome sound. That is how it all began after all. Some people come to game, and to game a lot. I used to want to do that as much as I could at these events. Not this year. I need to take some pictures and socialize. I game 300 days a year online with these people. I only see them face to face for about 7.

I check the countdown Timer at the “command center” that Action has built in the center of the room. Complete with projector, Podium, Microphone, and Laptop to keep tabs on the scores from tournaments. Something tells me he has built a fort out of pillows and blankets a few times as a kid. 35 minutes until the Opening Ceremony, the rumor that is going around the room is that it could possible rival The Olympics.

I grab a quick breakfast, McD’s again. It’s the cheapest and closest thing I can find. Greasy food has started to take over my body.

The opening ceremony was great, DeeJ gave a quick welcome speech and laid out the schedule for the weekend. Then Action gave a speech for “The LAN Cup” which Fate won.

After that, gaming commenced. A few games into the morning, we loaded up Standoff Multi-flag. As the game was about to start, Jericho started yelling “Nade the Hog!” to his team, however the whole room caught onto it and all 16 players in the game were screaming “Nade the Hog!” and lofted their two grenades across the map to try and stop a Warthog Blitz. Neither team was successful, but the moment was pure mayhem.

Gaming continued, for a while then I had to go with Gunny to pick up Venus from the Metra station a few blocks away. Venus has been a little hesitant to come to the LAN, so it was awesome that she was coming out. It’s always unique to meet 40 of your best friends all at once.

We returned back at the LAN just in time for the FFA. 28 contestants in 2 heats of 14 getting whittled to Top 16. I had a crappy 2nd game of the 3 game set in Heat 2 and was not able to make the cut. Which is fine, FFA sucks. (I promise I’m not bitter).

The final ended up being between Bear and Thrashy. Thrashy made a few early mistakes and then Bear started camping with Rockets, and well… it wasn’t pretty. Cold Storage with Rockets, always ends up one-sided but hey… that’s how it goes.

After an afternoon of gaming, Loco, Ballistic, Bunny and his lady, plus Stu were going to try and grab pizza from Giordano’s. We walked there and it was packed. The reception area had a 10 minute line to get your name for a table that would take about an hour to get. We were hungry and instead went over 2 blocks to Elephant and Castle, an Irish Pub that had some decent pub food.

I got Chicken Quesadillas and they were tasty, but I was still hungry afterwards, Ballistic scarfed down his Open faced Steak Sandwich pretty quickly and was still starving so we got dessert. Bunny was working on a mountain of Nachos. When the waiter asked us if we wanted to wait for Loco to get back to order dessert, we took about a half second and both said no. I guess we’re not the most patient group around…

Dessert was delivered with extra spoons “in case we wanted to share” which Ballistic didn’t. Instead he decided to double fist spoons and ate it in about 2 minutes flat.

After stuffing our face holes with the large amount of food (for me, not Ballistic) we headed back to the party central. Gaming commenced until late, then we were going to head back to _________?

Can you guess where? That’s right, Miller’s pub. Darren was working as he always does. DARRRREENNNNN (that’s for Fate).

We roll in around 1 a.m., so I already know it’s going to be a late night. Shortly after we take over our territory, a wedding party comes in. Awesome, they crowd in next to us and the party ensues. At one point mvuakali is talking to the groom and tells him that the bride is a freak. Without batting an eye, the groom turns to his lovely bride and says “Show him your ass” she turns around and let’s everyone take a look, and the groom gets behind her and says the best line of the weekend. “Built like a tank”

Priceless.

Venus was at the bar with us that night, and it was our job to make sure she had a good time. From the looks of the pictures, I would say mission accomplished.