Weekend Plans Post: Sitting in a basement on a Saturday night. But different.
“Peeking outside” by jcwesley is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The quarantine was rough on the gaming group.
We tried multiple different things to do the gaming thing. Gaming over Discord was okay for a handful of sessions but… if you’re already on the computer… why not open a browser and maybe browse the web? Maybe play a turn-based game of some kind? Why not browse the web *AND* play a turn-based game of some kind?!?!? Oh, crap? It’s my turn? What do I type to roll dice again?
So that tapered off. We tried playing online games together. Gremlins Inc. made for an amazing online session, I thought… as it turns out? Nope. I’m the only one who likes that game. We made several attempts with Tabletop Simulator but the mechanics were just too awkward.
And then… well… it just sort of fizzled out. We’d send emails, texts… talk in the chat from time to time. We had a fun little Bloodbowl 2 tournament…
But, yeah. It stopped happening.
But then… the vaccine! Somewhere around my second vaccine shot I realized “we can get back together soon…” and I dropped a comment in the ill-used discord: Hey. When is everybody’s 2nd shot scheduled? I figure we can get together two weeks after that.
And Maribou and I fought tooth and nail to be at the front of the line when our group was finally announced to be eligible to get the shot. Other folks were somewhere between “my second shot is scheduled next week!” and “my first shot is scheduled next week!” (with one “I’m not so sure about this vaccine, guys”) and, after hammering out this, that, and the other… well, the first gaming night in a long time is going to be this weekend.
We had a person say that they won’t be able to make it back to the group after a year (they’d fallen out of the habit and we spent too much time screwing around and socializing and not enough time gaming and, well, this was an opportunity for a clean break) and this person won’t be able to make it due to a scheduling conflict and that person is still kinda apprehensive about getting together in a group indoors and so it won’t be *EVERYBODY* getting together… but most of us will get together. And we’re going to eat something, and screw around, and socialize, and try to remember what it’s like to sit in a basement with friends and play a game.
On top of that, the days of having groceries delivered and having Petsmart curbside pickup is *OVER*. So it’s going to include going to the King Soopers for groceries (holy cow, I haven’t gone to my King Soopers since before the lockdowns… the Safeway with our pharmacy is on my way home from work and it has 98% of the same products as King Soopers anyway) and going to Petsmart for kitty litter and getting it off the shelf myself and putting it in the car myself.
It’s weird the things you fall out of the habit of doing.
So… what’s on your docket?
Last year, thanks to Covid, Bug got 0 birthday parties (that’s a rough thing for an 8 year old). This year, he gets 2. He had one on his birthday weekend with a bunch of the neighborhood kids, and this weekend it’s a family party, with everyone in the family all vaccinated.Report
I’m now fully vaccinated, but most everything in my area still has masking mandates, so my weekend plans are…basically the same as any other covid weekend, but with a swagger in my step.Report
I’m bringing Formula D and after eating, we’re playing a damn game. I don’t care how much y’all don’t wanna play, if it has to be like a little kid’s birthday party where nobody wants to play “pin the tail on the donkey” and it’s a bunch of six-year-olds standing around crying with donkey tails in their hands while the parents are all like, “Boy, you’d better start having fun RIGHT NOW or so help me when I get you home…”
But seriously…if we just eat and spend 25 minutes talking about what we want to play when the group proper returns and then slowly disperse into the night, I’m cool with that, too. 🙂Report
The triumphant return to King Soopers happened today. As, like, a family unit. As celebration, we went to the new one. The *BIG* one. The one that has a clothing section and a toy section and sells vacuums and 7 different kinds of carrots.
We wore our masks to signal to everyone else that we have been vaccinated and found ourselves freaked out by the mass of humanity after about 15 minutes.
But we’re getting back to normal. Slowly but surely.Report
“We wore our masks to signal to everyone else that we have been vaccinated”
I sense that that turn of a phrase means something, but I can’t figure out what. On my end, our priest announced that the county’s current rules expire this Friday, and we should stay tuned for new procedures.Report
I believe it’s poking fun at all the people saying that they’re going to keep wearing masks, despite having been vaccinated, as a virtue-signaling mechanism (“so nobody thinks I’m a Republican”).Report