Magic: probably won’t draft anymore, not fun to play with people who’d rather be playing someone who can actually play. i’m like 20 years behind, learning cards takes too much time, still barely know game mechanics, barely know some lorwyn cards, don’t know any other cards at all, don’t even know set names or when they came out except for ravnica which sounds really cool. must play casually a lot more first, probably more interested in casual-style-only play anyway, since i’m all about setting up combos or goofy choices and less about “MUST.WIN.EVERY.TIME” hyperefficiency. made first deck. red elementals plus a chandra, only lorwyn cards. because i bought a lorwyn fat pack and i pulled a chandra and an ashling the pilgrim out of those boosters, and ashling’s totally hot … ha ha … ha. interested in multicolored elementals, maybe. morningtide is gonna have cool lands that give mana of any color as long as you use them to play elemental spells. acquired set of WORLD OF WARCRAFT THE TRADING CARD GAME dice LOLOLOL LOLOL well, dice are useful if you’re going to be a gamer so there!

i’m dismayed at the level of enjoyment i get from Stuff. it means i’m shallow and materialistic. i’m afraid that people will mock me for putting my first deck into sleeves. “she can’t even play and she’s putting her cards into sleeves as if for show. pah!” but it’s cuz i can sell one card for $3.50!

i’m also fully aware that the whole thing is a complete waste of money.

Board games: played Fjords with krishna’s friend while krishna punched out his brand new copy of BRASS!!!!!! OPENS MOUTH INTO LARGEST SMILE POSSIBLE which i’m excited about playing maybe on sunday. Fjords is really fun. you take turns setting down hexagonal tiles to form a board, but there are mountains, fields, and water to match up (kinda like carcassone). then you try to claim as many of the hexes as you can, blocking off your opponent (like dots and boxes kinda). attempted to play THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT BOARD GAME on thursday, took 2.5 hours to set up, by that time the other three people didn’t even want to play anymore, we only played six (out of thirty possible) turns. everyone griped about the combat system, but i think it makes sense and is interesting. they found some creative ways of implementing concepts from the video game.

Call of Duty 4: i’m terrible at first-person shooters, but it remains fun. it also remains hard to save the multiplayer data without errors all over, so it’s headachy. gonna run a cod4 game night every tuesday from jan to april through igames, where you make teams of 5 and battle other teams from other game centers all over the country. that sounds like fun. i hope we make friends with some other internet cafe in another state or something. realized that i like playing a support class IRL. even though i can’t even play the game, if i’m involved in creating fun for 5 or 10 other people, i am happiest.

LA: bliss.

Movies: saw the golden compass. episodic. beautiful, though, and the actor playing lyra is very good, and a good thing too since she’s basically carrying the whole movie. “hey, here are some gyptians, aren’t they nice, and now a bear, now pretend you care about them cuz we don’t have time to develop any characters other than lyra at all WOOHOO HERE GOES THE TRAIN.” mrs. coulter also fantastic, and creepy. daemons not a disappointment at all. at the theater a smartly dressed young woman said to her companions “the water horse, i’ll DEFINITELY see that one” and so i played the judgejudgejudgegame with nick, who then told me that we were in LA, it’s not a game, it’s what they do. all the time.