Nothing Like Meeting Friends and Strangers

For those of you who aren't gaming geeks, feel free to skip on this post.

I haven't talked a lot about my World of Warcraft (WoW) involvement, despite the fact that I spend a lot of time with these people, despite the fact that a lot of them are "real life" friends who I see regularly. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it doesn't seem to fit in with the bloggy nature of most of the other cool bloggers I know.

In any case, I had a blast this past Saturday night with a group of people I play WoW with. Many of them were people I'd met before, but some of them came into town just to hang out with us, and that made for a great time for all.

I'll use real names and game names so that translation is possible for anyone who knows these people in-game, and so that it's readable for those who don't and try to struggle through this post anyway. Poor misguided souls.

Josh (Ataraxia) came into town on Saturday morning from Atlanta. We had agreed to a potluck dinner on Saturday night with Josh as main chef.  Our first order of business was to get Josh some real Texas barbecue, which we did at Rudy's.  I took a pic of Josh washing his hands in the Rudy's hand jacuzzi, but it was unfortunately out of focus.

We went back to the house, where Vic (Lucient) had shown up from Temple, about an hour away, and was waiting for us.  After hanging around the house and playing Rock Band 2 for a bit, we headed to get Vic and Josh some Tex-Mex. If you've been missing my food photography, you'll be very happy to see this next picture. Look, it's a plate full of cheese!

I understand there may be corn tortillas, meat sauce, rice and beans in there somewhere too, but mainly there's cheese on that plate. Trust me; I know. And this was after we ordered a large queso. This place has arguably the best queso in Austin (y'all can yell Taco Deli at me if you want; I'm gonna call it a tie).

The guys of course spent some time fidding with their phones, taking pics of the food and each other. I took a stealth photo of them while they were doing that. I'm sneaky like that. Vic is on the left; Josh is on the right. They both have great smiles and are a lot of fun to hang out with.

Next stop was the HEB (grocery store) where Josh and I stocked up on everything we'd need for the party.  As we checked out, Josh gave his approval to our mother lode of grocery goodness.

Now on to the party pics! Marc (DB) stopped by before the party started to drop off this amazing looking cake, which he called a Strawberry-Crown Trifle, or his three-hour cake.  Marc doesn't cook often, but he's an amazing cook when you can get him to do it.  The cake was, shall we say, highly alcoholic (the leftovers are making my fridge smell like a distillery even now), but it's all kinds of yummy. In this pic I'm on the left and Pat (Bliadd) is on the right. Apparently when Pat indulges in his own Mexican Martinis he earns the nickname of "Chatty Patty."  I worked with this man for 4+ years and have never heard him talk as much as he did that night.

Vic doesn't indulge in alcohol at all, but he did pose for us in a highly amusing manner. I couldn't resist posting this one!

This is Robert (Tyrinia) pretending to be a Rock Band guitarist. Don't let him fool you; he's playing on easy mode. I'm a fine one to talk since I can't get past medium myself, but I gotta call him out...

And this is Son the Older (Fedarden), who is a legendary Rock Band drummer, playing most songs on expert mode. Sick and wrong, I tell ya. Note the look of intense concentration. His shirt says, "HELLO! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Josh hadn't seen the movie. We threatened to not let him go back to Atlanta until he'd done that bit of homework!

Here you can see Travis (Holyspit) on the left and Tai (Drakolan) on the right both blaming Josh for something. Why is it always the warlock's fault?

This is Karla (Pat's wife, who doesn't play WoW) and Pat.  How she survived the evening with all of us, I do not know. We had one other spouse, but she left early with their toddler, who had to go to bed. Karla hung in with us until the bitter end. Brave woman.

This is the aforementioned Marc (DB), who showed up again near the end of the party, having left to go to dinner with his uncle for his uncle's birthday in San Antonio. Marc is also a Rock Band legend on both drums and guitar, and he was kind enough to bring us his extra guitar for the party so more people could play. 

Last but certainly not least is our group pic (minus Marc, who came back too late to be included). I put numbers on people, but they're pretty hard to see; maybe you can make them out well enough. The key is below the pic.

1. Edward (Bizzarro) (who says he never smiles in pictures - HA!)

2. Tai (Drakolan)

3. Son the Older (Fedarden)

4. Pat (Bliadd)

5. Brad (Elfhorn)

6. Vic (Lucient)

7. Travis (Holyspit)

8. Josh (Ataraxia)

9. Lisa (Gnostica)

10. Robert (Tyrinia)

11. Becky (Findah)

Thanks everyone for coming. It was a great time. We'll have to do it again sometime!