Live! Fully Clothed! Nerdity!

No work today; I'm taking a four-day vacation. A mini-vacation. A vacationette.

As I recently finished paying off the car I have been leasing for a couple years now, I tried to go get my new title reissued for this state. But I got enmeshed in Stupid Bureaucracy: in order to retitle, I had to get the "green paper" from the mandatory State Inspection (basically just a way for Texas to charge citizens for owning cars and using the streets, which although it sort of rankles [or maybe just itches a bit] at my anti-government inclinations, is basically okay by me, as it discourages multi-vehicle ownership). However, my Inspection was last November, and as the "green paper" is only valid for thirty days, I have to either get re-inspected now, three months early, to the tune of $60 or so, or just wait until the Inspection falls due to transfer the title. I opted for the latter.

I met with the Ex and she paid me some money she owed me. She's quite visibly pregnant now. Meeting her made me sort of sad. I don't miss or want to be with her anymore, but I do miss losing what we had.

But the mopery did not last long, for tonight was Trivia Night! The first (and possibly last) live trivia at the Hangout, hosted by Yours Truly and his good buddy Friar! We wrote the questions (which, as I earlier predicted to the Friar's obdurately deaf ears, were too multipartite for the crowd’s taste, so we redacted and shunted text extemporaneously), picked the music to go with them, tabulated the scores, and had a blast. There were only six teams, but that was about what we expected; the place is normally pretty dead on Mondays, and we had almost no publicity, not even a flyer --- poor planning on our part.

Everyone seemed to have a very good time, there was a lot of witty repartee from tables to stage and back, big cash payoffs were awarded, and of course the hosts (us) drank free. Cool. In all honesty, I haven’t had so much fun in a long time. I mean to say, I have had better times, passed the time more pleasantly I guess, but it’s been a great while since I actually had fun. Friar mentioned several times that he liked the feeling of "control" in emceeing; I’m not as much of a control freak as he (though I am one, certainly), and what I think I liked enjoyed the most was just being part of something real and meaningful that involved other people.