At one point last night, we were making comic book and videogame jokes while playing Lord of the Rings Risk.

Dear Lord, forgive us, for we have geeked.

I have made it through. Seriously. Grad school has no power over me - well, at least until we get our final project grades back and I start bitching again.

In fact, I had a happy grad-school moment today. Awesome Imagineer Jesse (who admittedly did lose a few points for forcing us through that whole pretend-videogame-pitch crap) gave back my final project for the class - a board game I created based on popularity contests in middle school.

I got an A, and his last comment was:

"Overall - This is a fantastic idea, that could potentially make it to market. If you would like, I would gladly send your sell sheet to at Wizards [of the Coast] to get his advice. I would also be happy to help in the continued iteration and playtesting of this game."

Wizards of the Coast - well, they're a "small" company that makes such unimportant titles as Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon CCG.

Ahem.

(dance) I'm a geeky gaming goddess! (/dance)

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This weekend was full of goodbyes.

Kind of weird...we don't know if we'll be doing our second year here (or if we will stay in California with the SimCompany), so we have to pretend like it's our last year here...just in case.

I just have this nagging feeling that I'm really moving on for good.

We've started to pack, and a week from now, we'll be somewhere in the Midwest on the Grand Hunter and Athena Cross-Country Adventure (GHACCA!)

Wow. Does that mean that two weeks from tomorrow I'll be working for the SimCompany?

Why, yes it does!

Some of the younger kids in the theatre troupe told us we were "gods" to them for having these jobs with this company. That was a little weird. Oh well. If we won't be remembered for our wacky hijinks, we will be remembered for our place in the world.

Onwards and upwards.

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We had a lovely evening on Saturday... we started by going to fellow grad student Dave's goodbye party - he's graduating the program and moving to Japan to work for a small videogame company there. He's living the dream.

The gathering was mostly a chance to see people one last time before jumping into California. There were quite a few people we didn't know. At 12:30AM, we said goodbye and headed to Liz's house for her low-key end of the year gathering.

That was an interesting group. My ex-vice president and now ex-Student Body President PrezBrian was trashed, Liz's boyfriend Mike was tipsy, and everyone else was just sort of chilling.

We watched Zoolander (with Brian poking me every 5 minutes to flirt with me or ask me if the movie was pornographic) and had a few drinks. Eventually, PrezBrian, B-Lev, Sharin, and her boyfriend left, which left Mike, Liz, Hunter, and myself.

The four of us ended up awake until 6AM, talking ans watching old episodes of the State in a academic life post-mortem bonding extravaganza.

It's just so wacky looking at who I consider my friends as this long, strange journey wraps up. I guess it's true that every time God closes a door, he opens a window.

Last night was Mayhew and Lakshmi time. Mayhew was sad that Hunter was leaving today, and he asked if he could come over and watch him pack.

:-(

So Mayhew, later followed by Lakshmi, came over for the evening. They seem in continued good spirits. We played the aforementioned Lord of the Rings Risk, and I guess the world ended or something, because I kicked some major Middle-Earth ass!!

"In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the morning and the night!"

I had 41 points. The runner-up was somewhere in the teens.

We played LOTR Risk and watched baseball, and then watched Pokemon: Mewtwo Returns, and then watched 2 episodes of Trigun.

Well, at least we embrace our geekdom.

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So now I'm home alone, packing to go home on Wednesday (barf!) and for the big move next week. What do we need? What don't we need? Anything we can ship? Utility activations, new leases, two sets of bills -- "grown-up" life wants to be acknowledged.

Oh, and the laundry. Let's not talk about that. I like to consider it a very colorful carpet. Plush carpeting.

(And definitely wall-to-wall.)

Now it's time to ... clean the "carpet" and do my nails (they're so long I can't get my contacts in anymore. ergh) and figure our how to get up the Climbing Cliffs in Wind Waker.

A busy evening, to be sure.

Thank God the semester's over.