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As our ranch crew prepares to sit down to dinner in-universe (though it won’t happen real-time for some weeks yet), this past weekend saw your humble proprietors at long last cleaning up their residence in order to host some proper in-person gaming again for the first time since the pandemic began.
Yes, we were perhaps very slow about this. We have never been the most social of butterflies, being more akin to burrowing moles as far as animal comparisons might go. Certainly we have gone blinking and squinting into the harsh light of day and other people prior to now, or had a few friends over here and there, but time was that our abode would host movie nights and tabletop events on a basis that I recall being more-or-less monthly. The Gaslands game I posted about in my last blog was the chosen vector but honestly given the amount of folks that showed interest, not to mention showed up, I think people may have just missed gathering at the Wolf Den for some beer, pizza and rolling of dice, as if some ritual ceremony of geekdom had been lacking.
Certainly I will say that having impending company over gives one motivation to strive against the forces of entropy and make the place presentable. I by no means would say sparkling and fancy, it ain’t that kind of crowd and we ain’t that kind of folk, but I have a benchmark I’ve held in my head since my teen years where we’d occasionally go gaming at the home of a couple from the FLGS (that’s Friendly Local Gaming Store in the elder tongue) and their bathroom toilet was perpetually in a state that Lacey would definitely describe as “yugh.” If we can maintain our standards somewhere above yugh, I am pleased enough.
Meanwhile the rest of the service felt like it went as it did in the Long Long Ago and this certainly gave rise to a certain feeling of satisfaction in my being. We remain a childless franchise by choice and while our real estate footage is by no means huge, it is ample enough to accommodate a Fellowship-sized gathering indoors without too much squeezing. Perhaps most importantly, despite being in the Los Angeles area our street provides for ample free parking most times of the year. So if there was a get-together to be hosted, we were often the ones to knuckle down and provide the venue.
That had been lacking, and although we’ll likely be giving over to SDCC prep and Dawn’s artworks for the next few weeks it was good to dust off that particular bit of pre-COVID lifestyle with hope for more like it again in the future. Nerds aren’t necessarily social creatures, but the occasional party (adventuring or otherwise) on our terms is still an important feature.