a group of people who miss the same imaginary place

[enthusiastick]

So this past weekend in Chicago was absolutely superb, I could not have asked for better. I got in late Friday night and rushed to Norris to participate in Rodrigo's pick-up D&D game. I had carefully prepared a 10th-level Wizard specializing in the school of Evocation, despite my general loathing of Arcane spellcasters, because the party needed one. And in my opinion if you're going to cast Arcane spells, you might as well cast max'd-out Twinspell Magic Missile. Just do (10d4 + 10) HP per round and get it over with, right?

The game sort of dissolved before it ever got going due to some problems with Zoe & Rodrigo's duty as members of the Norris house staff, so plans were made to reschedule it to the following day prior to Tremere Prom. Then I went off with spreadnparanoia, Mike D, Kevin, king_biscuit and jrdameonhvto the lakefill. king_biscuit made a comment fairly early on that my presence seemed very natural, and I think that was the feeling all around. More so than just feeling like coming home, which it did, it felt to a certain extent like I had never left.

The game went off without a hitch the following day (a good time was had by all, I think) as did the Tremere Prom. The Prom was totally heartwarming, the whole old crew (more or less) together again with a very light peppering of new folks. loopygirl and the_matras totally showed up, because apparently the_matras is playing this year or something. I was entirely green with envy, and positively giddy with amusement when Mike D came up all puppy-dog like and asked loopygirl to explain to him just what was wrong with OWBN. She managed to shut me (the opinionated total outsider) and the_matras up long enough to deliver a fairly cogent response, actually.

I bummed around for a while on Sunday and ended up meeting up with pax_malificus, rollick and spreadnparanoia once she got off work. They, predictably, asked me to run my random game and I, unpredictably, acquiesced. All considered I think it went pretty well. attackmonkey and snubkin dropped by just to say hi and ask after the food situation, which was very cool. rollick was amusingly out of it for the first portion of the evening, and then managed to pull herself together into startling coherency, sparking a one-on-one scene between her character and an NPC that did more to advance the plot than I've felt comfortable doing on my own up until this point.

Which brings us around to Monday and the question of what the hell I've been doing all week. Monday afternoon I went to an interview at Public Communications Inc., better known as simply PCI. They have an unbelievably good location, right on the river near the State & Lake stop on the Red Line. More to the point they look like a very cool company (approximately 45 employees) and I think my interview went fairly well. I walked away from it with a three part writing test which I buried myself into until about today when I submitted the last of it. If they like what I wrote then I have a shot at a (probably) three-month paid internship which will (probably) start in either December or January. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much... and I'm trying to ignore the fact that if it goes down that way the internship will synch up with spreadnparanoia's Medill-mandated Teaching Media, when she might be gone from the Chicago area. Happy thoughts.

That about brings us up to date.