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serindeSpent most of Saturday at the vintage clothing show, which was really amazing. I expected to be bored, but in fact found it most interesting. Kathryn and Beth both made purchases, but I didn't...because by fashion standards I am a cow. (Though as my waist continues shrinking, I'm rediscovering the problem I had in high school--that my _breasts_ don't fit into anything even if my waist and/or hips do.)
Kathryn says she talked to a vintage clothing dealer once about the way they never seem to stock anything size 12 or up; he replied that he tried, but women would _refuse to buy_ anything in those sizes--they would buy things much too small for them, because they didn't want to admit they were anything over a 10. So, as a businessman, he just couldn't justify buying stock in the higher sizes. I sympathize with his plight, truly I do...but I sympathize with _mine_ a lot more. And I want to shoot all the fucking idiots responsible for this mindset, and all the fucking idiots who buy into it.
Then came home and watched Aliens, in preparation for the morrow's exercises.
Sunday: Paintball! Boy howdy. Only half of the people we'd gotten commits from actually showed, so we didn't get our own field; but for the most part this turned out okay, and much fun was had by all.
We were hooked up with another group, of 8 or 9 I think; but rather than playing directly against them, the refs mixed us together. The other group were, apparently, a bunch of teachers, and mostly women; I don't know if it was a team-building exercise or what, but they didn't seem to be all that excited about being there. Still, they seemed to have fun. We played a couple capture-the-flag games in the woods, and then three or four more in a field called "Circle City" which has all these odd dome-like things in it. The latter games were much more blast-everything-in-sight in nature, because it was a much smaller, much more open field.
We stopped for lunch at about 2, whereupon the other team (and also Nick and Julie of our group) left--they were only doing a half-day. After lunch, our ref said there was another group whose opponents had also left; there were a number more of them, so we got a small portion of their team.
That is to say, we got the five kids playing with them, so us (most of whom had never played before) plus five pre-pubescent boys got to face a force of 15 Fighting Uruk-Hai.
I don't know if they were ex-military or just wanna-bes (many were the Semper Fi patches and tattoos on their arms), but whatever they were, they were testosterone-laden chest-thumping assholes. We were "defending" a structure called the Pentagon, which had (duh) five sides, each one with a doorway, and a tower at each corner. Their objective was to get inside. Our objective was to make them fail their objective. It was off to a roaring start when the other group's ref started the match before we were ready, but that was fairly minor. It was a slaughter, which would have been okay, except that our charming and sportsmanlike opponents were in the habit of continually shooting people who were already out. Erin and I were in one tower, and got shot fairly early; we yelled "out", put the plugs in our gun barrels, and held up our hands as is the custom. Now, you're supposed to make your way off the field at this point, which is difficult when you're on a 20' tower in the middle of a firefight; so we thought to stay still with our hands up and our guns down until the fight moved away. They kept shooting us. I tried to climb down; I got shot about six times in the five seconds I was out from our minimal cover. (This whole time, Erin and I are screaming at the tops of our lungs, "This tower is out! We are both dead! Stop shooting at us!") At this point, I shame to say, I had a morale failure and curled up shaking and crying for a minute or two...the balls do hurt when you get hit, and being continually pelted by them was quite outside my experience. Anyways, our other ref (each group has two, usually) went over and started hollering at them to stop shooting the dead (and, I heard, also got shot during that), and fairly quickly after that it was all over. Though some of them kept shooting even after the whistle call to end the fight. I also learned later that Noah and Eli, who had been killed early and were making their way to the "dead zone", also were getting shot while their hands and guns were up in the dead position.
We and our two refs decided we did not at all want to deal with Team Felchmonkey any further, so gathered our stuff and our tattered spirits and marched off. They did not actually taunt us or anything, but did make that sort of jock-like apology with the subtext of "ain't you man enough to take it?"--I'm sure my Gentle Readers are familiar with what I mean. As Eli commented, "Ah, the orcs are apologizing. That makes _all_ the difference." Our refs led us to another, quieter, larger field, where we could have something a bit less intense for awhile.
And those two games were, I think, the most fun; it was what they call a "president" scenario. One person is the prez, and some portion of the group are his bodyguards; the rest are assassins. The bodyguards have to get the prez to the other end of the field, or at least keep him alive for the whole time; the assassins have to kill him (and he can only be killed by a head shot). This field was, as I said, enormous, and we only had nine people, so it was a very sneaky kind of scenario. The first game, Noah was prez, and me and two others were his bodyguards; the other five were assassins. We did a bang-up job getting him silently and securely up to the creek that bisected the field (though Mr. President actually lost his shoe in the mud--the field is called Z-Swamp for good reason--and I nearly lost my boots rescuing it), and got across the creek too; but then we had to wait and hide while an assassin moved up...and while we were waiting, Zach crept up and offed me and Erin. The remaining guard killed _him_ and got our prez out of there, but the rest of the assassins homed in on the noise, and Eli dropped Noah with one perfect shot right to the eye. Well, the visor, but you know. It was truly stellar.
Second game, All the President's Men became assassins, and all the assassins but Zach switched accordingly; John was president this time. We had a good plan--Noah guarded the target backfield, Erin and I spread ourselves to watch the whole creek, and the other two played roving hunters. At length I spied our targets moving up the far end, hollered for backup, and started firing...but Mike picked me off (from 100+ feet away!), a three-shot burst that got me one in each arm and one in the mouth. Well, the visor again, but the paint came through the slots...yuck. It seems they'd given him John's gun (he has his own, unlike the rental ones we were all using, and it's quite accurate) as an attempt at a decoy (because it also has a vest with stuff that goes with, and he was the only one wearing such a thing), but it was wasted on me anyways as they move completely differently. Not that it really mattered, in the event. Heh. After various shootings, Zach finally got within 10' of the president and demanded his surrender, and he wisely complied.
The rest of the games were capture-the-flag on various wooded fields. The last two, we again combined with another understrength team (bizarre coincidence: one of them was in Eli's fencing class), but what made this different was that, to make numbers even, a ringer was pulled in. This was a teenager who is _paid_ to be in tournaments, he's that good, and had some shit-hot incredible gun too. The first game, he was on the same team as me, and snuck around into the enemy's backfield and took most of them out. The second, he was on the other team, and tried to do the exact same thing the exact same way. However, Noah was waiting for him, and plugged him in the back. He said afterwards he didn't for a second think that ninja-boy would actually be that cocky...but, well, there it was. (Noah turned out to be the day's secret surprise star. And this on his first time out, too.)
So I'm tired and bruised today all over--one tends to get a welt wherever a ball hit, especially if it didn't break, and I have bruises around most of my welts--but very glad I went, and intending to go again.
Today has been crazy-mad frustrating and busy, but since the morning I have had a lovely aikido class and am now settled down with an excellent salad, so all is happy again.
Kathryn says she talked to a vintage clothing dealer once about the way they never seem to stock anything size 12 or up; he replied that he tried, but women would _refuse to buy_ anything in those sizes--they would buy things much too small for them, because they didn't want to admit they were anything over a 10. So, as a businessman, he just couldn't justify buying stock in the higher sizes. I sympathize with his plight, truly I do...but I sympathize with _mine_ a lot more. And I want to shoot all the fucking idiots responsible for this mindset, and all the fucking idiots who buy into it.
Then came home and watched Aliens, in preparation for the morrow's exercises.
Sunday: Paintball! Boy howdy. Only half of the people we'd gotten commits from actually showed, so we didn't get our own field; but for the most part this turned out okay, and much fun was had by all.
We were hooked up with another group, of 8 or 9 I think; but rather than playing directly against them, the refs mixed us together. The other group were, apparently, a bunch of teachers, and mostly women; I don't know if it was a team-building exercise or what, but they didn't seem to be all that excited about being there. Still, they seemed to have fun. We played a couple capture-the-flag games in the woods, and then three or four more in a field called "Circle City" which has all these odd dome-like things in it. The latter games were much more blast-everything-in-sight in nature, because it was a much smaller, much more open field.
We stopped for lunch at about 2, whereupon the other team (and also Nick and Julie of our group) left--they were only doing a half-day. After lunch, our ref said there was another group whose opponents had also left; there were a number more of them, so we got a small portion of their team.
That is to say, we got the five kids playing with them, so us (most of whom had never played before) plus five pre-pubescent boys got to face a force of 15 Fighting Uruk-Hai.
I don't know if they were ex-military or just wanna-bes (many were the Semper Fi patches and tattoos on their arms), but whatever they were, they were testosterone-laden chest-thumping assholes. We were "defending" a structure called the Pentagon, which had (duh) five sides, each one with a doorway, and a tower at each corner. Their objective was to get inside. Our objective was to make them fail their objective. It was off to a roaring start when the other group's ref started the match before we were ready, but that was fairly minor. It was a slaughter, which would have been okay, except that our charming and sportsmanlike opponents were in the habit of continually shooting people who were already out. Erin and I were in one tower, and got shot fairly early; we yelled "out", put the plugs in our gun barrels, and held up our hands as is the custom. Now, you're supposed to make your way off the field at this point, which is difficult when you're on a 20' tower in the middle of a firefight; so we thought to stay still with our hands up and our guns down until the fight moved away. They kept shooting us. I tried to climb down; I got shot about six times in the five seconds I was out from our minimal cover. (This whole time, Erin and I are screaming at the tops of our lungs, "This tower is out! We are both dead! Stop shooting at us!") At this point, I shame to say, I had a morale failure and curled up shaking and crying for a minute or two...the balls do hurt when you get hit, and being continually pelted by them was quite outside my experience. Anyways, our other ref (each group has two, usually) went over and started hollering at them to stop shooting the dead (and, I heard, also got shot during that), and fairly quickly after that it was all over. Though some of them kept shooting even after the whistle call to end the fight. I also learned later that Noah and Eli, who had been killed early and were making their way to the "dead zone", also were getting shot while their hands and guns were up in the dead position.
We and our two refs decided we did not at all want to deal with Team Felchmonkey any further, so gathered our stuff and our tattered spirits and marched off. They did not actually taunt us or anything, but did make that sort of jock-like apology with the subtext of "ain't you man enough to take it?"--I'm sure my Gentle Readers are familiar with what I mean. As Eli commented, "Ah, the orcs are apologizing. That makes _all_ the difference." Our refs led us to another, quieter, larger field, where we could have something a bit less intense for awhile.
And those two games were, I think, the most fun; it was what they call a "president" scenario. One person is the prez, and some portion of the group are his bodyguards; the rest are assassins. The bodyguards have to get the prez to the other end of the field, or at least keep him alive for the whole time; the assassins have to kill him (and he can only be killed by a head shot). This field was, as I said, enormous, and we only had nine people, so it was a very sneaky kind of scenario. The first game, Noah was prez, and me and two others were his bodyguards; the other five were assassins. We did a bang-up job getting him silently and securely up to the creek that bisected the field (though Mr. President actually lost his shoe in the mud--the field is called Z-Swamp for good reason--and I nearly lost my boots rescuing it), and got across the creek too; but then we had to wait and hide while an assassin moved up...and while we were waiting, Zach crept up and offed me and Erin. The remaining guard killed _him_ and got our prez out of there, but the rest of the assassins homed in on the noise, and Eli dropped Noah with one perfect shot right to the eye. Well, the visor, but you know. It was truly stellar.
Second game, All the President's Men became assassins, and all the assassins but Zach switched accordingly; John was president this time. We had a good plan--Noah guarded the target backfield, Erin and I spread ourselves to watch the whole creek, and the other two played roving hunters. At length I spied our targets moving up the far end, hollered for backup, and started firing...but Mike picked me off (from 100+ feet away!), a three-shot burst that got me one in each arm and one in the mouth. Well, the visor again, but the paint came through the slots...yuck. It seems they'd given him John's gun (he has his own, unlike the rental ones we were all using, and it's quite accurate) as an attempt at a decoy (because it also has a vest with stuff that goes with, and he was the only one wearing such a thing), but it was wasted on me anyways as they move completely differently. Not that it really mattered, in the event. Heh. After various shootings, Zach finally got within 10' of the president and demanded his surrender, and he wisely complied.
The rest of the games were capture-the-flag on various wooded fields. The last two, we again combined with another understrength team (bizarre coincidence: one of them was in Eli's fencing class), but what made this different was that, to make numbers even, a ringer was pulled in. This was a teenager who is _paid_ to be in tournaments, he's that good, and had some shit-hot incredible gun too. The first game, he was on the same team as me, and snuck around into the enemy's backfield and took most of them out. The second, he was on the other team, and tried to do the exact same thing the exact same way. However, Noah was waiting for him, and plugged him in the back. He said afterwards he didn't for a second think that ninja-boy would actually be that cocky...but, well, there it was. (Noah turned out to be the day's secret surprise star. And this on his first time out, too.)
So I'm tired and bruised today all over--one tends to get a welt wherever a ball hit, especially if it didn't break, and I have bruises around most of my welts--but very glad I went, and intending to go again.
Today has been crazy-mad frustrating and busy, but since the morning I have had a lovely aikido class and am now settled down with an excellent salad, so all is happy again.
