State of Mind

Dave, Vin and later James were all in attendance last night. What a terrific time. Many-a-cup of coffee and discussion. Over the holidays, USA Brad had printed out an optical illusion and left it a my place. It has taken up residence on my fridge where it errily watches over my visitors. Here you can see Vin enjoying the effect. You can download it yourself on this guy's blog (.jpeg), or here (as .pdf), although it seems likely that it would have originally been popularized here.

This was followed by a viewing of some of the LotR extra DVD features. James didn't get here until 10 or 10:30 but he came with his game ON -- Literally!

He brought over his Nintendo DS, a portable speaker set up, and a new game, Elektroplankton. It is both, hard to call it a game and yet, you could hardly call it anything else. Confused? There you go. For at least an hour, the four of us huddled around the device with a mixture of confusion, humor and awe. Dave seemed to think it was pretty good.

I enjoyed playing around with the guys and it was only through an extreme effort that I was finally able to push James out the door well past any decent sense of the phrase "bed-time". As I stumbled off towards bed something struck me. Not, as is usually the case, the rocking chair in the dark against my big toe, but rather a feeling. For me it has become only too rare for a host of good, adult reasons. It wasn't time well spent. It
wasn't time utterly wasted. It was the kind of time that I managed a lot while in university. Time well wasted and utterly spent. It comes with the kind of activity that is so frenzied, detailed, fun, or full of life and living that there isn't a second to spare.

It didn't last long. But it was there. This is one of my greatest motivations behind QT and The Quest in general. QT was a resounding success. Sorry to have missed you.