Words with Nerds

I really like this picture and I think it's going to be one of my favorites. That's my wife and my best friend, each playing Words with Friends on their phone. I took a break to snap a picture with mine.

My friend Tim came down to visit this weekend. Tim has been my best friend for a long time. And the usual disclaimers apply here, that Jen is my best friend too, but in another way, and that it's weird for adults to say "best friend". Whatever. But it is nice to see the people with whom you're closest getting along so well.

Here's my piece from the series I wrote when the blog was young. Tim's a good guy, he's interested in the same geeky things (in some cases, he sparked my initial interest in those geeky things) and I don't see him as often as I'd like in person, so I sometimes forget how frightfully smart he is. (Though, like me, it's the kind of smart that's not really useful for anything on its own).

And before I get too far into this post, I want to say how very much I appreciated everything Jen did to make this a weekend where I could really spend a lot of time with Tim. Lily really wanted to see Mister Tim and Jen kept her busy with roller skating and trips to the shore so Tim and I could have some time alone, which we mostly squandered.

Here's a picture of Tim reading with Lily. We have a series of books called "You Read to Me, I'll Read to You", which are designed to be read by two people. One reads the text of one color, the other reads the text that rhymes with it, which is printed in another color. The final paragraph is read by both readers, and usually includes some variation of "You read to me and I'll read to you." It's cute. We have fables, fairy tales and scary tales, the latter of which is of course Lily's favorite.

I have the habit of humming fragments of songs. Usually whatever pops in to my head or something that I hear in my environment. Tim does this too. So I'll start humming something and I few minutes later Tim will hum it. Repeat several dozen times over the course of the day.

We were mostly humming the theme to Gravity Falls and a piece from Nausicca.

For your listening pleasure:

This was the first time I had seen Gravity Falls, but Tim loved it and Lily loved it and I loved it too! (Jen declined comment) I don't know why no one ever thought to cast Kristen Schaal in a cartoon before this, but oh my good, she is perfect as Mable. I enjoy the absurdity of the show, and the Street Fighter episode is one of the all time funniest things I've ever seen. "Winners don't lose!"

On Friday night, we all had Indian food at the local restaurant. The place has to be a front for someplace, because there are never more than ten people, including our party and the staff whenever we eat there, and yet they've been tenaciously clinging to life for several years now.  Lily loves Naan and she made a meal of that and washed it down with the ice water, and we tried not to think too hard that we were feeding our child bread and water.

We stayed up late and played Sleeping Dogs and Trapt. Sleeping Dogs was a Hong Kong version of Grand Theft Auto and will get its own post shortly. Trapt is the successor to the Deception series of games, where you lure people in to your castle and kill them with traps. Trapt was great in concept, but lackluster in execution. I should have listened to the reviews on Wikipedia that call it "tediously unengaging"  and "fairly short and almost unintelligible".

We spent too much money on food and since Tim is occasionally interested in alcohol archeology, we went to the local liquor store. He took a picture of a beer called Delirium Tremens, which is the ultimate in truth in advertising. This picture is a placeholder and I'll replace  it when I get a copy of Tim's photo.

Truth in advertising

Sometimes we do something big when we get together, other times we don't and this was one of those times. I don't regret it, though. Sometimes that's just what the doctor ordered.

A picture of Tim next to a sign with a curiously specific claim about its cheesesteaks

And we will conclude Random Quotes from the weekend:

• While Playing Sleeping Dogs: "I don't like being beaten to death." "Then stop doing it so much."
• Lily came downstairs when she heard us watching cartoons at 4 in the morning. "This is what grownups always do after kids go to sleep!"
• "Is that a camel or a dromedary?" "It's a llama with osteoporosis."
• "Chinchillas will pee on you to defend themselves."
• "At least I'm still beating my wife." (This was in reference to how I was losing most of my Words with Friends games, but I was still ahead of Jen in that particular match.)

and the best for last...

• "Let me put my pants on! I don't want to miss this!"