Subject: TAN: How many Darkfriends can you fit in a bed? From: sginter@ix.netcom.com (Steven M. Ginter) Organization: Verdant Future Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan The preparations for the second Toledo DarkFriend Social began several days beforehand. Dave Rothgery E-mailed me, asking if I'd like to share in the driving duties out there (it being a roughly 5 ½ hour drive from Buffalo to Toledo). I said sure, so we made plans to meet at a bookstore at the local mega-mall on Friday morning at 9:30. "Cool," I thought, "I can browse and find a book to read while it's Dave's turn at driving." So Friday morning comes, and I decided to go and grab a bite to eat at Denny's before meeting Dave at the mall. I hadn't eaten at Denny's for a while, and now I remember why. I got to the mall feeling a bit green around the gills, only to discover that Buffalo, being the incredibly civilized place that it is, has malls that open much later than 9:30 in the morning, so I stood in front of the bookstore reading a newspaper until Dave walked up. We took a short trip to my house to drop off my car and pick up my luggage (which included two PCs, a very heavy toolbox (more on that later), a small duffel bag, and a sleeping bag and pillow (I wanted to travel light, so I left the swords and kitchen sink at home this time)). The drive out to Toledo was rather uneventful. We stopped for lunch at a roadside Burger King, and I demonstrated to Dave the essential skill of driving with your knees while holding a burger in one hand and a soda in the other. The one noteworthy thing, however, is that apparently the Ohio State Bird is the roadside traffic cone; we saw literally _hundreds_ of those things during the drive out; it seems that every road we were on was under construction. To hell with "your tax dollars at work;" I'll keep my money and take a plane instead! We arrived at chez Brazeau around 4 or so, and were greeted by a smiling Maggie and Kenn. I had several gifts for Maggie, only one of which really worked out. I had made her a chain-mail bra. I recently took up the hobby of making chain mail, and a (relatively) small project like Maggie's bra only took about a week to do; it took about 200 feet of 14-gage galvanized steel wire, or roughly 2,000 5/16-inch rings. After much carousing and joking, we headed off to dinner at some Chinese place that Maggie recommended. The food was quite good, I must say, and trying to teach Dave to eat with chopsticks was amusing. I recall remarking to Kenn that the restaurant staff must've heard that he was coming, because they were thoughtful enough to put pink toilet seats in the men's room. (As an aside, in retrospect I suppose I teased Kenn rather mercilessly the whole weekend; I'm not gay but that didn't stop me from flirting with him, pinching his nipples, spanking him, or parading around in front of him wearing spandex. Sorry if I overdid it, Kenn.) Now afterwards, we had all decided that we wanted to go see Blair Witch Project, which we had wanted to see in Vegas but never got a chance to. First, though, we had to stop off at Circuit City to pick up some blank CDs (I had brought my PC out so I could burn all of Maggie's mp3 files onto CD for her), and also to visit Mark, Maggie's husband. Well, between those two things (with a rather healthy stop in the toy aisle of Mark's store for some enjoyable exercises in mental regression), we were too late to catch the movie, so we decided to go to a video store instead, because another movie that Kenn wanted to see was "The Opposite of Sex." By the time we got back to Maggie's place, the kids were already asleep, so I sat down to have a long talk with Maggie's PC. My goal was two-fold: I wanted to put her hard drive into my PC so I could burn the files off using my CD burner (Maggie's processor couldn't support a CDRW, or so she had been told), and I also wanted to rebuild her system into something a bit faster and much more reliable, using parts from my spare PC which I'd brought with me. Well, best laid plans and all that, this turned out to be a real mess. I could go into the details, but the short version is that Maggie's hard drive is extremely tempermental and doesn't like being moved, so we were forced to eventually wipe it. But that came later. By the time I gave up on it on Saturday night (because Mark wanted to get some sleep), her PC was in pieces and I couldn't read her hard drive at all. So they all piled onto the couch to watch the movie that they'd rented while I made some alterations to Maggie's chain mail (I had made the bra cups too small…silly me!). I think we all got to sleep after four. We all arose rather groggily a few hours later, and I was glad that I was just too tired to kill the people that I wanted to kill; namely, Kenn (for his snoring) and Maggie's cats (mostly just on the principle that they're cats, but specifically because they kept scaring the hell out of me by running over my legs when I was sound asleep). We were supposed to get moving around 11, which of course was not fated to happen. Amelia arrived sometime around 10, I think, and Dave and I left shortly thereafter to buy Maggie a sound card (she'd been using the on-board sound support in her old PC). The trip took longer than it should've, but we got back, all piled into Dave's car, and I drove us out to Cedar Point. There were a few comments about my driving habits being a precursor to the roller coasters that we'd be on later, but I just need to state for the record that because it wasn't my car, I was taking it easy. We passed right by a nuclear power plant, which was damned impressive. I'd seen nuclear power plants before (hell, I lived in one for three years), but never one quite that large before. So we got to Cedar Point around 1 or so and started on the coasters. We went on three or four and then broke for dinner, which was outside the park at a very good seafood restaurant. We all overate (I had a very good steak and a divine chocolate dessert), and then it was back into the park to see if we could hold our dinner down. We went on a few more coasters (the Magnum being one of them…what a ride!), and then we drove back to Toledo. A few interesting notes about Cedar Point: -it rained. Not much, but enough to close down some of the rides. -the ride that you want to go on next is guaranteed to be at least a mile away, if not more. -the parking lot changes shape and form after dark (as evidenced by a much-more-thorough-than-should-have-been-necessary search for Dave's car) -on most of the big rides, they have cameras at various points that take your photo as your life is flashing before your eyes and your stomach is in your shoes. It's good for a chuckle or two. After we got back, I built Maggie a new PC and tried to install Windows98, only to find that the copy that I'd sent her a while back wasn't good. So now she had a new PC with no OS on it. Joy. Just when I was wondering what else could go wrong, I finally got lucky: stuck in the back of a jewel case for one of the utilities CDs that I'd brought was an old copy of win95b, and it worked! Hooray! We were all flagging from lack of sleep the night before and most of the day spent on our feet, so we turned in at a little after 2. I can pretty much guarantee that I didn't stir the entire night. I doubt I even breathed. Sunday morning we all slept in. I stumbled into Maggie's room and put the finishing touches on her PC (like installing the modem drivers and configuring her Dial-Up Networking and network settings). We all piled onto her bed and were having fun tortu^^^ickling her son Alex to death, until the bed sprang a leak. Oops. I decided to take a shower, and got out of the shower just in time to witness Maggie's cat "christening" my pillow, so Maggie whisked it off to the washing machine. Hmph. I should've killed it when I had the chance. We all piled into the kitchen for some very good omelettes (thanx again Mags!) and around that time Alex and Ernie popped The Lion King into the VCR, and so began the gradual migration over to the couch to watch it. There's just something about Disney that roots you in that spot and forces you to watch. The movie ended, and dave and I realized that it was well past the time that we had intended to leave, so I got my pillow back, we all took pictures, and then Dave and I left to begin the long drive back. On the whole, PC problems notwithstanding, I had a *blast*. Maggie and Kenn were great (as always), and Amelia and Dave are both very nice people. I wish every weekend could be like that… -- Steve G. Wandering Gaidin "There's no more universality in this than in any other matter of personal taste, be it masturbation or chocolate." -Kate Nepveu, rasfwr-j