20180722_quake

For the last thirty-six hours I’ve been in a state of wifelessness. It just so happens that Roselyn went away on Friday afternoon to attend a conference with one hundred and sixty other women. It’s fair to say that when the cats been away the mouse has been playing…..playing some old school PC games that is!

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Just to reassure you, I made sure that I wore an appropriately dejected face as I kissed her good-bye and watched her drive off into the sunset. Once I was sure it was safe that I was out of her view I threw a few fist pumps into the air and immediately texted a bunch of friends that the LAN party was on!

Some may mistakenly believe that LAN stands for Ladies Away Night but in reality, it’s actually, Local Area Network. For those of you that have not experienced the joy of hosting a LAN party then let me assure you that it really should be on your bucket list.

At a LAN party everyone brings their laptops (used to be desktops but they’re just a pain to carry around), plugs them into a router and downloads whatever game we plan on playing.

Before the frivolity begins, drinks are brought out (always makes the evening better), pizzas ordered, and copious amounts of junk food littered around the table. Basically, we're systematically loading our bodies with as much sugar as we can possibly take so that we're wired for the nights entertainments.

So after we devoured the necessary calories we fired up Quake Arena 3. For those of you that don’t know what Quake is then I suggest you tear up whatever degree you have earned at college and get a real education. Quake was the foundation stone upon which all other first-person shooters have been built. If you like Call of Duty or Gears of War then you have Quake to thank for that.

The thing about Quake is that since it was release in about 2002 it doesn’t waste precious computer cycles on trying draw realistic images. The environment is made from simple textured big polygons and the characters are much the same.

All this lack of video sophistication doesn’t really matter when have a good friend in your cross-hairs. In fact, I had one of those special moments in my life when I launched a rocket at one of my friends, glanced at his screen just as his character turned to receive the incoming projectile. Needless to say the rocket exploded and there wasn’t much left of his character. Oh….good times!

What was interesting with this LAN party was that a few young adults in their early twenties decided to join us old timers. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing as my hand twitched the mouse and keyboard. It’s safe to say that the youngsters learned that old doesn’t necessarily mean incapacitate or useless.

After getting to bed at around 4am my body clock stupidly woke me up at 8:30am. It was then that I remembered that youth had some advantages......I miss those teenage years of sleeping into midday. When I was younger my digestive system also seemed to be able to cope with the abuse of a LAN party but now that I’m in my fifties the Saturday ended up being a bit of a challenge…..but it was worth it!

So the lesson to this story is “Carpe diem”. When your significant other ends up being away then “Seize the Day!” and have a great time blowing up stuff (and friends) by hosting your own LAN party.

Have a great weekend.

Michael