So last night Sarah organised for a bunch of people to play Darkzone, in Box Hill. I was surprised actually at who came – Sverra, Adele & Michael, and so forth. They all travelled quite some way (well, with the exception of Sarah of course), which is a rare effort for them.
Anyway, it was cool, as expected. It was surprisingly quiet for a Friday night, so we were virtually playing alone – I don’t think we had more than half a dozen other people in there with us at a time, versus our dozen. Turns out Sverra’s a sneaky little bugger; he won at least the first game, and I think one of the other two. I managed second in the first game – I had high hopes given that Rob wasn’t there, whom inexplicably always manages to beat me – but they were dashed. Unfortunately I was slowed down a bit towards the end of the second game… Sarah brought Mint Slice & TimTams, and I started getting a bit of a cramp after thieving off with half of them pre-game. Whoops. :)
The last game we played was just our group plus two random guys, and was played in “Fast Freddy” mode; the guns fire 4x faster and the respawn time is 4x lower. That made for some pretty frantic action to start with, although it made things a bit crazy; if you ran into someone in close quarters, there was little chance to get away from them before you respawned, so you were pretty much guaranteed of either a double kill or being doubled killed.
In the first game I got some power-up thing, too, which doubled my fire rate. I’ve never seen that one before, but it was cool while it lasted; I went on a rampage and killed half a dozen people in only a few moments before some little blighter got me.
I would have preferred, in the last game, to play the other alternative we were presented with – “Midnight Madness”. In that mode the packs aren’t lit (until you kill someone), so it’s less of a duck shoot and more tactical. Unfortunately the consensus was closer to Fast Freddy. Nonetheless, by the end of the third game I’d grown tired of the pace and decided to be sneaky anyway… I don’t think I got shot once in the last half of that game, despite hitting many others. That was nice, although my score suffered proportionately; I fell to 6th in that game.
After Darkzone I quickly ran off, partly to pick up Roxanne so she could join us for dinner, partly so I could avoid potential scorn from my poor ranking. :D Roxanne’s not really up to Darkzone yet, or at least not interested in it in any case, so she was to join us afterwards for dinner. As it turns out Ebony also came along, which was cool; I haven’t seen her since at least last year… well, probably my 21st, I would guess.
I should also note that Michael [Robinson] came along too. He’d never played Darkzone before. He didn’t do too fantastically I gather, in points, but I think he had fun.
Anyway, dinner was excellent as always – hard to go wrong with the Pancake Parlour – although it was very much soured by the embarrassing antics of Tim & Ann-Marie, who were so rude to the waitresses that I very nearly left. I think perhaps that Scotty did leave partially because of that, although he did have to head off earlier anyway.
Their antics mainly boiled down to be extremely rude when their drinks were apparently delayed – I had no issues, getting mine within ten minutes of getting there – and very condescending, demanding a new receipt that was “legible”, even though there really wasn’t anything wrong with the first one. It was just the normal scrawl you get from waiters and waitresses, which isn’t written for the customer. They could have just asked politely for an easier to read copy, but no…
Then when it came time to pay they made a point of not leaving a tip, saying so far more loudly than necessary so that the waitresses could hear.
Oh, and someone (I presume Tim) apparently wrote on the back of the first receipt something about the “blonde” waitress sucking, but being hot.
I get along fine with Tim & Ann-Marie in most cases, for short periods, but I really can’t see myself ever inviting them to anything I organise. Not after that. I know Sarah felt terrible, seeing as she organised the dinner and is quite familiar with waitressing. ‘course, she’s seen her fair share of such types too.
Afterwards most people went back to Sarah’s for mousse and whatnot. Roxanne, Ebony & I eventually left there at about 4:15am, after playing with the cats, the dog, and chatting for ages. Unfortunately Roxanne’s allergic to cats, and after all that time in the house with Monster & Missy running riot, she wasn’t feeling too well. Still, I think she was glad to see people, especially Sarah.
Curiously enough, on the way back, after dropping Roxanne & Ebony off, I was pulled over by the police, somewhere along Southern Road. Hooray! That’s the first time of course, while I’ve been driving. I was a little worried, of course, with all the registration stuff for the car sort of all over the place. Plus, I’d realised just a few days ago that it actually says on the license that you have to notify VicRoads of changes in address, which presumably means they actually care about that sort of thing… whoops.
Anyway, I got the standard license and breathalyser check. That was a huge anti-climax… since I’ve never drunk alcohol in my life, I was kind of hoping something special would happen… like it’d maybe come up as a negative BAC, or conversely go off the scale. But no, apparently universal irony was taking a holiday, since the reading was zero.
The police lady checked my headlights, and pointed out that one of them was dim (virtually off). I had no idea; I know one of the driving lights is kinda spastic and orientated wrong, but I’d never noticed any problem with the headlights. She didn’t seem to mind too much, though; I think luckily because it was still on, albeit very dim, was enough to avoid any nastiness. She also let me go on the license address thing, although you can be sure that’ll be first on my todo list this week. :)
She then went to check the registration on the car. I told her that it was my uncle’s, I was buying it, and that the registration was being processed this week, so I wasn’t sure who’s name it would be in. I then realised while I was waiting in the car that of course Scott doesn’t have the same surname as me, and it is an out-of-state rego, so they probably have no way of verifying that he’s my uncle. I started to get quite worried after a while, especially given it took several minutes for them to do their thing. I then saw in the side view mirror that they were pulling out, and that worried me a bit – I had pictures of them swinging in front of me to stop me getting away, but no, apparently they were happy and they handed my license back to me out the window… unconventional, but given the temperature at that time of the morning, pretty understandable.
So, my first police check. Exciting. :D
