OCT 10

2024

THURSDAY (2024 SB Meetup)
0507 Sitting at gate D15 about 20 minutes before I can board. Wanted to stop in at any of the restaurants, but it just makes more sense to do that at the destination, where I likely have hours to kill. I did not sleep last night, but I DID complete Timewalking Ulduar for decent gear upgrades. Other than the meet-up, I'm especially looking forward to the new expansion announcement for HS, happening around noon today; I had a widely liked comment on the subreddit yesterday in which I concluded they're probably not adding the monk class to the game, but at least I can keep dreaming about it for another day. The community rep, Ridiculous Hat, told me to "keep dreaming buddy", but I know better than to draw any conclusions of any sort from a statement like that.

They're asking to have 10 or so passengers check their carry-ons. After being without a CPAP in Colorado last year, I won't risk checking it. We'll see if they make me check it anyway.

0910 Forgot to mention, the ride share driver in Philly was very talkative and told me about starting his own driving business after a bunch of his regulars expressed interest in coming to a long-term arrangement. Currently sitting in the MSP seating area in front of their food court, having just eaten a breakfast of burgers at the Shake Shack. No idea what kind of wait I'm in for before other people show up. I'm pretty sleepy, and I'm concerned I failed to load one of my charging cables... Or perhaps it failed to make it through security? They sent my stuff through twice.

1835 Some time after my last update, people started filtering into the MSP airport. I tried to follow Cania and others into the baggage claim area, but we never specified which terminals we were in, so we never met up. I eventually found my way to Meauxdal, and we talked for a while. I grabbed a cookies and cream drink from the coffee shop, and she played "America" on the piano in an unexpected time signature. Tulpa appeared soon after, and we then walked to the other terminal's ground transportation area to meet up with Cuba. Unfortunately, he'd already committed to transporting the four people in the "Price of Flight" party, so there wouldn't be room for me. I bid them farewell.

After spending some time catching up on the announcements and chaos surrounding the upcoming Hearthstone expansion, "The Great Dark Beyond", I decided to return to the other terminal to find Brooks and the_clraken, and I think also SLUGGER showed up? We were trying to find our way to HelloJed, but poor communication of intent lead to misadventure, and we elected to stay in the ground transportation lobby until we figured out the plan. A student hockey team swarmed the area right after we found seats. After confirming that the other airport stragglers had made arrangements, Celeste ordered a ride share for the four of us. I was in the middle seat in the back, and once I started nodding off and snoring, I put my mask back on.

Arriving at the church was a little overwhelming. The sanctuary space with the stained glass window (in the north-ish direction, based on our best reckoning) has been converted into a dining area with 12 tables seating six each. Opposite the window to the south is the kitchen; the numberless bedroom is in the northeast corner. South of the kitchen is an entry stairway with some cabinets and a microwave. (The code to open the exterior door midway down the stairs is under dispute.)

North from the bottom of the stairway is a hallway with a peace mural on the west wall; numberless bedrooms line the east wall. After the second doorway to the east (a bathroom), the hall opens up into a TV den with two couches, two recliners, and a table with two high chairs.

Upon closer examination, there are "his and her" bathrooms east of the den, though they're only gendered in decor and wall colors; both have showers and bins full of towels. The next east wall feature is a narrow kitchenette with little more than a fridge, a coffee maker, and a roll of paper towels. I worried I'd get a splinter from the rough wooden walls while I fumbled for the light switch. The west side of the den had an open doorway leading to a half-stair nook; kids' games and towels are stored here, along with workout equipment and croquet stuff. Halfway up the stairs open onto the main hallway which bisects the building, while the rest of the stairs continue up to the southwest entrance to the sanctuary.

Returning to the den hallway, we have three bedrooms. Taking them counterclockwise, the southeast bedroom has six beds (three bunks). The northeast bedroom has four beds (two bunks), plus an uncloseable doorway to the northwest bedroom, which has a weird boat-shaped bed, and a second tiny bed under the overhang of a staircase behind the west wall.

It turns out that these rooms ARE numbered: 1, 2, and 3. 4 (to the southwest) is closed with a keypad.

Back to the central hallway: there's a back entrance on the south end, while the main entrance is opposite that to the north. The south side has a coatrack built into the east wall. Walking north past the half-stair, there are doors west (to the main bedroom hallway) and east (to the public men's room; cinder block and drywall painted blue, institutional tricolor tile, and just one stall/urinal). Further north, an information station has been set up along the west wall. The public women's room is a little further north from there, after which the hallway opens into the main entryway foyer: double doors west lead to the bedrooms, and double doors east then climb eight steps into the sanctuary.

Let's step back to the southernmost hallway to the west. Immediately through the doorway, there's a laundry room to the south and a bunch of towel shelves to the west. The hallway continues west past the shelves, but it also climbs stairs to the north, where a landing 9 steps up lets you either go another 9 steps down to the north, or climb seven steps to the west to reach the Main Room.

If we follow the west hallway instead, we've got a bathroom to the north, then bedroom 107 to the south (1 master bed plus a bunk bed in the corner), a closed door to the north, room 108 to the north, 106 to the south (1 master bed and 1 twin bed, I think?), and finally another north-south hallway.

The south end of this hall has a locked metal exit door. Going north, we have the hockey-themed room 105 (just a master bed) to the west, then the connecting hallway I just described to the east, Baby Angel room 104 to the west with another queen bed and a bunk, the second connecting hallway to the east, and finally the train bedroom 103 to the west (with two queen beds, one of which is under a bunk) and the CYOA/sun-themed room 102 to the east. I took one of the queen beds in here; Brooks took the other. Jason grabbed a top bunk, but I don't know if anybody else is on the bottom bunk.

Second connecting hallway from the west: Room 108 has a second door to the south here—I think it has a pair of bunk beds and a queen bed in the middle. 101 then opens to the north, which has just a pair of queen beds. Looks like Bachelor has one of these. Approaching the stairs, there's another bathroom to the south, which is probably where I'll be showering. This end of the hall opens up with something I'm going to refer to as a credenza, decorated with various ceramic church models.

Let's go back up to the stairs to the Main Room. There's a bar along the east wall, north of the stairs. In the room center is the main seating area; three couches and two recliners face a big TV on the wall. The ceiling descends in the corners, so the northwest section of the room is just seating and tables for children. Another couple of areas with sofas and comfort chairs around coffee tables flank the door in the center of the west wall. The center of the room is taken up by the stairs up to a more intimate space; past the stairs to the west, there's an opening in the south wall to the final area with bedrooms.

The hallway through the opening runs west to east. The west end is the door to room 201, and it's closed, currently. As I walk east, there's a locked closet to the north; a half-bath to the north with just a toilet, urinal, and sink; room 202 to the south (closed), 203 to the south (just a couple queen beds and maybe a folded cot, and finally the east door is a full bath.

Taking a break from that: after we arrived, I watched HelloJed play Burnout 3 for a while, then moved to the sanctuary to try charging my phone. It was draining faster than it charged, so I cut my losses and started this update. The pizza showed up at the end of the previous paragraph, so I had a couple slices while I charged my phone and tried the new cards that came out with the new expansion announcement, today. Tried to set up on the second floor by the Xbox/GameCube, but folks were starting to watch High School Musical 2 for some reason, so I watched that until I started to fall asleep, then finished this update.

2023

Tuesday: this was a routine workday, most of my time absorbed in helping my team with guidance on our project and dealing with a follow-up that turned out to be unnecessary. I had a sandwich for lunch. Julie was late getting home from work, but we finished the large-noodle pasta leftovers while watching Futurama. I ran some laundry and brought up her small green suitcase since she's going to be out of the area tomorrow night on their auditing trip with work. I've been watching these old FFXIV stream vods the past couple days, and today's progress saw the guy finish the Shadowbringers base game.

After posting this update, I thought I'd probably play some FFXIV myself before bed. What actually happened was that I looked up my Steam profile and copied a bunch of achievement data and info about the last time I played various games into my calendar. I was up way too late doing this, but I cannot underscore how satisfying it is to see more information filling up this website.