Well, folks, two of the three days of birthday merriment have now passed.  On my actual birthday, Friday, Mom and I went to the Greek place at the mall and did the birthday meal thing.  Mom was hungry, I was talking about stuff, so she actually ended up cleaning her plate before I did.  And I didn't finish all mine.  Very odd, for us anyway.  Is it me or am I beginning to eat less?  Must be getting old.
 
Today, Saturday, I actually used a day of leave time (the crowd gasps!) and yet dragged by cellulite-packed rumpus out of bed at 7:30 AM.  The clock went off and startled poor Boo so much he nearly fell off the bed.  Up, washed, braided, tied up, fully dressed and checking e-mail by 8:15.  Was out of the house by 9, met my friends and after a bit of car shuffling we were on the road.  Got to Dave & Busters right on time.  Logistics, my friends, makes the world go 'round. 
 
Dave & Busters is a giant arcade with a nice restaurant attached.  The current state of the art in video games (or rather arcade video games) is simulation games, it seems.  Everything was a sim game of some sort.  Of particular interest was the Star Wars Pod Race game, which after about 2 tries I was able to get the hang of.  The two throttles are for the engines on each side.  That's the key.  You can't really move vertically.  You push the throttles forward to go faster, pull back to go slower, and vary the power to either to turn.  Trying to get into the entrance to Beggar's Canyon can be a whiplash-inspiring experience.  I can claim to have done a few smooth passages through every part of the course, but not all of them on the same run.  I am particularly pround of my ability to do so through the stone archways.  I can do these things.  I'm a Jedi.  Got the braid to prove it.
 
But truly the reason I wanted to go to Dave & Busters was the BattleTech simulator.  And let me tell you, folks, it's worth it to do the all-day pass.  I got 6 runs in, anywhere from 8 to 12 minutes.  That sounds like a gyp, I know.  But 12 minutes in that thing feels like an hour!
 
This thing is to video games what the Sistine Chapel is to fingerpainting.  This isn't a video game, it's a true honest-go-gods combat simulator.  It's got about a million buttons -- I'm sure the guy running the thing told me how many, but I've forgotten.  The main screen shows the view outside your mech -- or rather the view you the pilot would see looking out your mech's head, with appropriate heads-up displays.  At your left side is the forward-backward movement control.  You push forward to go, pull back to stop, with a button on the side that you push when you want to go backward.  Awkward as that seems, you quickly get the hang of it.  The joystick at the right hand controls the left-right and your weapons.  There's two smallers screens on either side of a slightly larger screen on the console -- mech status, radar, weapons status, various functions, all kinds of buttons.   There are also two more screens above, but I never got around to those.  How anyone learns all of this I'll never know.  I can see myself spending obscene amounts of money learning.   
 
The game starts and there you are, in a mech, and it starts walking -- or more usually running, as you're usually trying to get to the fight which of course is halfway across the map!   It's fun just to simply run in the things, you go through water and you can hear the splashing, you go up and down hills, around trees.  Unless, of course, you've got an Atlas in front of you shooting the trees you were cleverly thinking to hide behind.  It worked in the paper game!  You can knock trees over.  You can go weaving through buildings at a full run, bouncing along with that peculiar bird-like gate.  Then you have to ruin it all by shooting at something.  Which, admittedly, can have its own appeal if done from a nice appreciable distance.  It has even more style and panache if you can do it without nipping the armor off your teammate who is currently standing toe-to-toe with said target.  So I pulled the occassional William Tell feat of marksmanship now and again.  Other times, you chase mechs around like a cheetah going after a gazelle.  That's also particularly fun while giggling maniacally.  The "run straight into them full charge with all weapons blazing" mode of battle quickly loses its appeal after you've died about 5 times, so I was quite happy to switch tactics -- or to be precise to acquire some tactics.  Run around the side of the hill and come in from the side -- that really confuses them.  Using your teammates as distractions so you can run right up behind an Atlas and chase them down with all weapons blazing -- now there's a reason to get up early in the morning. 
 
So suffice to say that I had my moments.       
 
So we played, we ate, we talked, I got convinced that maybe I do really need to seriously think about moving to Atlanta (and NOT because of the BattleTech simulator but for serious legitimate reasons like GETTING A LIFE).  Nevermind the staggering logistical nightmare it would entail in uprooting my entire moderaly comfy though limited life here at Radio Free Ross-a-Noodle ... a total rethink of my future and all plans concerning my plans to do the reverse mortgage on the house when I get wrinkly and consign myself to the Old Sci-Fi Writers' Home.  What would I do, where would I live, sell the house, move a couple hundred miles away, uproot my cats, throw away all I've managed to scrape together for myself here...
 
But the Force knows I may not have much of a choice soon, if our cheerful little cove of madness we call The Day Job goes belly up...
 
And the Force knows I've had serious doubts about my abilities to hold all this together here at Radio Free Ross-a-Noodle.  Constantly feeling like sand is slipping through my hands, that I'm forgetting something, that niggling little feeling in the back of my mind that it's not working. 
 
Anxiety dreams of falling airplanes, lost lunch money, wandering in interminable hallways while the minutes tick away, endless parking lots and I can't find my truck...
 
If one must fall, it is better to dive. 
 
 
Tomorrow I go to Cleveland to the third and final installment of the Wacky Weekend.  The mysterious Present That Wasn't Ready will be there.  My mother isn't the sort to go for the blow-up sheep, so...
 
Further bulletins as events warrant.