I had a blast, as always. On Monday night I met up with Kyle at the airport, walked out to the van, boom, Abney and MR (no big deal). After picking up Trent we took our time getting to the house, walked around a DC mall for like an hour and stopped at Chipotle while we were there.
Arriving at the house, there were about 10 people crowded in the sunroom playing/watching Kart practice. For me, the whole meet was defined by Kart. Playing in the basement, getting people together for rounds, keeping score on the laptop, doing practice rounds...by the end, I was definitely Karted out. I'm with Jim, I don't have the same fire as I did five years ago (even though I was glad to play well in my first R16). The final between MR/Zoran/Boss/Abney was incredibly fun to watch, but we probably could have arrived there sooner with less play-ins and such. I'm definitely in favor of shortening the tournament in the future.
Once upon a time, the ping-pong tournament was pretty hyped...Nate ran it under the radar this year and played a sick final with MR at like midnight on Friday, resulting in as good a final as there's ever been at VA. MR winning Kart and ping-pong was sick
Hadn't played GE multi in forever, what a shit game
Overcooked was awesome, would've liked to see more people try this game. 1P-4P game where you're chefs in a kitchen trying to keep up with orders and all sorts of mayhem goes down, glad to try it
Poker was fun, would've liked to play more than one session. Had a couple fun hands but mostly just folded or c-bet after preflop raising to win small pots...QB and Brian Ray regaled us with some good stories
The first game of werewolf was as much fun as I've ever had playing the game, partly because I got to actually live until there were five left. Modding with DK was a lot of fun as well, though most games are really just a shitstorm of confused villa and overly delayed seer claims (as well as half the room not saying a word). Always fun to see new guys try the game out
Was awesome to try the VR headset, big ups to Nash for bringing that
Volleyball was awesome, I would've played a lot more. We were in the lake for a couple hours one day just messing around...would be fun to come up with some type of competitive thing to do in the water. No basketball was a damn shame considering the milder-than-normal weather, though I guess some guys took a few hours to play tennis one day. Tennis is really fun too
Getting to see Deel/Qwec was great, some of us ended up chilling upstairs for awhile talkin GE/PD, the old and the new (Infil's last PR was in 2001, FYI), and watching Trent fail Aztec for hours
Ended up chatting with the Weathertons a lot more than I normally do. Awesome, awesome people. S'mores by the campfire was dope
At the end of the day, like I said, I definitely wanted more time to just be there, chill, and do things that haven't been done before (zero board games were played for the whole meet, has to be a new record). Getting the Kart tourney done on Wednesday night and having to figure out what to do with two full days and no tourneys would be awesome.
Notwithstanding, it was super fun and I always really enjoy seeing everyone. When I got back to my job, the first day I was at work, it was just me and a pharmacist who I relate to pretty well. I shared a bit about the vacation and showed her a picture, and the main comment she made was that it's unusual and not many people would get to do something like what we do. "You guys all get along?" Pretty sure she had not the best family and not the best childhood; more and more, I see how lucky I've been in life and how you can't over-emphasize how great the atmosphere at VA is. Good times
