Like None Did Before in 2014

I'm already starting to slip on keeping up with PB, but it's at least on my mind. That wasn't the case with OD during the last few months, or even the last few years. Sometimes the days feel only a couple hours long. In reality, I'm just damn busy, which is my own fault, and also how I prefer things most of the time. Thinking back over the weekend, I worked all day Friday, then immediately went to an Anti-Valentine's Day party, which was just basically a hangout with people I would hang out with anyway(and there was even a couple there, hah). Got like five hours of sleep, worked all day Saturday, immediately had a massive Magic the Gathering tournament at my place and then was up late because of running people home and hanging out with who was left when I got back home. Got up Sunday, worked for a little over eight hours, immediately went home afterward, packed up my Wii and went to a friend's house for a mini Smash Bros. tournament and hanging out. Got like five hours of sleep, then worked nine hours Monday and then donated afterward. And then a little bit of free time, finally.

I've been making more of an effort to get sleep lately. I technically can function on 4 hours of sleep, but it's not fun, and it's showing. I've always had small bags under my eyes but they've grown much larger the past few months. I got a decent night's sleep Monday and slept for about 12 hours last night. As soon as I write this I'll head to bed so I can get up to hit the gym in the morning.

Anyway, being super social has its benefits. It seems to come naturally to me. I never wanted to be a leader, but over the past five years I've come to become the unanimous leader of the OME. It stands for Oregon Magic Entertainment, a carryover from Michigan Magic Entertainment when I moved here from there. It was just a spoof of WWE, since I like wrestling and I like Magic the Gathering. Originally the OME was just that, some people playing Magic at my house. I've slowly gathered more and more people. Some have stayed, some have drifted away, some have been exiled. It's now a group of friends that do play Magic, but also party and play video games and even have the drama and complications that any group of friends does.

I do everything, for the most part. Update the Facebook group, make events, invite people over, provide transportation sometimes, create tournaments, all this stuff. Recently some people have had problems with the local hobby shop in town. It's the only one in town, so they can get away with general asshattery. I looked into getting stuff sent to us from Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Magic cards. I only go to the hobby shop for prerelease tournaments, if I could order those packs directly for my group there'd be no need to go there. No dice. You either have to have a store or be an event organizer, and that means opening up your venue for anyone, which is my house.

So I do all this shit anyway, and somehow the discussion came up...why not open our own store? The more and more we discussed it, the more it made sense. There's one place in town, and it sucks. It's a niche market, but we live in a town of 70,000 people, in a valley of 200,000 people with only two other shops half an hour away in opposite directions. There's enough for us. I'm charismatic, friendly, and hard-working. I hate my current job and it doesn't seem like I'll move any time soon. What's there to lose? So that's the plan now. I'll work over the next year to acquire a shitton of cards and get a credit card for small loans to build my barely-there credit. I have one friend who is interested in doing the same. He has a reputation for being flaky and impulsive, but I believe in him. I'm the one that believes in people. Rarely am I believed in myself, so I understand what it's like. And I think we can offer something not only unique, but simply better than anywhere else. The Magic league is pretty popular right now, I can only imagine what I could do with a store. Saturday's tournament had 17 people - there's not much more nerd you can pack into a house. I'll get actual, full-size metal belts made for single and tag team play. It's goofy, but that's the fun of it. Plus all the regular hobby shop stuff, video game tournaments too. It'll actually be clean, and not smell, and I plan to avoid as many derogatory nerd cliches as possible. I want a place that smells nice, and is clean, with people who are social or at least nice, containing an environment that is competitive but with respect. It's a far cry from anything I've experienced playing at the shop in town. I also have a core of friends and friends of friends who would stop in at least once or twice a week and more importantly would spread the hopefully true good word of my place and the certainly bad word of the competition, since everyone seems to have a negative story stemming from there.

It's not something I would have imagined myself doing a year ago. I want to make music. I never practice bass. I keep myself too busy, and I'm too stressed out/drained when I get home from my job. It makes sense to make money off of what I'm already doing anyway, and I would actually want to play bass after work because work wouldn't suck. My co-conspirator, Chris, is a musician, so he'll help me with music and I'll help him become better at Magic. Getting a loan will be tough, as will finding a decent location. Someone suggested a Kickstarter, which would be kind of weird to advertise, since it's a store and not a CD or something, but it's worth a shot. We're a pretty interesting group of people who tire of working thankless corporate jobs and want to create a better escape from it for us and other people in the community too. I'm sure someone can identify with that.

I went to Portland last week with several friends. One needed to go up there to do some training for his job, and that's all the prodding I needed. I love road trips. I ate a shitton of food. We stopped at a Denny's on the way up, and the waitress didn't deliver the oreo shake I ordered until we got the receipts and I was already full. I did the only sensible thing to do, which was to chug the shake and the backup shake. I thought I was going to die, haha. We went to a pay-by-the-plate sushi place the next day, so I went to town on that. Uni is pretty much the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten. Makes sense, since it's sea urchin gonads. Tastes like a tidepool smells. We stopped for donuts on the way back down to Medford, and I asked someone to get me a small glazed donut. They got me the biggest donut that was there, it probably weighed a pound. The only way to counter an asshole move like that is to one up it by eating the whole thing right away, so that's what I did. Ugh. I could die in peace without eating another donut ever. I wouldn't mind a few more shakes though.

Off to bed it seems. Farewell for now.