Processing, Processing, Processing...

So our stuff arrived. We've spent most evenings this week unpacking and setting up stuff. We've still got a ways to go, it takes a move to realize how much crap you're lugging around in your life. But it's slowly shaping into our regular household dimensions.

Mostly what I've found here is things are very similar to California. Sometimes you get the 'humidity' which is a word for when the air feels wet but it's not actually raining. Doesn't seem to be too big of a bother and I've rarely had it happen for more than a couple hours at a time.

We tried out Josh's LARP thing. I played an NPC, which meant I played as goblins, orcs, tazeloids (giant frog people), skeletons, skeleton tazloids... etc. Their combat system is not quite what I was hoping for. You can't hit someone in the head (which is usually the best target when they're defended by a shield). And there needs to be a one foot buffer between you. Which mostly means my SCA sword fighting knowledge is of less use than I'd hoped it would be. But generally it's a fun little game, and more of my interest will likely lie in the storytelling aspects. I'm going to try to bring a little bit of SLO LARP-crafting experience into the fray and see how they like it.

I'm still just getting to know Josh's friends, he has a lot of them to meet. Around 30 of them get together every Monday night for a potluck dinner. (They all fit in Josh's house, that's how big his house is). Generally I'm finding they have less of the high intellect conversations we had and more of the gaming and sex related discussions. So of course I'm happy with the subjects mostly :). I think I'll have to update you later with how things progress as for now we're mostly on the outside and just being integrated into the group dynamics.

We went last night to the SCA fighter practice. First impression is: it's very big. There were around 20 fighters (I'm used to more like 5). There were a lot of children running around for Kailee and Sarra to play with. My next impression was that they fight completely differently. Talking to someone on the sidelines apparently they say they fight 'an A-frame' and they call our fighting style 'old castle'. From what I see 'A-frame' is basically a boxers stance, both sword and shield up front, and then they try to generate power from... somewhere. It looks to me like they're much more relaxed in their combats, and they don't seem to throw combos at all, and most of them fight with a round sheild (but nobody throws leg shots). Maybe there's more to their fighting style than meets my eye, but I'll have to get my kit together to try it out.

Around here we can't go to Costco because it's too far away. So instead we go to Sam's club, which is apparently Walmart's version of the Costco. It turns out that they have almost the exact same layout and very similar food items. So we will likely be eating very similarly to in California. Truthfully as our house gets more set up and we get normal food on our table I forget sometimes that I'm not in California. Although I do miss friends that would come over to our house, rather than us dragging the girls all about.