sleepyOn Saturday I took a trip to Legends Games & Comics to examine and purchase a copy of the D&D Heroscape Master Set: Battle for the Underdark hexagonal battle game. Heroscape is actually a Hasbro game of simplified battles, where two or more opponents construct small battle groups from existing characters and soldiers that all have point values — similar to constructing armies in a game like Warhammer Fantasy Battle, but on a far smaller scale. It does have its own rules, which seem simple enough to be fun, but I mostly bought it for the components: it comes with 50 hard-plastic hexagonal tiles, 10 creatures to use in battle, and a few item tokens. The main attraction for me was the tiles, as I've been interested in trying D&D using hexes instead of squares, but all the Dungeon Tiles sets are square. These hexagonal tiles are interlocking and come with different terrain features, including water, mountainous spires, grasslands, and the like.
Sunday was the day I'd been waiting to see, since I got together with some friends for the National Cherry Blossom Festival. I hadn't actually realized before that the National Cherry Blossom Festival is technically separate from the Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival (桜まつり), which takes place next weekend, overlapping with the former. The first is a hanami (花見) run by its own nonprofit corporation, while the second is a street festival with exhibits, food, performances, and vendors organized primarily by The Japan-America Society of Washington DC. In any case, I managed to arrive at
radhardened's place about five minutes late to carpool with her to the festival. (She'd offered the possibility of carpooling with me to D.C. previously, after we realized that we live only a half-hour from one another, since my health is rather prohibitive toward driving long distances too often.)The cherry blossoms were, of course, beautiful, as was the weather.
radhardened also wore a lovely yukata (浴衣), and brought with her a parasol, a small blanket, and bentou (弁当). We met first with hasufin, stardansr and guest, followed by several others including kitten_goddess and nobbyknees. We spent about an hour and a half sitting under a cherry tree, eating food, chatting, and relaxing in the light shade while hundreds of people kept walking nearby, all around the Washington Monument. It seemed like only a few minutes, but soon enough it was time for the main ceremony, which took place on another side of the Tidal Basin, just opposite the Jefferson Memorial. We spent a couple more hours by the basin, chatting a bit about Japanese culture, mad science, and other such things before we all felt we'd spent our day and started walking toward our various transit methods home.Being the first day in a few I actually took my methylphenidate — since my psychiatrist recommends only taking it as needed, so as not to create a dependency — I became extremely talkative throughout the day. I felt bad babbling endlessly at
radhardened, who (as the handle suggests) is a very quiet person, and especially awkward because I'm more used to being a largely quiet person myself. I don't like to feel like I'm overshadowing anyone else, so I'm thinking I'd prefer to take the medication more regularly as well as see people more often.At the end of the day,
radhardened mentioned Yuri's Night, which I unfortunately declined because my house mates are throwing a housewarming party that day. I've since realized that the housewarming party is from 1:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m., while Yuri's Night is only from 8:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m., so I'm reconsidering. I really do need to spend more time outside the house, with a variety of friends and not just my house mates, and it isn't as though I'm a homeowner or host for the party. I also need to try new things more often, so I don't feel like I'm suffocating so much.Overall it was a good but tiring weekend, and thankfully I don't have much to do this week. I might like to store as much energy as I can for the weekend and see about making it to Yuri's Night after all.
