- Joined
- Feb 10, 2010
Have a seat my friends and fellow gamers, I'd like to spin a yarn for you. What you're about to read is a true story and happened to me, many moons ago.
We begin our tale with myself, and my girlfriend debating whether it would be a good idea to go to the midnight release of Burning Crusade at EB games. I have a pre-order from Best Buy, but I figure EB may have a copy or two left after the pre-orders get filled, and our Best Buy wasn't opening until later that day, around 9 am.
Normally, there would be no question that such an excursion to the local EB games would be an excellent expenditure of our time, gas, and money. However, since both her and myself are in college, and she had homework and an early class the next morning, it was cause for a short discussion over the pros and cons. Since a brand new Draenei priest was in the mix, the victor of the two possibilities was short decided.
So, we drive to my home, pick up my laptop to have as a source of entertainment while we sit outside the doors for a couple hours and wait. While there, one of my roommates tells me he'd be willing to trade his pre-order for mine. His was for EB, and mine, as I said, was for Best Buy. Wonderful idea. We make the trade, and my girlfriend and I are shortly on our merry way toward EB games, receipt for his pre-order in hand. As a side note, this is the only time in my life I've ever been joyously singing the tune to "I've got a Golden Ticket" from the old Willy Wonka movie in my head while behind the wheel of my car.
We arrive at EB, turn the car off, and flip out the old laptop, and randomly browse through a few funny old movie clips, a flash animation or two, and are generally enjoying wasting time, when the second camper shows up, and pulls up beside me. Being the ever-sociable person I am, I roll down my window, and throw up a friendly wave, to which he does the same.
"Burning Crusade?"
"Yep."
"Hehe… same here."
So we disengage from our downright Shakespearean conversational crossfire, and roll our respective windows back up to stave off the rather intensely cold wind, and light rain beginning to fall. To give a sense of time, we pulled into the parking lot at about 10 pm, at about 10:15 the afore-mentioned person B rolls in beside us. At 10:20, person B gets out of their car, and starts the line. The front of the line. Knowing quite well that we were there before him. The very nerve.
As such, my girlfriend and I decide that perhaps sitting in the car with the assumption that everyone else would do the same was perchance a severely bad idea. So, we close the laptop, I grab my receipt for BC, we lock our doors, and slam them closed. To review, I have my laptop, my BC receipt, and nothing else. The doors to my car are all locked. It’s raining, cold, and rather windy, and I have just locked myself out of my car. I have my wallet on my person, with just enough money to either buy the game, or pay for a locksmith.
So, being a rational human being, I get in line to buy the game, and start making some calls to friends in town. After trying two of my list of four, and coming up with zero, I give my roomate a call, who is blessedly still awake, and willing to pick us up, on the other side of town, about 20 minutes away. Hosanna, I can get the game, get some cash tomorrow, and get a locksmith. /Cheer
We stand there talking to the random other gamers for the next twenty minutes; she pulls up looking rather amused at the whole situation, and joins in our conversations with the new arrivals, as the line grows exponentially over the next hour. At 11:45, EB opens, and we stand at the registers, since we're only second in line, and talk to the manager and pair of employees until zero-hour. They pass me my copy, I pass them my locksmith money, and we all leave in a rather pleasant mood.
About 3/4 of the way back to my girlfriend's house, where my computer is, her homework is, and most of the stuff we need to survive is, she suddenly asks, "So um... how are we going to get back in." I was the only one with a key to her third floor condo, which was then dangling cruelly from the ignition of my little Ford Focus still outside EB. In my head, I said several expletive terms that if typed out, would get me banned from the website.
So we stay the course to her condo, and upon arrival, I surmise an ingenious idea. Earlier that day we had been painting some patio furniture on her back deck. Perhaps in the bustle of our labors, the sliding glass door hadn't been locked, and it may just be my last window into midnight release glee. So, being the brave person I am, and more importantly being hell-bent on playing BC that night, I scale a thin fire-escape ladder in rubber-soled shoes.
Let me paint this picture for you. I am not a small individual. I stand at 6'4" tall, weigh approximately 320 lbs. I am also not the most graceful of individuals, considering my complete lack of competitive sports history. It is then about midnight-thirty, extremely cold, and raining. This ladder is small, thin-railed, slippery, and surrounded by concrete at its base. World of Warcraft is apparently that important to me. The two friends with me are female, and if I were to slip, and snap my spine at the unforgiving base of my climb, I would be pretty much dead in the hospital, assuming the three-story fall didn't kill me instantly.
So, I take hold of the ladder, and begin my ascent. About two stories up, one of my shoes slips no more than an inch on the slick steel rail beneath me, and I begin to realize that this was perhaps not the best idea. However, my mind was set. I would have WoW this night, come Hell or high water. So I continued climbing.
Finally, I reached the peak of my labors, and after, quite literally, falling over the edge of the too-high railing around my girlfriends back-deck, and landing in a stumble that had me thinking how glad I was that the floor under me was dry and wooden, I wrapped my almost-numb fingers around the little steel handle of the door and pulled it hard.
It was locked. My haul on the little dip yielded no more than a millimeter of motion, leaving me feeling rather stranded on the third floor in the open air on a cold rainy night. After several more expletives I looked down to my friends below, whom were both looking rather curious as to whether or not my death-defying stunt would yield the fruits of an opened condo. Sadly, I had to report that no, I had just put myself on a third floor balcony to no avail.
The particularly unfortunate consequence of my rather risky decision was my inability to swing back over the too-high rail around the 10’ x 7’ deck. The only way I'd been able to get there in the first place was to completely surrender my weight to gravity, and fall onto the wooden planks. Doing the opposite would yield a much more painful 35, or so, foot drop to the wet concrete below.
So, my only resolution was to simply stay on the back deck, in the wind and cold, all night. At which point the real-estate office would be able to supply a spare-key, or one of the aforementioned friends could pay the locksmith, and use the key still hanging from my ignition to open the door in the morning. Either way, it posed a rather unpleasant evening for yours truly.
It was at this point that two very interesting things occurred. The first was the sudden urgent realization that I hadn't... Um... Well let's just say that the consequences of drinking some-odd two-dozen glasses of iced tea about 4 hours before had finally taken hold, and had gone about doing so in an almost ravenous panicked state.
However, from my position atop the balcony, with my two female friends looking on below, I had no way to relieve myself of the rather increasingly painful development. The second was my girlfriend, bless her, yelling up to me that they should check the front door. I was positive that it was locked, but with them on the opposite side of the building, and inside, away from windows, I'd be able to enjoy the few precious moments of solitude to relieve myself.
So, they rounded the corner, and I yelled after that they should try to card it if it was locked, then faced the opposite side of the balcony and set about my business. Scarcely a few seconds had passed, when the light from inside the condo popped on, and I heard from the front door, "Wow... That was easy."
Uh oh…
Fastened to my current rather candid position, I hurried to finish the task at hand, and did so just as the blinds pulled back and the non-girlfriend of my female friends stepped out onto the balcony.
Apparently, and ironically enough, my roomate whom plays a rogue in WoW, had incorporated her max level lockpicking in the real world, and carded her way into my girlfriend's condo with a $1 Wendy's gift card, and the confidence of a professional thief. We were quite impressed with the swiftness of her skill, as was she surprised that it'd been so easy for her. So, since she'd been such a lifesaver over the course of the night, we made plans to take her to dinner that weekend.
The entire development put us in a much more satisfactory position. I was now inside, warm, with a working computer, and my copy of Burning Crusade.
I installed, and played my copy that night, just a little after 1 am. Huzzah. Victory tastes like a level 10 Draenei priest, and it couldn't have been sweeter.
We begin our tale with myself, and my girlfriend debating whether it would be a good idea to go to the midnight release of Burning Crusade at EB games. I have a pre-order from Best Buy, but I figure EB may have a copy or two left after the pre-orders get filled, and our Best Buy wasn't opening until later that day, around 9 am.
Normally, there would be no question that such an excursion to the local EB games would be an excellent expenditure of our time, gas, and money. However, since both her and myself are in college, and she had homework and an early class the next morning, it was cause for a short discussion over the pros and cons. Since a brand new Draenei priest was in the mix, the victor of the two possibilities was short decided.
So, we drive to my home, pick up my laptop to have as a source of entertainment while we sit outside the doors for a couple hours and wait. While there, one of my roommates tells me he'd be willing to trade his pre-order for mine. His was for EB, and mine, as I said, was for Best Buy. Wonderful idea. We make the trade, and my girlfriend and I are shortly on our merry way toward EB games, receipt for his pre-order in hand. As a side note, this is the only time in my life I've ever been joyously singing the tune to "I've got a Golden Ticket" from the old Willy Wonka movie in my head while behind the wheel of my car.
We arrive at EB, turn the car off, and flip out the old laptop, and randomly browse through a few funny old movie clips, a flash animation or two, and are generally enjoying wasting time, when the second camper shows up, and pulls up beside me. Being the ever-sociable person I am, I roll down my window, and throw up a friendly wave, to which he does the same.
"Burning Crusade?"
"Yep."
"Hehe… same here."
So we disengage from our downright Shakespearean conversational crossfire, and roll our respective windows back up to stave off the rather intensely cold wind, and light rain beginning to fall. To give a sense of time, we pulled into the parking lot at about 10 pm, at about 10:15 the afore-mentioned person B rolls in beside us. At 10:20, person B gets out of their car, and starts the line. The front of the line. Knowing quite well that we were there before him. The very nerve.
As such, my girlfriend and I decide that perhaps sitting in the car with the assumption that everyone else would do the same was perchance a severely bad idea. So, we close the laptop, I grab my receipt for BC, we lock our doors, and slam them closed. To review, I have my laptop, my BC receipt, and nothing else. The doors to my car are all locked. It’s raining, cold, and rather windy, and I have just locked myself out of my car. I have my wallet on my person, with just enough money to either buy the game, or pay for a locksmith.
So, being a rational human being, I get in line to buy the game, and start making some calls to friends in town. After trying two of my list of four, and coming up with zero, I give my roomate a call, who is blessedly still awake, and willing to pick us up, on the other side of town, about 20 minutes away. Hosanna, I can get the game, get some cash tomorrow, and get a locksmith. /Cheer
We stand there talking to the random other gamers for the next twenty minutes; she pulls up looking rather amused at the whole situation, and joins in our conversations with the new arrivals, as the line grows exponentially over the next hour. At 11:45, EB opens, and we stand at the registers, since we're only second in line, and talk to the manager and pair of employees until zero-hour. They pass me my copy, I pass them my locksmith money, and we all leave in a rather pleasant mood.
About 3/4 of the way back to my girlfriend's house, where my computer is, her homework is, and most of the stuff we need to survive is, she suddenly asks, "So um... how are we going to get back in." I was the only one with a key to her third floor condo, which was then dangling cruelly from the ignition of my little Ford Focus still outside EB. In my head, I said several expletive terms that if typed out, would get me banned from the website.
So we stay the course to her condo, and upon arrival, I surmise an ingenious idea. Earlier that day we had been painting some patio furniture on her back deck. Perhaps in the bustle of our labors, the sliding glass door hadn't been locked, and it may just be my last window into midnight release glee. So, being the brave person I am, and more importantly being hell-bent on playing BC that night, I scale a thin fire-escape ladder in rubber-soled shoes.
Let me paint this picture for you. I am not a small individual. I stand at 6'4" tall, weigh approximately 320 lbs. I am also not the most graceful of individuals, considering my complete lack of competitive sports history. It is then about midnight-thirty, extremely cold, and raining. This ladder is small, thin-railed, slippery, and surrounded by concrete at its base. World of Warcraft is apparently that important to me. The two friends with me are female, and if I were to slip, and snap my spine at the unforgiving base of my climb, I would be pretty much dead in the hospital, assuming the three-story fall didn't kill me instantly.
So, I take hold of the ladder, and begin my ascent. About two stories up, one of my shoes slips no more than an inch on the slick steel rail beneath me, and I begin to realize that this was perhaps not the best idea. However, my mind was set. I would have WoW this night, come Hell or high water. So I continued climbing.
Finally, I reached the peak of my labors, and after, quite literally, falling over the edge of the too-high railing around my girlfriends back-deck, and landing in a stumble that had me thinking how glad I was that the floor under me was dry and wooden, I wrapped my almost-numb fingers around the little steel handle of the door and pulled it hard.
It was locked. My haul on the little dip yielded no more than a millimeter of motion, leaving me feeling rather stranded on the third floor in the open air on a cold rainy night. After several more expletives I looked down to my friends below, whom were both looking rather curious as to whether or not my death-defying stunt would yield the fruits of an opened condo. Sadly, I had to report that no, I had just put myself on a third floor balcony to no avail.
The particularly unfortunate consequence of my rather risky decision was my inability to swing back over the too-high rail around the 10’ x 7’ deck. The only way I'd been able to get there in the first place was to completely surrender my weight to gravity, and fall onto the wooden planks. Doing the opposite would yield a much more painful 35, or so, foot drop to the wet concrete below.
So, my only resolution was to simply stay on the back deck, in the wind and cold, all night. At which point the real-estate office would be able to supply a spare-key, or one of the aforementioned friends could pay the locksmith, and use the key still hanging from my ignition to open the door in the morning. Either way, it posed a rather unpleasant evening for yours truly.
It was at this point that two very interesting things occurred. The first was the sudden urgent realization that I hadn't... Um... Well let's just say that the consequences of drinking some-odd two-dozen glasses of iced tea about 4 hours before had finally taken hold, and had gone about doing so in an almost ravenous panicked state.
However, from my position atop the balcony, with my two female friends looking on below, I had no way to relieve myself of the rather increasingly painful development. The second was my girlfriend, bless her, yelling up to me that they should check the front door. I was positive that it was locked, but with them on the opposite side of the building, and inside, away from windows, I'd be able to enjoy the few precious moments of solitude to relieve myself.
So, they rounded the corner, and I yelled after that they should try to card it if it was locked, then faced the opposite side of the balcony and set about my business. Scarcely a few seconds had passed, when the light from inside the condo popped on, and I heard from the front door, "Wow... That was easy."
Uh oh…
Fastened to my current rather candid position, I hurried to finish the task at hand, and did so just as the blinds pulled back and the non-girlfriend of my female friends stepped out onto the balcony.
Apparently, and ironically enough, my roomate whom plays a rogue in WoW, had incorporated her max level lockpicking in the real world, and carded her way into my girlfriend's condo with a $1 Wendy's gift card, and the confidence of a professional thief. We were quite impressed with the swiftness of her skill, as was she surprised that it'd been so easy for her. So, since she'd been such a lifesaver over the course of the night, we made plans to take her to dinner that weekend.
The entire development put us in a much more satisfactory position. I was now inside, warm, with a working computer, and my copy of Burning Crusade.
I installed, and played my copy that night, just a little after 1 am. Huzzah. Victory tastes like a level 10 Draenei priest, and it couldn't have been sweeter.
to OCF.
