Five Things I Learned From Derecho 2012

Well, it's been quite a while since I've last written, but I've survived Virginia's Derecho 2012 and have made my way back to the blogosphere.  I was one of the wimps and ran to places where I had power during the week, so I certainly didn't suffer nearly as much as some others.  Can you believe there are still people without power?  I couldn't have imagined anything like this occurring.  Nonetheless, even though Derecho 2012 left some places with some power, I experienced a vast slowdown of life during that week.  It gave me a lot of time to think, and so here are five things I learned from Derecho 2012, almost all of which are not weather-related.

 1) I learned the word "derecho" and what it means.  Incidentally, my nerd side has realized that "Derecho" or some form of it would be a sweet screen name to use online in a game.

2) World of Warcraft would be lame without people.  I downloaded the starter edition (basically, free to play until you get to level 20, which seems to occur really quickly) and tried it out.  Thought it'd be cool if I could group up with the girlfriend and some others and work some quests together but alas, the starter edition disables grouping.  Thus, "collect 7 of these" and "kill 10 of those" can only appeal for so long on your own.  Massively multiplayer gaming should equal social gaming, which is the best kind of gaming.

3) You can never count out Roger Federer.  Federer beat Andy Murray in the finals to win his 7th career Wimbledon title, tied for the most all time.  If there was any debate before, this win cements Roger's place as the greatest player of all time.  Even at the age of 30 (which is near retirement age in tennis), Fed captured his 17th career major title, adding to his record total.  He has overcome the two other giants of the game, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, to earn the world's #1 ranking again.  This is an incredible era in men's tennis where we get to witness four (I'm counting Murray, who hasn't won a major simply because he has to deal with the big three) of the best players of all time fight for every major championship.

4) There are some incredible male singers out there right now.  This is certainly not an all-inclusive list, but I've been impressed recently by some of the talent out there, including Gotye, Nate Ruess (Fun.), Chris Daughtry, Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic), Darren Criss (from Glee), and Danny O'Donoghue (The Script).

5) Ticket To Ride is an excellent board game.  I bought it in early May, and I've yet to get tired of playing it, regardless of how many players I'm playing with, and what style we choose.  I know the day will come when I get sick of it, but until then, I'll keep enjoying my Europe board game and my US software game.  Yep, I've got the board game AND the computer game.  Love it.

I don't know if this entry will get me back on a regular post pattern, but I ought to be back soon.  I mean, won't be long before something makes me go "What the heck, man?", right?