April 24, 2004 - 7:02 p.m.
Laurie Is Great Dep't: Laurie is now on her ninth hour in a game called Dark Wizard on Sega CD. Her ninth consecutive hour. This morning we went to get coffee (her) and donuts (me), and she started the game when we got back. When its music had repeated itself one or two times too many, she went into the options screen and turned the music off, and I put on a playlist of Sega Genesis music in its stead. During the bonus area music from Golden Axe, she said from the couch: "stupid elves." The bonus areas in Golden Axe consist of your character kicking the crap out of two elves to get them to drop potions. I stood up and darted around the room in the manner of a speedy bonus elf that was difficult to kick, glancing around shiftily, occasionally jumping up in surprise and going BEEBEEP. Laurie laughed a lot. Who else with two X chromosomes would possibly be amused by an impersonation of a Golden Axe bonus area elf?
I give the impression, in this diary and probably elsewhere, that all the things I love about Laurie are videogame-related. That simply isn't true. The obvious joke would be to write "just most of them," but that isn't true either. Laurie is kind, easygoing, intelligent, dependable, adorable, hilarious, fun, affectionate, press any key for more. The fact that she plays video games is merely convenient.
That's why it hurts to see her stuck in a bad situation at home. She rents an apartment with her sister, and they don't get along. This isn't her diary, and getting too deep into it feels uncomfortably like gossip to me. So I'll just say that she's paying too much for the privilage of being treated unfairly, and she's caught in a lease that won't let her out until October. It causes stress and eventually too much stress will get to anybody, even somebody as laid-back as Laurie.
She'd been worrying about her situation and acting a little less... less Laurie than usual. I began worrying. What if it's me? What if I've become that lousy boyfriend I've been accused of being?
Fortunately, before my dark thoughts could start taking over, she realized what had been troubling her and let me know. "I'm sorry I've been kind of cold lately," she said. She seemed so mature that I wanted to marry her on the spot. Although I did have to worry for a while what the matter was, she didn't try to take it out on me in any way. And as soon as she knew what was wrong, she told me. Money troubles and sibling conflicts, totally understandable.
Of course, now that I know what's wrong, I can't do anything about it. She's trapped in the lease until October. All I can do is offer her emotional support and a place to be where her sister isn't, but that somehow makes the amount she has to pay for rent seem even less reasonable. Well, like I said, there's nothing I can do about it, so I'll try not to worry needlessly.
I've let way too much time go by, and now the amazing weekend I had that I didn't write about at all last time doesn't seem like it would make for good stories. I was in the front row of a They Might Be Giants concert and it was definitely one of the best things I've ever experienced. Trouble is, the details would be pretty dull unless you were a huge TMBG fan. Also that weekend: I finally made it into Treasure Island, and charged Streets of Rage 3, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose, Joe and Mac, The Addams Family, Gradius III, Pocky and Rocky, and a Famicom cart converter to my credit card. Nobody cares about that, and I still plan on starting that gaming blog thing. On my gaming blog thing I'd probably also talk about Laurie's effort (last weekend, again) to learn Guitar Freaks and painfully detail how I hurt myself playing Drummania. I started this entry with a paragraph about both Dark Wizard and Golden Axe, and I'm trying to limit myself to one videogame-related topic per week.
That, and, I managed to accidentally erase a bunch of this entry (by highlighting it and selecting "paste" instead of "copy," ironically part of an effort to back up the text in case something happened) and I don't feel like typing it up again. Narrrrr.
