jackofallgeeks | A nice happenstance.

So today was going to be like any other Saturday: clean my room, wash my clothes, and spend the evening at the game shop playing Magic. Then just after noon I get a call from my good buddy Michael Lambie, saying that he's on his way up to Monterey for no real good reason and, hey, am I around?

For those who don't know (many of you, I would guess), Mike is an old buddy of mine since way, way back. He lived up the hill from me when I lived in Annapolis back in, like, kindergarten. We spent lots of time together playing with Battle Beats and Transformers. It was good times. When my family moved to Hawaii, his went back to Michigan and for a long while we lost touch, except for our moms sending each other Christmas cards. We didn't get back in touch again until after I was nearly through high school, but it's always good when we get together. These days he lives down in LA, working for this or that Television company. Most recently, me, Gene, and Anastasiya met him for lunch on the last leg of our Cross-country trek.

He gave me a call again at 5:00 when he was closer in and said that he and his girlfriend, Anne-Marie, were supposed to have gone camping this weekend with friends, but it was called off because of rain. So the two of them decided to drive up toward San Fransisco and on the way there Mike thought, "hey, I wonder if Andrew's around." He figured that I'd be back East with my family for Easter or something, but he gave me a call anyways, and here we are.

We decided that they'd take some time to wander around town for a while and we'd get dinner at 8:00 or so, which was fine by me because that let me get a couple games on MtG in at the game shop. Mike gave me a call at about 7:30 and was coincidentally just around the corner from the game shop, so he parked there and came in and I introduced him to people. Then Laurel and Brian came out with us to dinner at the Crown and Anchor, my favored pub in the area. Afterwards, Mike, Anne-Marie and I went to see "The Lives of Others," a very awesome foreign film about surveillance in East Germany in 1943. I highly recommend it; ever foreign film I see (Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior, Pan's Labyrinth) reminds me of how great they can be, and how little the subtitles really bug me (thanks in part to years watching anime in high school).

It was really, really awesome. Much like foreign films, every time I seem Mike i'm reminded of how much I really like the guy.