Marathon Games 1 & 2

I'm going to put most of the actual hockey game stuff over on the other blog, but I have been having a BLAST this week!

-I am apparently a very familiar-looking person. Five different people at two hockey rinks almost 400 miles apart have either stopped me in the concourse or approached me at my seat to tell me that I look very familiar. Weird.

-If you sit near the home team's bench, you don't get to see your team on the bench as much, but you get to see them shoot at the goal closest to you twice. If you sit near the visitors' bench, you will get to see your guys on the bench a lot more but it will be harder to see them on the ice. Presuming, of course, that they spend more time on offense than defense, which is generally a good thing to do in a hockey game. I cannot decide which I like more and may continue flip-flopping. (I think my seat for tomorrow is on the visitors' side, but not sure.) However, sitting on the visitors' entrance aisle iz teh ossim. (Honda Center, Sect 209, Row E, around seat 10-ish. That is going to be my seat there now forever!) I got high-5s from my guys!!!

-Staying on board the Queen Mary while in SoCal and it's really nice for the price! Very thin walls, though. I did one of their ghost tours this evening, which was very interesting. There was one room that they were asking questions and the K2 meters were going off and a few people said they saw something (including a self-proclaimed psychic)* - I felt/saw/experienced absolutely nothing other than visually seeing the meters light up. We move on to the old first class pool and supposedly there's a lady in the changing rooms who "guards a vortex" there. They set up the equipment and were asking questions again and asked if she would let us go into the changing rooms. The "answer" came back as a clear "No!" The guide told the group that they could go into the changing rooms if they wanted but he wasn't going to; he'd had his own experiences in there and didn't care to repeat them again. Of course, the rest of the group all wanted to go in, but I kept getting a nagging feeling about it and didn't. It wasn't like I was afraid something bad would happen or something but it was just more of a "Man, if you believe what you just got 'told', and she told you to go away, go away already!" protective kind of feeling that I just couldn't shake. Rather like walking by a door guarded by armed security guards. You're really curious as to what is behind the door but it's clear that it's not an issue that really needs to get pressed. Weird. So I stayed out and talked to the guide for a little bit. It turns out that I am not the only one who has had issues with going down to the isolation wards. (Claustrophobia, however, didn't bother me tonight.) All in all, though, nothing happened that I would say beyond a reasonable doubt was paranormal, and if any ghostie wants to come into my room at night and wants to mess with my stuff, that's fine, as long as I don't get woken up and I don't lose any of it.

-I have a new favorite pair of earrings. Big dangly cheap silver and turquiose circles. Love them! Yet another set of earrings that I can't wear for 90% of my life, between work and martial arts, but they're so fun!

-Thanksgiving was much more fun than I had anticipated. I was invited to a guy I work with's house to spend the afternoon/evening with his family. There turned out to be six adults - two couples, two singles (I got kind of a "wow, what a coincidence that you guys have SO much in common!" vibe, but oh well) - and three kids. It was very fun. The kids were all old enough that they could run around outside or play upstairs, and the grownups played a cross between Pictionary and Telephone (I can't think of the name right now, Scribbleysomething, maybe?) and Apples to Apples which is a very fun game! You get to see how a lot of people's minds work, which is interesting. Anyway, I had kind of figured it would be eating around three, some polite conversation, and home by six or seven. I didn't get home until after eleven. Which sucked for trying to get laundry done and packed for today, but was too much fun to really complain about.

-I think I might hit up the Aquarium of the Pacific tomorrow, since the game isn't until the evening. One more day/night in SoCal, then going back up Sunday and have to go in to work for a couple hours to get caught up on the daily tasks that haven't gotten done because everyone's been on Thanksgiving break. Random day off later this week too, so my orders can change over from MPA (being loaned out to the 614 AOC full time) to AGR (being actually employed by the 216 OSS full time). My schedule's going to be so out of whack!

*ETA (because I'm not falling asleep now) Some of the experiences included flashlights turning on and off, several people feeling ill (I felt ill, too, but that was because I'd had two alcoholic drinks that day and not enough food to soak it up!), a couple of odd noises, and supposedly an apparition in the green room. There's this room that is supposed to be "Henry's" room - a guy who died in a boiler room accident and is supposed to be, well, grumpy about it to say the least - and they had everyone go in and turn off the lights and then they set up a flashlight, a K2 meter, and a DVR on a table. Another lady in the group had a second K2 meter a couple feet away. They started asking questions and got a few hits on both the meters and the flashlight. People around me seemed tense and a couple mentioned feeling dizzy or ill. They asked if whoever was there wanted us to leave and it went dark. Someone joked "Aww, Henry likes us!" and the meter flashed all the way across. Then this girl in the group gasped and said "You guys are going to think I'm crazy, but I swear I just saw a little girl over by the table!" No little girls had been mentioned on the tour at all at that point, but the guide said that there is supposedly a little girl running about the place and that she usually stayed one floor above, but people had seen her all over the ship. After that, the group claimed that "the energy in the room got lighter", they felt better, and the psychic said that the little girl had made the "bad energy" that was in there before leave. Also, in the changing room above (the one I didn't want to go into), one couple on the tour supposedly got touched by a dark mass who wanted them to leave.

I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the people I shared the tour with, but I have serious reservations about the claims that they made. I have no doubts that they experienced what they said they experienced, but think about it from a psychological standpoint. You have about twenty people in a group because they want to learn about ghosts. You're taking them through locations that are famous for being haunted. Now, no effort was made to scare us, it wasn't like going through a haunted house at Halloween or anything, but you tell the group about a supposedly malevolent spirit and then stick them in a small dark room. Not to mention there is a slight pressure difference because you're actually about fifty feet underwater at that point. (I really didn't need to know that, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.) Energy is going to be weird and tense inside that room just from the combination of psychological factors you just had them experience! Then this little girl appears (that I can't explain, unless the tourist was a plant) and suddenly everyone is relieved because it's not a big bad scary spirit, it's a little girl and who is scared of a little girl? and the "energy in the room" lightens. I'm not sure I would call that paranormal, just normal environment messing with your mind, maybe deliberately, maybe not.

I really thought the tour was interesting and a neat experience - you do get to see parts of the ship that are not open to the general public - but I felt pretty detached from it. An observer rather than a participant. Except for the "these rude people are invading my space after I asked them to go away" feeling in the changing area (and a creepy vibe from one of the - living - cleaning crew guys we saw - you know how there are some people you see and you just don't like? yeah, that was him), it was pretty uneventful for me. I am not psychic, I have no desire to be psychic and I also am not willing to be deliberately scared for entertainment. Evidently I am not "in touch" with the spirit world and am "closed off", or ghosts really are like most living people and tend to leave me alone ;-)