I’ve been quiet lately. Today will be another quiet day. I started drafting a story yesterday, but my mind has been on other things. Bad things. Namely, video game things. Doolies and I have been playing World of Warcraft (WOW). We started playing only a few hours a week, and that slowly built to over ten hours a week. And then, miraculously, we stopped. Doolies went off to China (without David, who’s not bitter, not bitter at all), and, after not playing for a couple of weeks, I felt my addiction shrink away like ice cubes kept too long in the freezer. I didn’t want to play. The thought of running the rat race in video game land was gone. NEQID was upon me, and I was a bigger, better person. I used my time to read and write more, and even started keeping the Castle clean.

And then the unthinkable happened. I received an innocent looking email from Erik, a friend from graduate school. It was short and it said he was going to do it, he was going to buy WOW. I had spoken about WOW to Erik before—well, actually, I had spoken to him about Dark Age of Camelot, WOW’s predecessor, and he seemed uninterested. He played video games, but they didn’t involve much online action. He scoffed at my descriptions of MMORPG, thinking only children played such games. So, when he told me about buying WOW, I thought little of it. In truth, I felt bad for him because I knew he would grow addicted as all players do. I was beyond my addiction at that point, shaking my head knowingly at a friend about to fall.

The email chain then expanded to include our mutual friend Will, who I didn’t even know played video games. Erik had somehow convinced Will to buy the game. Will hemmed and hawed, but eventually bought it. He spent the first couple of days struggling to sign in (we had to teach him to turn the computer on before trying to run the game), and in two days, he, too, was addicted. That’s when plans within plans started forming in my brain. Evil plans. Plans involving me reentering the gaming world with Doolies at my side, to join Erik and Will in spreading mayhem.

We exchange many emails over the last few days, some describing strategies for working together, others trash talking about respective penis sizes (from what I was able to gather from the conversation, Will, although short in height, towers over Erik in that department). Long email exchanges passed the time at work, and we agreed to log in at 8pm tonight to form the ultimate four-person party and keel (that’s David-video-game speak for killing) unsuspecting mobs (video game monsters).

So, you see, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, with planning for the video games tonight, and leveling up my character (and Doolies’s) to the agreed tenth level. I think once we start playing regularly (assuming this works out), I should get back into my normal writing schedule with fewer distractions. At least, that’s my hope.

I’d write more, but it’s almost 5:30pm, and I have to get home and mentally prepare for tonight. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? We’re all going to be rearing to go way before 8pm tonight. We’re addicts after all.