The unconventional chronicles

There are times in life when your so busy with work and other "things" you forget that sometimes you need to be outside and breath the fresh air. Well I did just that.

I called my friend Alicia Salinas whom I have known for about couple of years. We met when I used to work at Pasta Bella off of Austell Road. She was one of my regulars who would always get the pasta of some kind. Angel Hair with meatballs if I remembered correctly. We would talk during the slow hours of the day and found out she loves playing video games. At the time she was obsessed of Gears of War 3 so we talked about that for awhile. Even though I left Pasta Bella about a year ago we never lost touch.

I called her to see if she would like to grab lunch and catch up since we haven't talked in a couple of months. It's strange how you don't talk to a person for the longest time and then you get back in touch as if we've seen each other everyday. So she agreed to meet at my house tomorrow.

The next day she arrives in her brand new hummer like jeep. It was yellow with a blacktop roof and artificial eye lashes were attached to the headlights...yes you heard me, eyelashes! So I went inside and I couldn't believe the interior. It looked like a toy car. Everything was so spacious. She even had a little dancing flower on the dashboard (cute).

We decided to go by Hoboken's Cafe off of Whitlock Ave. We went inside and saw a rather large dark skin man. He had a cheerfulness thing about him. His name was Johnny...Johnny Pizza (yeah ikr?) He welcomed us and told us about some of the sandwiches they had. I ordered a salami and mozzarella and Alicia ordered the tuna sandwich. We talked to Johnny for a good and turns out he knew about half the people that lived in Hollywood. At the back of the restaurant were dozens of pictures hung on the wall of many celebrities he took pictures with. Celebrities from Tom Cruise, Larry King, Seth McFarland, Frank Sinatra, the list goes and on! It just comes to show, you never know who you might meet.

We thanked Johnny for his hospitality and left. We decided go down a couple of stores to place called Black Forest Comics. We went inside to see Kevin, one of the co store owners. We talked to him for a good bit and I got to add him on Facebook. He was a really nice guy.

After I got dropped off, I had to take my Cadillac to go see Gary Hunt, Jesse's Dad. I drove to towards Mableton to go see him to get my window rolled up. I drove up on his drive way and he came out and gave me an estrange look. I got out of my car and his face changed with a smile. "Oh Kyle, I didn't recognize you for a second." I did grow out my hair a bit. He asked me to come inside his house to have a drink. He offered me a glass of water and we got in a discussion on how water can actually kill you if you don't have potassium in your diet. Fancy that.

We sat on his couch  looking at some videos on how to get the door panel off so we can manually roll up the window. As we were watching it we saw that this wasn't going to be a piece of cake, it is a Cadillac afterall.

Gary suggested that I should look around for a used regulator for the door in order for the window to roll up. He mentioned some junk yards around the area to see if they have any Cadillac of that model. So with that, I waved goodbye to Gary and went towards Auto Zone to inquire about the part they may carry.

I went to this Auto Zone off of Powder Springs Rd to ask exactly what the part number is for the regulator. I went inside to see there was already a line at the register. So with my big black notebook in hand, I waited patiently to be helped. Moments later a rather large black woman came inside with three little kids. One of em was a little girl running around. Obviously she was restless as she was picking up things and making a lot of noise. The woman then picked her up and she started crying next to my ear. I really wanted to just ask a question and leave but then I thought of it for a second, these kids need to go to bed as it is 8ish at night. So I decided to let her go before so she can get those kids to bed. Afterall, I got a long night ahead of me.

Finally I had a guy to help me with my question. His name was "John M" He was rather a slender older guy probably in his 50's. He had grey short hair sticking up and a thick grey mustache who wore glasses. I asked him about the part I was looking for and he was kind enough to look it up for me. He was very friendly and even noticed I was wearing a Halo 2 t-shirt. "I love Halo" he said. "You play games?" "Oh heck yeah, I love video games" "Well, your never too old to play" "Shoot no, I'll play games till I die." "So what games are you playing?" "Oh I've been playing Skyrim lately, I love that game." "Skyrim huh? That's a pretty deep game. What made you wanna play that." "The way I see it, there is so much bad that is going around in the world right now that it's just nice to turn on the console and escape from reality a bit." I couldn't agree more with his statement. It just comes to show you that there are adults that do play video games and it makes me glad that we as adults can openly talk about our interests and not be ashamed of it

I told John thank you and left the shop. Seeing that I got some time left I decided to drive by to Giga-Bites, a tabletop place where geeks gather to play games such as Magic The Gathering, Warhammer 40,000, military strategy games, etc. As I was driving down Roswell Rd I started getting kinda woozy since I haven't eaten since I had lunch at Hoboken Cafe so I decided to get a quick taco bell stop. Afterwards, I drove down to where the Giga-Bites was but the only that remained was a for lease sign on the window. I tried to think back if this was actually the place. So I went on the website to see that it moved to another location actually! Fortunately where they moved wasn't even a mile away from its original site.

I turned right at this vacant parking lot only not very vacant when go towards the right of it. I would count at least 100 cars were parked in front of a building that said "Giga Bites." I couldn't believe how big the turnout was, my heart started pounding a little bit from the anxiety of large groups of people but I kept my composure and went inside.

It's rather overwhelming when inside, you see people on your left playing with cards with different pictures on on them with d20's on the table. On your right you see people gathering around a rather what it looks like a small model of a beach or battleground with toy tanks and soldiers. I didn't see anybody I knew so I decided to go up to the front desk to ask about the different games they are playing. They took me to where the RPG stuff and there I meet a small group people playing what the game is called Smash Up.

In the group was Russ, a older guy propably in his 40's, next to him was John, a clean cut young guy with glasses, and sitting next to me a slender white girl with dye colored blue hair named Hillary. They were quite nice and got to learn how to play Smash Up a bit. It was rather fun actually. I feel though John and I got along the most as we were in the same peer group and we actually talked about Hearthstone which he says he loves! I got his number to stay in touch so until then we parted ways.

A couple of tables down I spotted familier face with his familier group. It was David Eames. I went down to see David to sort of catch up on how he's been doing. David was the first person I met when I started going to Giga Bites. He is actually a DM (Dungeoun Master "story teller" "referee") for a modified D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) game called Exalted. He showed me a little bit of how the game is played and its really easy to get lost cuz he put a lot of thought into this game since 2001. He is very nice too along with his companions Tim, Mia, Eugene, and a new face I didn't recognize was Aaron.

After Giga Bites closed I continued talking with David about Exalted, Robot Chicken, Doctor Who, and other geek stuff. I started talking to Aaron as well. Now Aaron I thought was at least 13 or 14 because of his baby face. I wouldn't know that he was actually 18 and he drives. That kinda shocked me for a bit...well probably not as much as he was shocked that I was 26 when I rather look 18. Go baby faces!

Well after we parted I drove back home to get a nice well earned rest...

(Short Version)