Playing the Giant Meeple...

I had this great post just about ready, but sometimes things happen that I need to write about, need to vent about, and my posts get shuffled. Tonight one of my friends was blindsided - not in a physical way, thank God, but in life. Happens though, doesn't it?

We all do it, even if we don't realize it. In a bid to put ourselves at the top of the pack, we do things that from other points of view, might seem a bit -- less than right, maybe downright unfair. Games are a good example. Carcassonne is a better one (I promise to steer away from this obsession very soon, just bear with me).

When I'm playing Carcassonne, I do quite well most of the time. I do get beat, sometimes decidedly so, but I'm not half bad at this little game. Now of course, you should know that sometimes I...how do I put this delicately?... Sometimes I resort to what some would call cunning strategy and others would call "playing dirty". And the funny thing is, like most people, when it's visited back upon me, I get upset (it must be funny to see me pout...I should film it some time just for the amusement later). Don't misunderstand, I don't break any rules (and neither do my opponents). My moves in the game, while sometimes infuriating, are legal within the construct of the match. Putting the giant meeple down with only a few tiles to go and actually succeeding in stealing cities or invading fields? Turning the tables with a vengence and without warning? When it happens to me, it's evil. When I do it, it's doing what needs to be done to win. Funny how perspective changes things, isn't it?

And tonight, in something a little more important than a game, I watched as someone used perfectly legal manuevers to take away something from one of my friends that had been something she wanted. And that sucks. She worked hard. She came at this opportunity with a passion and she was gonna be great. And it was gonna makes things better for a lot of people. But someone else decided she didn't deserve it or just thought they deserved it more and in a last minute move, they played the giant meeple. And they won.

WHAM! Totally blindsided.

Don't know what this blog is going for. It's late and I'm trying to vent a bit and the small dose of caffeine in my Diet Dr. Pepper is wearing off now, so... I guess I'm just trying to understand why the events of tonight unfolded the way they did. I'm trying to reconcile an anger I have for one person and realize it's not the organization that I'm upset with - just that person who took something from my friend. Well, and some co-conspirators that yeah, I guess did kind of shatter some illusions.

Kinda morbidly looking forward to seeing what happens next. Maybe nothing. Maybe we'll all move on and realize that life is more important than our hobbies and this drama of today will fade into memory as so much drama has before. Or maybe what was, up until a few hours ago, a chance to infuse a lot of fresh ideas and new blood into something showing its age - maybe that chance has been destroyed. I think tonight upset a lot of people -- it did me. Maybe it was just me, I don't know. Gotta feeling it wasn't. So now I'm interested to see it play out. See if they didn't just blindside themselves.