I wanted to post this Sunday, but finals caught up with me and I had to write a few papers.

Anyway, Saturday was a great day. I’ve been a bit stressed because of some things going on in class that I won’t bore you with, so Friday night and Saturday were great for stress relieving. Friday was good because I found out that The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is on Netflix, so that helped take my mind off things for a bit. Saturday was great because Dorkstock.

Like Dorkapalooza, Dorkstock is a larger scale event that the Dork Club participates in at the end of the year just before finals. It’s a time where we can come together and play a bunch of games to relax and not worry about finals, even if only for a few hours.

Anyway, the day began around 12. I spent a bit of time observing and eating some food before actually playing a game. Unfortunately, no one else brought 40K stuff, so my Space Marines did not get a chance to do anything last night. However, I did look to other games to pass the time, and I did play a few good games (didn’t win most of them, but that’s not the point).

Probably the game I played the most last night was Formula D. I think I mentioned this game in a previous blog post, but as a refresher Formula D is a game where you control a race car and race other people around the track. I seem to be a bit too cautious of a driver, as downshifting into lower gears always sees me get into the back of the pack (or even causes me to crash… it happened). And somehow Professor Morillo’s daughter is a god at this game, pulling so far ahead that the others can never keep up. It’s a pretty fun game, and very amusing to watch people crash (but then when isn’t it?)

I’m the car in yellow (what isn’t shown is me later taking a turn too fast and crashing)

As the night went on, I got a chance to play another game I have been looking forward to playing for some time (some time being when we got it a few months ago). That game is Ikusa, a Risk/Axis and Allies hybrid where you command one of five warring factions in Feudal Japan. The goal is to kill off the other players’ Daimyos and conquer Japan, and you do that by building armies of samurai and peasant spearmen and gunmen, and hiring the occasional ninja to go assassinate someone. My forces were somewhat scattered across the board, but I did manage to get a nice concentration of power in the northeast. From there, I moved south and west, and on my last turn I managed to kill two Daimyos and secure a nice chunk of land. We called it quits soon after on account of some of the other guys wanting to play Diplomacy (which I highlighted in an earlier blog post) so I, Professor Morillo, his daughter, Professor Porter and one of my Brothers sat down for one last Formula D race. I came in third on account of blowing up my Brother with mind bullets (actually an engine malfunction, but mind bullets sounds cooler) and Professor Porter hitting the wreckage and crashing, and once again Morillo’s daughter swept the race.

War in Feudal Japan, so much fun! (I’m Orange; you can see my army in the northeast)

Things were dying down, and as some of the others left I sat down for a small scale Star Wars RPG. Our mission was to infiltrate an Imperial base for a little sabotage, and things went well until one of the Imperials called for backup on account of there being dead bodies in the trash compactor (long story). Our group quickly got involved in a firefight with Stormtroopers and Imperial soldiers, and I managed to take out a few with only a few small wounds to worry about (although there was some cheating; due to lack of planning on behalf of one of my squadmates I got shot, a lot, and should have died had Porter not said that I was merely “stunned and ducking behind cover). By then it was bout midnight, so I decided to call it a day and go home to get some sleep.

I am incredibly thankful that Wabash has groups like the Dork Club. Without it, I probably would have been panicking with stress for the past few days, not to mention a bit more grouchy over the course of the school year due to a lack of some way for me to relieve my stress. And I’m sure this isn’t exclusive to Dork Club; there are other groups here at Wabash that can be just as effective at relieving stress, and I encourage all incoming student to get involved in something they love to do so that they can relax for a few hours and not have to worry about classes and papers.

Also, as this may very well be my last blog post of the year (I say may because the time slots are a little weird. I might give you another travel log), I want to thank you all who have read my blog and followed my Wabash journey. I might not know most of you, but I feel happy that I have had the chance to reach out to others and show them just what Wabash has to offer.