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#2 Unfamiliar

We like games of randomness the most. I frequent the card tables, poker and euchre usually. Kevlar and I like to play Scrabble together; a word board game where you pick up certain amounts of upside down, lettered tiles and try to make words out of what you have grabbed. Because you can build new words off what others have played, the game often ends up looking like a crossword. Sometimes Kevlar and I will put four or more boards together and add in extra sets of tiles so we can try to make bigger words. Others may play more physical games such as hockey, long distance speed skating, running or swimming and other forms of endurance competition. One week of every year is the Games of Olympus. The biggest event is always the pesticleous climb. 400 participants are given three days to see how far up one of the trees they can climb.
Some things I do by myself are to practice my lettering of ancient languages on my GSlab and read the Global Daily with its news of Elousa and the lists of winners from the different games. Everyone likes to see their name in the paper. The Global Daily also has 12 pages of word and number games and mazes. I always do extra reading on the next day’s class topics too, so I can remind us of additional things.

Earlier today, the lesson for Emotive was on early forms of depression. I usually take my Emotive later in the evening around 10 pm, but today I was leaving town and headed to St. Petersburg, so I decided to take it in the morning. For the first half hour Of Emotive, if you are not discussing the readings, then you must try to express the topic in a different way. Some of us go into the booths to dance, paint, write or to listen to and create music.
When I arrived at class , I saw Derbi off in the corner painting. He doesn't like to paint in one of the booths; he brings out what he needs and sits facing the closed door. Turning your back on a large group of people in not considered polite, but it is okay in Emotive. I noticed that Derbi is getting better. It is still just the same scene, blue skies and the pesticleous trees, but more true. When I walked over to him, he handed me the brush and I painted a crude little person dressed in the white harvesting suit, standing below the trees. When I was done, Derbi looked up at me and said, "Well, sign your name too then.” So I did, but apologised, “It doesn't look so good now.” Then Derbi pardoned me, so I headed over to join the largest group of polite listeners there to discuss our topic, until the Elites arrive to take over class for the last half an hour.
Today Lecha kept laughing after much of what I said; normally this wouldn't be considered polite either because depression isn't a laughing matter. We are glad to have cured that disease a long time ago. But each of us has our quirks, hers just happens to be persistent laughter. My quirk is that I blink and squint too much. It creates wrinkles, but replacement skin for eye areas only take 3 seconds to make. These days I am usually changing them monthly.


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