Inevitably when having a party, there will always be someone who doesn't agree with what is being served. I imagine intermingling with completely different species would only compound the issue. Of course, what are you to do when what might be socially acceptable to eat may be wholly indigestible? When we have company, I try to cater to the tastes of the crowd, but I suppose some lines have to be drawn and some sensibilities better left offended in the sake of nourishment. It is well past the days of Lavos now and I still eagerly await the machine that energizes without the need for messy foodstuffs, though I suppose perpetual hunger would be depressing.

Pie and I have been getting a lot of Guild Wars 2 time in, and I must say that I am still thoroughly impressed. We have been taking a very leisurely approach, which has been pleasant in our whimsical course of exploration. Even though the launch was 2 weeks ago, we still haven't settled into our "mains". We only have an idea of what we want to explore to 80 with and I think it speaks volumes to how awesome it is to have a character's play style open up very early on.

I've also found that PVP has been quite enjoyable with WvW satisfying the large epic battles and structured battles for smaller skirmishes. What is especially enticing about structured PVP is having free access to all the gear, augmentations, skills and traits you need for free. You can spend time customizing your build and gear so you are free to experiment with your class and play style as you see fit. Perhaps you want to try crit over condition damage with traits to maximize crit percentages and procs? No problem! Swap in the appropriate gems, put them into your PVP-specific gear, refund and re-allocate your traits, enter a server and go to town! Additionally, each battle in a server mixes up the roster, so you can start to see if maybe you are ranking high or low because of the coordination between certain key players. You never feel like you got shafted by being on the wrong side or with the wrong group configuration, because each round is a different mix of people from the previous battle on a different map.

Another interesting aspect of the game comes by way of the cash shop. Any player can convert in game coin into gems (cash shop currency), thus allowing players to acquire cash shop commodities without ever paying past the initial game price. Some players in our guild, even despite the auction house being down, have started to amass small fortunes and have thus been able to completely outfit their accounts with additional bags, bank spaces, character slots and various aesthetic items. Players can earn the stuff they want in game and ArenaNet cares even more about keeping the game economy balanced and free of abuse. Double win!

Lastly, Pie and I have both been selected to move on to the second round of Penny Arcade's Strip Search show, which has been a great bit of news making the cut of 100 down from 500. It is reassuring that we both made the cut since the show is meant for individuals and we had to apply separately. I have to admit that it would be simultaneously jarring and interesting if we were made to compete against one another should it come to that. Nevertheless, we are both excited about the prospect of moving on to the next round to test our (creative) might.