Last Tuesday, I finally managed to pull off something I’ve wanted to do for about six years – we had a CVCA faculty laser-tag party at LaserQuest in Akron. For those who do not know, laser tag is a game where you put on vests covered in sensors, go into a dimly lit maze, and shoot at each other with low-powered lasers. It is a lot of fun, and we had a total of sixteen people show up to play. I’m hoping to do it again in the summer, and maybe we can get more like twenty-five people.

We played four games. The first game was standard – everyone against everyone. I could not hit anything for some reason, and I finished fifteenth out of sixteen. Usually I am a middle-of-the-pack kind of guy. The second game was team play, so we split into two random teams. The team I was on lost. The third game was a lot of fun – it was a “stealth” game where they turned off the driving background music so you could hear people coming, and then added more fog to the arena. That was a great variation on the game. The last game was much the same, except they turned off the delay on the vests from five seconds to one second; when you get hit, you normally cannot be hit again for five seconds, but in this game it was just one. I was not so crazy about that game, even if I finished sixth out of sixteen.

Poor Meredith hurt herself during the last game. She turned to flee from a group of people, tripped on something, and planted her knee into the floor while hitting her face on a wall. Her face is fine now, but her leg is covered in bruises.

Before laser tag, we met up with three colleagues at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, where we ate burgers and fries. That was a fun way to extend the evening. The group we had playing laser tag was a mix of people I expected and some who surprised me, but it was really great group, and we had a lot of fun.

We ended the evening at about 9:00, and so Mer and I were able to get to Handel’s Ice Cream at 9:25, right before they closed. Mer later said it was medicinal – the cold ice cream was to help keep her knee from swelling.