I have been trying, with massive fail, to write a blog post about how awesome the movie Clue is, for at least the last two weeks.

“Clue‘s only been awesome for the last two weeks?”

“No, I think he means that, for the last two weeks, he’s been trying to write the post.” Insert eye-roll.

And it’s been massive fail.

But Saturday morning — before heading over to help my friend move — I was browsing the board game section at Target, and I came across a newly updated version of RISK. I remember being introduced to this game in middle school by my friend Adam G. If you’ve never played, up to six players wage war against each other for global domination. It is quite possibly the game that inspired Wallace Shawn’s: “Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – the most famous of which is ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’ – but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!’” At this point, Wallace Shawn toppled to the side, dead, and if you’ve never seen The Princess Bride, what the fuck is wrong with you?*

In high school, I used to try to organize RISK games with my buddies, and a few times a year, we’d all gather at my place or one of theirs, and we’d play RISK while dining on soda and popcorn. We’d form alliances, and we’d betray each other, and we’d team up against those dominating, and on occasion, we’d even halt our advances for fear of forcing a friend out of the game. I fondly remember being implored to spare poor Konrad, who had been reduced to Argentina, only to have him spill out, expanding rapidly into both North America and Africa.

It’s been a long time since I’ve actually played RISK — I even dragged it up to Connecticut for Thanksgiving 2007, but even with twenty plus people, couldn’t find enough warm bodies to play. But for whatever reason, I can’t stop myself from purchasing more and more versions of the game — whether it’s Target’s Vintage RISK collection, or some of the more unique takes on the game, like RISK 2210 (it’s the future, and you can occupy cities on the ocean-bed, and the moon), and RISK GODSTORM (set in ancient Europe, where you can use Gods to attack with your armies, and occupy — until it sinks — Atlantis), I also couldn’t stop from picking up both versions of STAR WARS RISK (stupid, stupid concept — RISK works best with multiple players), and LORD OF THE RINGS RISK.

One of my favorite versions of RISK came with the first version of the game I bought — on one side of the board was the classic RISK map, with six continents and spoke-like figure pieces representing your armies. On the reverse was CASTLE RISK, a European-flavored RISK, where players battle for domination of the continent — or, at the very least, for domination of their enemies’ castles.

In any case, I refrained from buying the updated version of RISK. Because what would be the point? I don’t have anyone to play with. I did buy the Vintage Edition of Clue, but, again, what’s the point? I don’t have anyone to play it with!

And then I thought — well, how hard could it be to figure out if there are bloggers who like sitting around a table for hours at a time plotting intricate schemes to wrest control of Australia from someone else? Or who want to find out if Colonel Mustard really did do it, in the Lounge, with the Wrench? I mean, right?

*I bought a copy of the movie Saturday for my Office Wife, who told me she hasn’t seen it. It’s wrapped in an old WaPo Express for her to find when she arrives.

I got home at about a quarter of eight yesterday morning. I wish I could say I was out all night partying. I wish, in fact, that I’d been sound asleep by eight am. Alas, the cat vomit on the middle of the bed made that a no-go. I spent my first few hours home napping on the couch while using onlineclock.net to wake me to move my wet sheets from the washer to the dryer and then to bring them all up and hit the sack.

With the exception of a thirty minute nap around 3pm on Saturday, and a ten minute nap around 3am Sunday morning, by 8am I’d been up for over twenty-six hours. During that time, I helped a friend move apartments (thankfully, within the same building), and spent eleven hours prepping the Bookstore for the Christmas season — beginning at 9pm, tables were moved, books were put back onto shelves, more books were pulled from shelves, giant cardboard deer were assembled, and at some point, I decided the time had come to rip out the Stephen King books from Horror and try to arrange them alphabetical by title.

I was really worried about that overnight night. Usually, around 9pm, my body starts sending me signals: “Hey, I need sleep. Hit the hay, eh?” So considering that I knew I’d be up until at least 7am, I was worried about that extra 11 hours.

(Yes, I know: “Hey, Snay, you douche, 9pm to 7am is only ten hours!” But yesterday was also the end of Daylight Savings Time, so at 2am, the clocks got set back to 1am, so that’s how 9 to 7 is eleven hours).

The night wasn’t too bad. I actually went in a bit early to get some early Christmas shopping done, alas, very little of what I was looking for was actually in. I did pick up a copy of Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs for myself, and I continued reading The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr, a supernatural (I think) Sherlock Holmes tale.

A bit before 9, as customers were being ushered from the store, and the overnight staff began showing up, I clocked in and began imprisoning stuffed panda bears in display boxes. After a briefing from our store’s merchandise supervisor (who has a lit blog here), we split into two groups: Upstairs, and Downstairs.

I was on the Upstairs group (three of us total), and we spent the first hour or so moving the front of store furniture. Some of it — especially the smaller square and rectangular tables — is relatively light and easy to move. Others, the larger tables, the mass-market table in particular, are extremely difficult to move, especially since we move them fully loaded with books. Even using skates (plastic shells which you put under furniture’s legs which make it easier to move across carpet), the three of us got a pretty nice workout.

Once the furniture was in place, we began the holiday merchandising. I began with one of the bargain barges (in Bookstore parlance, a “barge” is a collection of product arranged either on the floor or on some sort of display). Fortunately, most of the product I needed was already on the upper level. From there, I assembled some cardboard reindeer, then began merchandising on several of the book tables.

Until about 2am (and that’s 2am accounting for the time change, so really 3am), we had a whole ton of costumed drunks knocking on the window. Most just smiled and wished us “Happy Halloween!” A few mooned us. One guy, I’m pretty sure, was humping the window, and another was screaming cusses at me and trying to entice me outside for a fight. I think he might’ve enticed someone to a fight, because at some point a whole bunch of cop cars assembled catty-corner from the store, and someone was loaded onto an ambulance on a stretcher.

The store sprung for pizzas for “lunch.” There was some concern, particular with the time change: would we get the pizzas at 2am, like, when the clocks shift back to 1am? Or 2am which would’ve been 3am before the time change? They actually arrived about ten minutes after what would’ve been 2am, and four pizzas, an order of wings, and a cheese bread disappeared pretty quickly — there were eight of us, and we were pretty damn hungry.

As the night wore on, even caffeinated sodas weren’t doing the trick, and I was getting progressively sleepier and sleepier. At one point, around 4am or so, I was sitting on a chair unloading a shelf. The next thing I knew, I was slumped against the shelf and books were spilled across the floor. I glanced to my left to see if any one saw me sleeping, and resumed napping. I woke a few minutes later, felt completely recharged, and got back to work.

The nap really, really helped. Although it was just a temporary solution. An hour or two later, I was reshelving in the Horror section when, for some reason, I became offended by the total randomness of all our Stephen King books, and ripped them all out and began alphabetizing them by title. I did this for about twenty minutes, then realized a.) it was futile and b.) there was more important stuff to do, threw everything back on the shelf and moved along.

Oh, I also learned that one of the new hires is a former major league baseball player just out of the Peace Corps. Beat that.

Finally, around 7am, we all collectively said “Fuck this shit” and rolled on out of the store. I dashed up 18th Street and managed to catch an L2 bus. I was debating taking it all the way to Van Ness for groceries so that I’d have something to eat when I woke up, then I decided “fuck that.” Then I fell asleep on the bus and that sort of made my mind up for me. I got my groceries, and caught the same bus on the return loop. That’s when I got home and realized I had to do laundry.

Also, most of yesterday was a blur, too.

Weird: I was awake when we passed Woodley Park Metro, and there were a whole ton of people clustered about the entrance. I’d thought the Metro opened at 7am on weekends, maybe whoever was supposed to open WP was late?