Will and I attended the midnight release of Halo 3 at our local GameStop. We were 18th and 19th in line. There were a mix of gamers and onlookers in the line and at some point during our time on the line, we felt our intelligence draining from some of the conversations we were hearing.
Our plan was to play our DS for the duration of our time in line. I failed that mission because I decided to bring my dead DS Lite as opposed to my half charged DS fatty. We also brought snacks and game fuel to ensure that we were wired for the evening. The evening started with a Halo 2 tournament. I was the only girl that entered (although one of the female employees filled in for one of the matches - and she owned all of the guys she was playing with). I was dead last with 1 kill due to my assault rifle/butt-stock to the head combo. I was really there as a stat boost although the winner’s kill count was less than 15. Will played next and came in second (the fem employee played in their game, so her 1st place win didn’t count).

After the tournament, we gathered back outside in numerical order for the most part. *Thought breaking rant: Some little a-hole flipped his number 51 and claimed he was 15. It was all kinds of stupid because the actual number 15 was 3 people in front of me. Needless to say, he didn’t get in front of us, but he did get in front of about 20 other people that had been there longer than him. To make matters worse, I overheard him bragging about cutting the line to one of his friends after his purchase…but back to the story.* Numbers 16 and 17 were a couple of young guys that were super cool to talk to. Jeff and Joe told me about their weekend in Ocean City, their jobs, their links to the military, their favorite football teams, oh and video games. I shared our game fuel and snacks with them since they had not eaten in several hours. Will was on the phone with Marvin who was waiting in line at his GameStop. Marv said that he was number 115 and that there were 1100 reservations made at his store!!! Good thing he got there early! Sean (who bought a new DLP television and a 360 just for this game…*sidebar: sold his PS3-haha Sony!!!*) waited here in DC for his copy.

Although I didn’t get to say goodbye to Jeff and Joe, we obtained our legendary box set and headed home. After unboxing the game and the helmet, we checked to see how many of our friends were playing at that time. Not too many at first, but as the night went on, it was the only game being played. We finally made a room with Jbug and SCKain (see cards below) and started the storyline mission. We played until 0330 when my eyes started to burn out. Good thing I took leave!

Was it nerdy? Totally! Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!