One thing I reallly love about JVC is that it forces you to be creative in ways of entertaining yourself. The standard weekend events are typically out, unless you’ve saved some stipend for splurging. If you’re me, you’ve spent all of your budget for the week on bus passes and coffee (and the occasional book). I’ve had to diversify my ideas of distraction. I’ve caught a few movies (a second viewing of The Dark Knight and Waltz with Bashir), but nowhere near the extent of how many I used to see. Going out tends to get too expensive, unless you go for Happy Hour or are adept at getting men to buy you drinks (needless to say, I’m not). Additionally, I like to go dancing but have been disappointed with the Seattle club scene. So, what do you do to entertain yourself?

Personally, I’ve become heavily reliant on the library. Not only do they have a great selection of movies, but their interlibrary loan system is great. I’ve never had such a great selection of CDs, books, and movies at my fingertips. I’m sort of enamored of Seattle’s Public library system. Our house must hold some sort of record for the amount of movies we watch.

I’ve also rediscovered games. I’ve always liked board games (Count the number of times I played Cranium or Life, and it will astound you), but I never appreciated the simplicity and fun of just sitting around with good friends and playing games. Our house is well known for rousing games of Charades, and we had a legendary game on Thanksgiving. We had Mercy House over for a game night last weekend, and it was a blast. We “hosted” a murder mystery, and everyone was really into it. People were assigned a character and dressed and acted the part. The game itself was a little overcomplicated and contrived, but we had such a blast playing it. Likewise, Stephanie introduced us to the game “Brown Bag”: you stand on one foot and try to pick up a bag with your teeth, after you go around once, you cut an inch off the top of the bag. It sounds easy, but it got challenging as we got further down. Additionally, we played Draw the Thing for community night on Sunday, which is possibly the best game in existence, and all you need to play is a pen and paper.

I’ll be on retreat on the Oregon Coast from Friday through Monday, and I’m excited to see the Pacific for the first time.