I had my first RinkMeet yesterday. :D It was cool. What follows is the report that I prepared when I got home, while I was tired. So it may sound odd in places. But it's still cool.

When I met up with Ross (wintermute) and Amy (famous), it was really pouring down, so they had decided to wait in the portico of the National Gallery to keep dry. I couldn't see them at first, so I decided to ring Ross' mobile so I could hear any ringtones going off. I did hear one behind me, but before I could turn around, Ross came up behind me and said "Hello!", holding his phone up, which was cool. We chatted for a bit while waiting for the others. Bourne turned up about 10-15 minutes afterwards, but there was no sign of Zarniwoop. I gave Amy the present I had got her for her birthday (a Snoopy book), which she loved. :D After a while, there was still no Zarn, so we assumed that what he said about his legs was the case here, and shuffled off to find out about theatre tickets for later.

We were going to see the RSC (Reduced Shakespeare Company) performing "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)". I won't get sidetracked into saying how it was, because that comes later. We found out that it was showing at a time when I would be able to watch it, so we bought tickets, and Ross and Amy told me just how funny it was. I believed them, and couldn't wait to see it. Apparently it's almost a tradition that when Rinkies come to the UK, they go and see this play, which is cool.

We then went to the Trocadero, where we had an excellent time playing on games, etc. I went on this cool flight combat simulator thing which turned 360° all around, which was a bit unsettling sometimes, but overall great fun. :D And I did better than the ones before me; the first one before me got 9 enemies, the next got 23 - I got 24. Nyaah nyaah.

We also went on the dodgems (bumper cars), which was great fun. :D Dodgems are cool. Yes they are. Overall, we (or rather, they) won 61 tickets on the games, of which Amy used 60 to get 4 lollies at 15 tickets each, so we were able to have one each. :D I have no clue what happened to the remaining 1 ticket, or at least the receipt for it. I imagine she threw it away; it was worthless really, given that the cheapest prize was 5 tickets.

While we were there, Beasty phoned to let us know he had just woken up, looked at the clock and had a 'WTF?' moment. He told us (or Ross, anyway) that he would be able to meet us about 4pm, which was coincidentally the time we would be meeting at the theatre to watch the play, so Ross had to go back to Leicester Square and get another ticket for him. Of course, it wasn't where we were. :/ He tried to see if there was another spare block of 4 seats, but there weren't any. Still, it was cool that we were going to see Beasty.

After a while, it was time to head off to the theatre, and Bourne had to make his way back to Scotland, so we saw him off at an entrance to the Underground, and made our way to the Criteron Theatre, where Ross went to the box office to do something which I'm not sure of, actually. Eh. Beasty phoned again to let us know there was a delay and that he'd be several minutes late for the start of the show, so we agreed to leave his ticket at the desk for him. Ross wrote his name on the back of the ticket and gave it to the attendant, then we went down to the... erm, whatever it is that has the seats facing a stage area. Is concourse the word? I think it is.

The play itself was hilarious. It was every bit as funny as Ross had said it would be, and then some. If anybody reading this hasn't yet seen it, go and see it. Now. You'll thank me for it later.

Beasty arrived about 2 or 3 scenes in, which was later than I expected, but at least it wasn't as late as one guy who came in and who the cast made fun of. :D That ruled.

During the interval, we all went and bought ice cream (very nice ice cream, I might add) and chatted with Beasty. Apparently the reason I don't see him in Chat much is because he works odd hours, and he's currently doing configuration things rather than tech support. We chatted for a bit more, I used the loo, and then we sat back down in our seats about 10 seconds before the house lights dimmed. Talk about good timing. :D

After the play ended (with some very humourous renditions of Hamlet being played fast, very fast and in reverse, as well as a cool scene where they dragged someone on-stage to play Ophelia (and last time, that person had been Amy herself)), I phoned home to check the status of the trains (as there had been a gas leak in the Waterloo area in the morning and Victoria Station had been shut as a result). It turned out that everything was back to normal, so I could come back by the normal route.

While I was on the phone, everybody else had been steering me into Pizza Hut, and after I got off the phone and sat down, we started chatting about things and thinking about what to order. I had an individual Italian Margherita - yum. :D I can't remember what everybody else had, but they all had deep pan pizzas. Among the things we chatted about were the RinkChat archives we had appeared in, the origin of wintermute's nickname (it's from Neuromancer, btw), how many RinkUnions we had each been to (I had been to none; Ross had somehow missed every one of them except the first; and I can't remember about Amy and Beasty), and other assorted random stuff.

Our pizzas arrived, and they were pretty nice pizzas. :D Mmm... margherita...

After eating, it was approaching 7pm, so we decided to once again go our separate ways, so we parted just outside the Pizza Hut. I then went down to Piccadilly Circus station and promptly made a fool of myself by trying to get past the barriers using my train ticket. :/ Turns out that Charing Cross would have accepted them, but thet let me through anyway, which was nice of them. When I got to Victoria, I needed to pay £1.60 to get through the barriers there because of the wrong ticket type, but as it was a shorter route, I had plenty of time to find my train back and text Ross.

So that was my day. It was a pretty darn good day too. And I finally got to meet some Rinkies! Yay! :D

- Cia"I spoke to 9 Rinkies on the phone though"ran.