With the holidays, I'm flooded with great memories of a perfect life in love with the perfect girl for me, raising a family, doing all the things that people do together as they live and grow together as one.
My wife didn't care for games like UO, her love was crafts. She wasn't a "natural" at it, but her persistence and expectations of perfection with what she did led her to become very good at making all sorts of things. Beautiful things. She painted pictures, did needlepoint, make these wonderful tea dyes dolls, sewed, just about everything.
In our house, since my wife had a business and sold many of her things through a store where she rented a booth, we had several work stations set up for her many talents. A sewing area set up in the Sunroom. An area in the dining room that we could quickly put away elsewhere when we had someone for dinner, some stuff in the utility room where we sprayed finish coats on certain things she made. But mainly, in our "computer room", the majority of it was a work center for her painting.
So, many times, while I was playing UO, my wife was in there painting or doing other things. I sitting on one side of the room, her on the other, facing the same wall. Almost like cubicles, heh.
Every once in a while, UO had some sounds that made her laugh. One day I was training up a new character, fighting a pig. Oink! Oink! Me wife started laughing and says "Robert" (she called me that when she was doing her mock serious thing), "what are you doing?"
"I'm killing an evil pig", I said.
I looked over at her and her shoulders were shaking with laughter.
"Roberrrt."