hanging out with Oren, and games night and stuff

Whee, so oren is in town interviewing and stuff. Well, or more like, he is in town, and interviewed on Friday. So today we hung out. We met up in Fremont and we went to Blue C Sushi for lunch. To consolidate cars we came back up here to Greenwood (where that Artwalk thing was going on, but you couldn't actually see much of anything from the outside), and then wandered down to the International District. We found an import videogame store called Green Pegasus or Pink Dinosaur or something along those lines, which I hadn't seen before. It's in the old Uwajimaya building. Oren also wanted to look through the video stores and other stuff just to get an idea of what we have here. Then we wandered Uwajimaya for a while, mostly looking for stuff at Kinokuniya.

Afterwards we spun by the Seattle Go Club for a few minutes so he could check it out, and then we stopped by Gary's Games for a few minutes on the way back to my apartment. At Gary's they're giving away a whole bunch of gaming posters -- I snagged a Shadowrun poster, an Aberrant poster, and a Legend of the Five Rings poster, and I really mostly snagged the last one because I figured someone else would want it. I may go down again and see if I can take a few more posters sometime and figure out later who to give them to.

For lack of any other real plan for what to do tonight, I told Oren about games at Nykkel's house, and called up Nykkel to find out if I would be allowed to bring Oren along, and it seemed like it'd be okay, and so Oren and I drove up separately (so he could leave early if needed). It did work out okay, which is good.

When we got there, just Nykkel and Farren were there, and shortly after the newly-married Rumi and Matt showed up, and Phaedrus a little after that. We played Uno until Kiefer showed up, and then split into two games -- Nykkel and Phaedrus and Oren and I played Tichu (and Nykkel and I got slaughtered, mostly due to neither of us wanting to call Tichu or having the cards for it), while the other people played Cosmic Encounter. When we finished those, we debated between dinner and more games -- and I ended up teaching everyone to play Ticket to Ride, we had four people play and three watch (and Phaedrus left). Rumi slaughtered everyone at that. After that we all went to Pagliacci's for dinner, where I got to see the Mariners-Red Sox game on TV and watch Trot Nixon hit his grand slam. Wheee. Came back, and the remaining four of us (Nykkel, Farren, Kiefer and I) played Alhambra, which I slaughtered everyone at, mostly due to dumb luck in being able to buy tons of tiles for exact change.

Wheeeee.

I should be sleeping but this song parody crept into my head and made me write it

I should probably revisit this one in the morning when I can rhyme better. I have no idea why I was thinking of singing about bridge anyway.


Fifty Ways to Lose A Contract
(to the tune of "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon)


"The problem is all inside your bid," she said to me,
"The contract is easy, you can claim it on trick three.
"I'd like to help you, 'cause as far as I can see
There must be fifty ways to lose a contract."

She said, "It's really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I think your splinter bids are often misconstrued
I won't show my suit, at the risk you'll think I cued.
There must be fifty ways to lose a contract."

You just misplay the heart, Bart
Drop a low spade, Wade
No need to finesse, Tess,
Just listen to me.
Give up a trick, Nick
Don't need much to nitpick,
Just guess the wrong split, Kit
And now you're down three!

She said, "It grieves me so to see you going down
I wish there's something I could do to turn your luck around."
I said, "Alright, I get the point,
And would you please expound about the fifty ways?"

She said, "How 'bout instead of bidding no-trump, bid a suit?
And learn to count to thirteen, or the rest of this is moot."
And I realized, her comments were astute
I'd found the fifty ways to lose my contract.
Fifty ways to lose my contract.

You just misplay the heart, Bart
Drop a low spade, Wade
No need to finesse, Tess,
Just listen to me.
Give up a trick, Nick
Don't need much to nitpick,
Just guess the wrong split, Kit
And now you're down three!