Every Day an Adventure

Whoa, weekend. I didn't update yesterday because I got home too late and was almost thinking of the same for today.

So yeah. Yesterday at the last minute I got invited to come out to Redmond and play board games. Jason and Drew and I played a game of Runebound. It took bloody forever since we hadn't played before, and I eventually left at 1:30am (after about 4-5 hours of game) because it seemed like I wasn't going to get a third rune (I was seriously one turn away from getting it and winning the game when Drew sniped it out of the city I was heading for.) and I just started throwing my character against really hard quests, at which point I lost my second rune when I died. Doh.

Today, damienroc and theonlymegumegu had invited me to come to a games party at this guy Leon's house in Tacoma. I was a little bit chicken about going, but when Jeff reminded me that it was sort of like the first time I ever met him, when I invited him to a games party at my house and he didn't know anyone either, I figured, what the heck. So I drove down to Tacoma and hung out there for several hours, and it actually went pretty well, plus I did know about half of the people there.

The first game I got in on was Duel of the Ages or something -- and we just made a board and dealt out some items to people and had characters go kill each other. It started off REALLY boring -- as in, I'd go away for 15 minutes and it wouldn't be anywhere near my turn -- but when we got to the end of the game and it was basically these two guys fighting each other and Wooko and I fighting each other on the other side of the board, that was a lot more fun. I lucked out and killed off Wooko's two characters, only losing one of mine in the process, and then I went across the map to try to kill off the other guys -- except that in the meantime they'd killed each other off. One of them had a "sentinel" item that kept attacking me even though the character was dead, so the sentinel thingy actually killed me -- but technically, 1) I was last man standing so I won, 2) I had a device to teleport me away from it, and it couldn't follow, so I should have won. Oops.

After that I played Tsuro with Rochelle and Brien and Chris (and later Jeff and Fuzzy too), and I won my first game of it, but in the second game, Chris pretty much killed three of us off in one tile, so Jeff won. I liked it, I would like to play again, I think, so I can get my head around the way it works more.

We had a big game of The Big Idea after that, with 8 players. The last time I had played The Big Idea, seriously, was before Ralph had moved off of Beechwood, meaning 1999 or 2000... and Laura Tweedy and I were going to draw extra cards for it, I remember, for the "suffixes" like "On a stick" and "In a Box" and all. Really, I wasn't that big a fan of the game, but with 8 people it was actually a bit more fun, even if I'm pretty sure I came in near the bottom if not dead last in ranking.

Jeff and Wooko and Chris and I played a quick game of San Juan after that. I won it, with my chapel. Apparently Wooko really hates chapels. Apparently I shouldn't make fun of Wooko about hating chapels, or steal his Skittles for that matter. Arr.

Anyway, by that point it was like 1am so I figured I should probably drive home. So I did.

I had a pretty good time. I'm glad Jeff convinced me to come down there. I wish Tacoma wasn't so damn far. I think it's awesome that I've had two big weekends of board games in a row, though. Plus Leon's house is way cool, his basement is a really good gaming setup.

Also, a funny thing that happened on the way down was that when I went past the Tacoma Dome they had a big sign for "TOBY KEITH -- TONIGHT!!" up on the blinky thing, and at the time, I was listening to a cover of a Toby Keith song, realizing I've never actually heard the real guy sing it. Weird. (I don't know what's gotten into me lately about country music -- I even borrowed a Tim McGraw CD from Drew yesterday, and I actually sort of like it.)

I do things besides write parody lyrics. Honest.

Today I drove down to Tacoma to go see a movie with damienroc. On the way there, there was an accident around Federal Way. Traffic was totally stopped, so I called Jeff to let him know I was running late. The funny part was, he was looking at traffic maps and cams on the net trying to figure out what the problem was, and as far as he could tell, there *was* no problem. It was very odd. But, I was on the phone and there were all these sirens and such going by... so, yeah. It turned out there was a van which had flipped over in the middle of the highway and two lanes of I-5 were unusable.

Well, I got there like 4:30, and so Jeff and Wooko and I went over to see the 5:30 showing of Dukes of Hazzard. Wooooooo, that was a really fun movie. I think it's hilarious to watch as its rating gets lower and lower on IMDB -- it's down to 3.8 as I post this -- but, seriously, it was a fun movie. I mean, you can't go into it expecting to relive your childhood or expect a quality experience -- you have to go into it expecting a goofy bunch of crap with a lot of car chase scenes and all the other usual capers of the Dukes of Hazzard. And then you won't be disappointed.

After the movie, I called back Oren, who was down at PLU for a Go congress or something, and we went and picked him up and went to Mory's for dinner. Jeff and I just ended up hanging out and talking about baseball and junk for a while; by the time I thought of maybe annoying Wooko to play games or something, he had gone to sleep anyway. Arr.

The drive home was pretty uneventful, fortunately. I listened to three volumes of Forbidden Broadway on the way down and back today. I feel very inspired. Problem is, I really sort of wish I knew which Broadway shows are "well-known" and which aren't, so people will "get" the stuff I write? Ah, well...

Today was a pretty good day. I got up really early to meet Megan and Heidi at the gym at 9:15am. We did leg exercises today. Because my knees are so screwed up from my years of DDR, I have a lot of trouble with some of their leg exercises, so they taught me how to do some of the curls and squats on a machine instead of with their freestanding versions, which stresses my knees less.

After the gym, we went to Cyndy's for breakfast, which was pretty good. Megan and Heidi went off plant shopping at that point, and Josh said, "well, I'm gonna go watch baseball, you're welcome to come along," so I went and watched baseball for a while. Eventually they all went outside to work on the fence and garden. I was mostly useless but I did yank a few weeds out of the ground and help measure fence stuff. When Cory and Justin showed up, I ducked out and stopped off at home for a bit.

Then I headed down to Tacoma... hung out at Jeff and Wooko's place for a while talking about Transformers (and we even watched an episode of it, because Jeff is a dork), then we went over to the movie theater, where we met up with Chris and two of his friends, and we all saw Batman Begins, which was, god forbid, a Batman movie that didn't totally suck. Well, Katie Holmes is pretty retarded in it, but most of the movie was actually good. Honest.

Afterwards we went to Mory's for dinner, and played a starting game of SPANC, this new game Wooko picked up, which is pretty silly (but like many other recent Steve Jackson Games, has a reasonably popular artist (Phil Foglio, in this case) doing the cards, so if nothing else they're funny to look at). Ro and Brien joined us at Mory's, and afterwards everyone went back to the apartment to play board games, except by that point I realized it was midnight and I should drive home. So I did. And now I am here. And going to sleep soon.

By the way, I think the Mariners have somehow activated an Infinite Improbability Drive, as they managed to actually beat the never-lost-to-the-Mariners Pedro Martinez, with Ryan Franklin pitching for us, and with Sexson ejected from the game, so our infield was Hansen - Lopez - Morse - Bloomquist. WHAT THE HECK?! I don't get it, but... wow. Just, crazy. If the improbability drive stays on, maybe Ichiro will hit four home runs tomorrow and Mike Cameron will be miraculously healed and get to play.

Arr.

Yes, I skipped the Fremont Fair... I just didn't feel like dealing with a hundred thousand people. I might go tomorrow, I might not. We'll see.

Went down to Tacoma today. Had dinner at Rock Pasta for theonlymegumegu's birthday thingy. There were a whole ton of people there, most of whom I recognized, many of whom I don't know the names of. I ended up at the "quiet" end of the table, and shared a pizza with Wooko and played Icehouse games with him and Stuph, we played two games of Volcano. Afterwards, we filtered out people at the Game Matrix, and then everyone converged on Eric's basement, where half the people played San Juan, and half played Settlers. I was in the Settlers game. I won. I think I'm too much of a gamer, it frustrates me when people make completely random and not-even-remotely-optimal moves, but I am getting a lot better at not expressing that at all. Half the group went to Seattle to see Izo as part of the SIFF, and the rest of us (at this point Wooko, Stuph, Ro, Brien, me, and the guy whose name I never caught) ended up at Jeff and Wooko's place, and played Betrayal At The House On The Hill. Nameless-Guy was the traitor, but the rest of us won, so it's all good. Then we played a game of Ninja Burger, which was utterly frustrating for me because d6's are my nemesis, but on the other hand I think I've figured out an important game mechanic for something else, so it's all good.

Drove home. Tacoma is far. Jeff has a beard. It looks weird.

Seattle is going through an odd thing right now where it's scaldingly hot during the day and horrendously cold at night. Makes it weird to sleep.