| A weekend of geeking |
[03 Jul 2008|06:51pm] |
I like to post these in the "Friday afternoon, tl;dr" zone, don't I? Yes, today is a Thursday, but it's effectively Friday... Ah well.
As you know I decided on very short notice to get away from it all to beautiful, rainy, Columbus OH this past weekend for Origins. What better than a weekend of gaming and gaming, a parade, and more gaming? :)
( Friday, travel and some games )
( Saturday, games and some more games and Mission: Caylus )
( Sunday, games and planes )
Monday morning the alarm went off and I got up, but only long enough to send an email to work saying (paraphrased) "ugh. coming in late" and then went back to bed until lunchtime. Hung over though I was, it was a fantastic weekend!!
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| Looks like another weekend getaway in the planning |
[02 Jul 2008|12:33pm] |
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So the Star Trek Experience is closing in September. Looks like I need to make one last trip out to Quark's this summer. Hmm. Maybe I can plan a weekend with some friends... ;)
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| Back from Origins |
[29 Jun 2008|11:51pm] |
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Tired. Happy, but would still love to play even more games. Plane fights back were amusing. More later, but first -- bed.
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| So I do yoga already without knowing it |
[26 Jun 2008|12:56pm] |
Today at work they had one of those "workplace yoga" things where they pimp the company that does on-site yoga classes (provided enough people sign up) and answer questions about yoga, as well as doing a simple set of in-chair stretches to give you an idea about how it all works.
One of the things I learned is that even though I'm horribly less-flexible than I used to be I'm still way more flexible than most people. All of the spots where she said "you don't have to get this thing to touch that thing" I was already touching. That was kind of cool. The other thing that really amused me was that several of the stretches she had us do are things I've just ALWAYS done to take a break at my chair. So I guess I kind of "do" some limited form of yoga without even knowing I'm doing it, but it seems to me natural to want to do some stretching and posing to wake things up over the course of a day in one's seat. Kinda cool!
She talked a lot about how yoga is good at helping relieve stress, and then proposed examples of stress like emails coming in or work in general just stressing you out and making you hunch your shoulders. I guess I'm pretty lucky in that I don't really feel stress like that at work: I'm kind of EXACTLY in the job I want to be in and am finally out of debt and have a good relationship so in general, I'm not so bothered by life anymore (it is definitely an "anymore" thing since I HAVE had plenty of stress in the past, BTW). So I just really didn't get the idea of needing it to relieve stress.
In the end I'm not sold on it. I mean sure, I could take classes to learn to do more of the stretching and posing, but I do some of that already and I also could probably start off with a video or a Wii Fit or something and not spend so much money on it until I'm actually at the point where a real person would help. But it DID remind me that more of the stretchy stretchy every day is nice. :)
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| Plastic cups, a plunger and a chocolate bar |
[26 Jun 2008|09:41am] |
Last night I had a wonderful dinner and chat with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) redarius who's down on business. It's always nice to catch up with him and I'm definitely looking forward to a much longer visit with him, dajoey and we think neuroxin in the fall when we can all WoW-geek out for a few days. :)
This morning I woke up thinking that I really need to play some board games soon. Then I remembered that I'm going to Origins tomorrow. Hooray!
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| Gamed but not forgotten |
[22 Jun 2008|03:58pm] |
Okay, having finally gotten done with the big giant brain dump that is the WDW trip, time to mention a little gaming I've gotten done.
Last Saturday (as in the 14th) was an embarrassment of riches as far as gaming was concerned. Not only was it the OC board game day, but it was also game night in Pasadena. How lovely! :) Unfortunately for the OC, Pasadena is where I have better friends so that was the one I spent the most time at, but I did get to the OC group for at least one game. Well, one game exactly. But it was a good one. I showed up as games were in full swing, but a few of us stragglers managed to coalesce into a game of Thurn & Taxis: Power and Glory. Two of us were old hands at it, one was familiar with the base game and one was brand new. The other old hand won, but it was largely because he managed as his first route to get one 8 cities long that let him actually play out 8 houses. Unreal! You really don't come back against something like that very easily, but I made it close anyway.
Then I headed up to Pasadena for the rest of the day. We started by saving the world from the Pandemic. I had never played this before, but I was more than willing to not let the one guy who'd played it before be the Orchestrator so we had a decent time of it. Still, I'm not sure this one's as good as LotR or Shadows just because it probably REALLY is prone to the Orchestrator. After that, shaunskywalker had indicated that he wanted to play Puerto Rico, so this we did. After the recent run of trying new strategies that spectacularly failed, I decided to stick with what works for me with much better results. Next up was (finally) one of my new games, Airships. This one was like Kingsburg or Yspahan in that you have dice but you can sort of control the luck, but it was much less on the "control" and more on the "luck" than those other two. It is nice and fast though, so it'll see some play again. Only one of us, M, really concentrated on building blimps and he walked away with the game. Finally (though I was hoping to get another of my new games in), M talked us into a game of Vinci, which I REALLY enjoyed. Toward the end, B tried to talk the others into kingmaking "me" (but really him) but mercifully they didn't listen. I will definitely have to be tracking down a copy of this as I like the way you have to know the timing of sending your civilization into decline. At any rate, by that point it was something like 1:30 or 2am, so we took off.
Later in the week, my belated birthday gift from my brother arrived. I really need to keep my BGG wishlist up to date because now that he's found it I think he's going to use it every time I need gifts given to me, because he sent Can't Stop from the list along with The Nacho Incident (because it looked silly). Yay!
Next weekend I'm now committed to Origins, so I expect the game log will get a good workout!!
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| uilos = pure evil (in a good way) |
[21 Jun 2008|11:21am] |
Okay, so I'm gonna do Origins then. I'm such an easy sell when good friends and games are involved... I'll get in on Friday afternoon and game a lot on Friday and all day Saturday, then most of Sunday (leaving Sunday afternoon).
I'm probably going to regret the lack of a relaxing weekend at some point, but I shall make up for it by goofing off all weekend now. :)
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| Some November gaming |
[19 Jun 2008|07:02pm] |
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Would any of you be interested in BGG.CON?
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| Answer to a meme |
[17 Jun 2008|12:25am] |
In a meme post, mikailborg had an "ask a question" line and he asked a question that I thought might be interesting to more of you:
( e) How did you become such a serious Disney fan, anyway? )
I've given a sort of overview of the question, but feel free to ask questions and I'll expand on whatever people are interested in.
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| Horrible updater |
[11 Jun 2008|05:32pm] |
Yeah, I have a bunch of weekend and birthday updates to do. Since pretty much the whole thing was at one Disney or another I'm debating whether or not to put this under the Disney filter (as always just ask if you want to be on it -- mostly it's to prevent people from OD'ing on hearing about me going to Disneyland), but either way I really want to get the report up. Not to mention that I have a bunch of pictures that need to get posted and a couple of new icons.
What I really need to do is schedule vacation days so that I have extra vacation days from my vacation to put up the blogs and photos from my vacation. Yeah, that's gonna happen.....
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| Fun to come |
[03 Jun 2008|12:23pm] |
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The deluxe birthday weekend will be starting off in style: my upgrades for LAX-MCO are confirmed and I'm getting primo fireworks viewing from M after I check into the Grand Floridian. Should be a nice weekend with ashoemaker! :)
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| Let's go to a show. A picture show! |
[02 Jun 2008|12:28pm] |
In other news, two movies in two weekends, I'm on a roll! Indy on its opening weekend followed by Sex and the City on its opening weekend!
( Spoilers for the movies, so don't open River Song's blue book! )
Um, yeah, and I also watched the latest UK Dr. Who if you caught that reference... :)
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| Busy busy |
[02 Jun 2008|12:21pm] |
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I've been so busy that I haven't had time to post about a few things that I've meant to say. Seems like that's the norm these days, which is nice. I think I was a lot less happy when I had time at the old job to make posts daily. Still, I'd like to be able to keep up with people a little more often. I've seen a few of my friends start using twitter, so I suppose I should check that out. The problem (if you can call it that) with such a solution is that I'd rather create a complete thought or post something where people can respond than just throw random lines out at various times during the day (not that I don't have plenty of random lines I could throw out). If you use twitter, what do you like about it and what do you feel like you get out of it?
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| A visitor for the weekend |
[29 May 2008|10:05am] |
For the long weekend, one of mt GDC friends RZ came down from the Bay Area to get away from work for a while and enjoy the area. He's looking at possibly getting a job down here (which would totally rock BTW), and I discovered that if he gets it I'd probably end up playing so many more games! :)
( Schedules are for people who do not get drunk on Friday nights )
All in all it was a great weekend, even if I was a bit slow to get out of bed on Tuesday.
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| Random channel flipping |
[23 May 2008|12:04pm] |
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I was poking around through the onscreen guide on my TV this morning, and was reminded that I need to see if something is not sold out. You see, right below WE in the listings is FIT.
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| Who knew? |
[23 May 2008|10:19am] |
So when did Origins stop being on the July 4th weekend anyway? Did I know that it has moved in the past already? Well, it's still ingrained in my brain that it's on the holiday weekend, so I got it wrong. At least the move made my decision about whether or not to go easier since I really don't have the vacation time for Origins on a non-holiday weekend and Spiel later in the year; and in this case the way cool trip to Germany wins.
In other news a friend from GDC is coming down this weekend for some Disney, gaming and maybe Legoland, so that should be fun. I had hoped to do a bit game day on the Memorial Day weekend like I usually do. Last year I didn't because my birthday was on a Saturday so I did the big to-do then, but this year I figured I'd do it.... until almost everyone turned up busy. Argh. So what I'm doing Sunday will be about 6 people until dinner when two leave. At least I suppose we'll have the option to go see Indy if we don't keep gaming I guess.
I was thinking of trying the July 4th weekend now that it doesn't seem I have anything to do then, but I suppose I'll need to send out a round of "are you going to be in town" emails. It would also leave the end of June in that awkward "too close to another party" stage to throw one in that month, but I can probably do the "4 people" thing one weekend.
I do have a couple of non-local readers of this LJ (and you know who you are) who I'll also have to poll. :)
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| Should I? |
[18 May 2008|09:00pm] |
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Debating some options here. Should I go to Origins?
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| Amusing disclaimer |
[18 May 2008|02:10pm] |
I'm settling up my bank account today after last week's trip and have come across the following at the bottom of one of my WDW receipts:
Thank you for visiting the
Walt Disney World Resort
Have a Magical Day
As a reminder, the Department of
Homeland Security does not allow
liquids or gels, including snow-globes,
through the security screening point
or in the cabin of the aircraft.
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| Some catching up |
[16 May 2008|09:35am] |
I have played games that I have not yet talked about! Before I forget, I should talk about them.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned Lost Cities with redarius so that brings us to the weekend of the 3rd and 4th of this month. Saturday was game day in Anaheim, which ends no later than 6 because it's at the library, so it's not a long day of gaming. Still, it's fun and it's letting me make new gaming friends. When I got there games were already in motion, so I had to wait a few minutes, but then got a couple of people to join me for On the Underground, which turned out to be a very tight game, all the way to a tie at the end. After that we pulled out The Princes of Florence. Now, I thought I had played this before, but now I'm pretty sure that I hadn't. I have seen it being played, but I had no idea how the flow of the game would go. Even so, after a couple of early bad turns, I still managed to do okay. I'll have to try it again sometime.
The next day, Sunday, I had three people over for a quiet day of a few games. Andy, P and C joined me. As usual, C was the prompt one so we started with a quick Balloon Cup which was down to the wire, and then we tried Race for the Galaxy with the two-player variant (I'd never used it before because I've been teaching it so much that all my two-player runs weren't with experienced players). I liked it, but I think I'm really starting to look forward to the expansion now.
By the time we were done, everyone had shown up so we decided to learn something new, Leonardo da Vinci. One of the guys at the Saturday day always bring that and Princes, and I had enjoyed the latter, so I thought I'd try the former. It took most of the rest of the afternoon to learn and play, but it was okay. I am not sure how much a fan I'm becoming of the "only a few rounds" games -- you need to know at the beginning how the end will play out and for learning that can make for a bad surprise at the end (which I got in both games). I mean, a game that is richer for repeat plays is great, but that first game needs to be good enough that you want a repeat.
We grabbed dinner after that at The Veggie Grill, and then came back for a quick game of Puerto Rico. I have to stop trying new things. I do worse when I don't go with what I've done in the past and when I try new things? Ugh.
Anyway, no games since then but Memorial Day weekend is coming up so I should get something in soon!
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| They can't believe their own marketing, can they? |
[14 May 2008|08:56am] |
So I've got the morning show on while getting ready and an ad for the El Capitan in Hollywood comes on, with the tag line at the end that you can buy tickets now for "Prince Caspian, the movie event of the summer!"
Um. Seriously, did they even believe that when they wrote it? I'm an unabashed Disney fan, but even I think there's another movie that might just steal the title of "movie event of the summer" and it isn't about Narnia...
( ...it should be 'crystal' clear. )
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