I was very busy this weekend, and my current health issues make me tire easily. Also, I feel that a blog needs to cover more than what was for lunch now that we are coming out of the pandemic. Of course, we may return to lockdown, and I will be writing about lunch again if the variants get worse and we all lockdown again. Then just getting lunch delivered and groceries send is a big deal.
So returning to Friday, I started the day as usual and had a few status meetings and emails to read and send. I also got my lab results and was a bit unhappy as there are some issues, but no medical person said anything. We have a website and even graphs of results from previous tests. I did follow up with a message about one missing test appointment.
As it is summer and Friday, I decided to stop working in the afternoon. Nike has summer hours on Friday, and so we often stop at noon.
I went to the hobby store for a few items and brought back Susie’s dinner, her fav, McDonald’s Happy Meal. Then, I drove in usually easy traffic into Portland to Richard’s house.
We played two games of the Vindication. I spent most of the first game explaining and helping others. We had a four-person game, and I was the only veteran player. Unfortunately, I managed to score last! However, Kathleen picked up the game fast, Richard managed to score high, and Alex managed to pull just ahead of me. They mostly liked the game, and we looked up how to buy a copy once the new Kickstarter ends.
I drove Kathleen home after playing one more game of Vidincation that we had only three rounds until we tipped an end-of-game trigger. I managed to repeat the same score positions (I was last!). Everyone seemed to like the game. However, they were unsure of the end-of-game triggers as it seems to end the game too soon, and the game felt a bit random to Alex.
Saturday was a slow start for me as I had trouble sleeping. It is hard to get to sleep after playing games at night, and the medical issues were on my mind too. I had the classic too tired to sleep. I managed to sleep for only a few hours and was up at 5:30AM.
I had time to do all the laundry, dishes, cook breakfast, and watched an episode of Warrior on cable. Evan was over at 1ish, and we had Mexican food for lunch and then headed to The 649 Taproom to play two games of The Lost Ruins of Arnak.
This is a new fav board game of mine that came out in 2020. I bought a copy after playing a two-person game with Richard. I like the theme of the 1920s Hollywood version of archeology with hints towards Indian Jones and Lara Croft.
This is often called a mid-weight worker placement and Euro game. It also includes a deck-building mechanic with deck thinning, which I think adds to the game’s charm for me. We played on the advance board this time, and we also had some misplays. For example, we did not get the iconography in some cards that only apply to campsites, not the more valuable explored sites. We corrected that and a few other mistakes.
Evan crushed me in the first game, and I came back and took the second game, but barely.
We returned and picked up Susie and went to the movies and saw the next Suicide Squad movie. We loved it. It was a freaky, fun movie. Peter Capaldi was the bad guy and seemed to channel all his villains from his Doctor Who days to make a believable and horror of a mad scientist.
We finished with the Spaghetti Factory for dinner. We had caught the early evening movie so we could make dinner work. We had a nice dinner, and that was the end of Saturday.
I managed to sleep a bit. We were up and out by 9ish to drive to the coast to see the Smith family at their beach house. The drive was 1:45 long with a strange wicked drive on a highway innocently called 53. It was two lanes and was a workout to drive. My speed was seldom above 30 as there were so many curves. It climbed within sight of Saddle Mountain’s summit (I was a bit surprised by seeing that). Apparently, Kat Smith, David’s and Michelle’s daughter, followed the same guidance and drove this on her trip too. It is now known, to the Smiths, as Kat’s turn-off, and it is avoided.
We were there at the beach house before brunch time. We had not met in 15 months. We were delighted to see each other. We then had brunch at The Yolk. The Yolk is open for brunch only and offers amazing breakfast food (except the biscuits and gravy I had, which was average at best).
After that, we returned to the Beach House and played Concordia, another board game. I had to teach this game too. Michelle and Kat played with me. Susie and Kat as a team. It took a while, but soon Michelle understood the game and started building her Roman Trading Company; the goal of Concordia is to build the best trading family. Kat started to get it and focused on food production. Kat built her last trading post and started the end of the game. I managed to pull just ahead of Michelle with Cat far behind; she had not purchased as many personality cards as Michelle (having cloth and wine trade covered), and I (bricks, tools, and having all my colonists out) and thus scored less.
We played a partial second game and had to teach David the game. I think everyone liked the game. It is one of the best light-to-mid worker placement Euro-styled games. It uses a deck-building process, but there is no deck thinning.
Kat made vegetarian-styled burgers and with fruit. It was nice.
We drove home convoy-style that night. David led, and we watched the sunset in the Pacific as we drove along the beach for the first ten minutes of the trip home (David did not take 53). Unfortunately, our homebound trip was delayed by paving highway 26. I put in for Monday off after I got home. The travel and my illness slowed me down today.
I am time boxing this blog to two hours of writing. So I will cover Monday and Tuesday together tomorrow.
Thanks for reading! Be safe. And as an IT person, I always say, “And don’t break anything!”
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 