Day 103: Tuesday Recovery

I am writing this Wednesday morning. I am feeling better, and I have been very thoughtful about my bottom, and the soreness is fading. I slept into 8:15 as I was enjoying just sleeping today.

Tuesday (yesterday) started with me raising 7ish, starting the blog writing for Monday, finding liberal coffee, and making a NYC  bagel, plain, with cream cheese. I enjoyed the writing and likely wondered a bit. I am feeling better and decompressing.

I had a box of potato pancake mix; I just added water and minced onions from King Arthur Flour, which I found when committing insecticide in the pantry. I found the Duck Fat (it is a John Wick movie thing) and added that to a non-stick pan (a gift from Steve). I used up all the mix and saved some potato pancakes for later. They were OK–it is pretty plain food. I had it with some ricotta cheese (I was out of sour cream). It was a good lunch.

I wanted to build some models or at least paint some items, so I needed to find the table in the fireside room in the house. It was buried under papers and the jetsam flotsam of my recent trips. I put all the recipes in the office box of papers to be filed. I threw away the stuff I would not need again but kept the maps for Texas and Louisiana. I find it hard to throw away maps. I trashed useless plastic paint holders and carried out recycling items twice. While not as clear as I wanted, I could return the table to usable.

I have some 1/6000 WW1 and WW2 naval ship models for tabletop gaming. They are not inexpensive, as they are a low-volume purchase (once you have them, you don’t need them again); these are only about an inch long, including the base, and are easy to paint. This scale is easy to store. I paste the flag of the nationality (Germany’s WW1 flag is white) on the base (there is a space for it) and also paste the name on the underside. Today, I glued the ships to their bases and primed them. I have stopped using spray primer for some small metal models. I instead hand-painted a water-soluble primer all over the models, creating a small but helpful coat for the paint to bite into. It dries fast, so I am not breathing in paint overspray, and the coating is so light that I don’t lose any details.

I managed to assemble some recently purchased WWI ships for the Falklands Battle (WWI). I also have new rules for another famous WWI battle, Dogger Bank, and most figures. I hope to use them someday. Again, they are easy to store, as all the figures fit in one drawer in my figure case.

After that, I found my time was running out, and I headed to Dondrea’s and Z’s house. We plan to play Stroganov (spelled differently than the food), and Dondrea was excited to make her special meal of the same name. I arrived at 5:30, and Dondrea had already finished most of the cooking. We shared the meal with Dondrea, Z, and me.

Dondrea, not one of our gamers, was initially put off by the board game’s complexity and process. Z, who often plays with me, soon got it and would win with a near-crushing score. I continued to walk everyone through the process and advised them on making score-improving moves. I came in last and should have followed my advice, but teaching and winning simultaneously is tricky.

I described the game in the previous post, so I will not go into detail now. Once they understood the processes, Z and Dondrea really liked the game. The game has enough resources on the board that it does not feel like a mean game (where every move removes options from the other players). With one advance action a turn for free, you get to do all the fun things every turn. There are no hidden items, so you can plan your turn during another player’s turn with a small risk of disturbing your plans. We all liked the idea in this game that the meeple furthest into Siberia became the first player.

I observed that the furs soon became only available in the further lands, as we had already harvested the easy ones—realistic. This also meant you could cheaply buy land as an advanced action near the start of the lands—you don’t have to pay for the furs yet to be harvested when purchasing the land. Soon, we had a land grab going. Z noticed that buying land was the fastest way to make points.

The favors from the Tsar give you only a few points but give you superpowers. Soon, Dondrea was a hunting machine. Z concentrated on lands and yurts and won. I was last, having tried everything to learn the game better. It was fun.

Z, blue, with the win! Dondrea was red, and me at the bottom was yellow.

I’m sorry if I focused too much on the game above; it was so fun to play with three players. After that, I headed home. I worked on the 1/6000 ships I mentioned, showered, and got to bed late. I ordered some more WWI ship figures to finish off the chance to play some battles. I slept well with dreams of riding horses and hunting in old Russia.

Thanks for reading.