Saturday with Games

Going backward, I arrived at an Air Volvo at about 11:30 from Richard’s place. The trip home was not without adventure. The tall bridge and the lunch-like ramp were not issues; other drivers were going fast, and some were racing. This is a Portland issue; we lack police to stop the racing. The Volvo safety features locked me to my seat when I slammed the brakes at 60 when a car cut off another, braked, and took the exit. I was two cars back and did not see it at first. No paint loss for Air Volvo. The bells went off when a car took a short left turn across four lanes, but I had plenty of time for that one. Since back-to-school, the intensity of driving in Portland has a marked increase, and the weekend racing and 90+ speeding have not improved safety! I went by one accident on Highway 26 with cars sprayed over the grassy medium.

I showered and soon began reading. I fell asleep while reading and put the Kindle down. I soon fell asleep. I had breathing issues from the pollen and had a nightmare of being trapped in smaller and smaller spaces. I woke up, got my inhaler, calmed down, and finally slept again. Ugh!

Returning to 5ish, I had finished Lobster Bisque soup and headed to Richard’s for games. The soup is from Trader Joe’s and comes in a plastic container. I just carefully heat it in a pan. The drive across Beaverton and Portland was without incident and was in light traffic. The intensity was in the late evening.

Richard and Lauren were finishing a new fun card game called Marvel-based Comic Hunter. In this game, you create a collection of comic books and score higher for popular heroes and randomly selected characteristics like costume changes. Lauren lost to Richard by one point and was not happy. James, who soon joined us, and Richard collected comic books, and the cards in Comic Hunter show a high-quality image of real issues in demand. They lovingly looked at the cards and said they had this one and that one as we played.

But before we played the card game, I requested an older game, Suburbia, which had not hit the table in a while. Richard has the giant box version (including all the extensions plus more selling now for about $200), but we played only the basic version. It has been more than six months since we played it, maybe longer. While Richard set up, we watched a how-to-play video, and soon, the simulation of building a city in a world of cities was running. The game contains rules that some city areas, printed cardboard hexes, pay not just in your city but for other cities run by the other players. Soon, James was receiving four coins for every green living space placed. This means you have to watch other players play, and the game plays fast, and there are no rounds; just pay for new city hexes or take another action, get paid, and move on to the next player. I like the game; once you understand it, it is fun. There were also four public goals for twenty points each; Richard took three, and I won one. I also made my secret goal for another ten points.

(the 3-D parts I printed and painted for Richard, one of my few successes with my 3-D printer)

Richard won by a lot, but I scored second, with Lauren chasing me by just a few points and James just a bit further back. Richard focused on income, not the scoring, and soon built an engine in his cities that gave him first place. Still, Suburbia and then Comic Hunter were good games, and we all agreed that we would enjoy them again.

Before all this, I was home writing code, doing laundry and dishes, and cleaning up a few dusty spaces. The house still needs a good cleaning someday. I started aligning the data in my Kaggle coding contest, copying from others but only the code I understood, and then changing it to match my code’s variable names and structure. I still spent most of my time reading, understanding, and looking up what some code executes in the online manuals. I am still unsure of my Pandas in Python. This code is more Pythonic (i.e., using the unique tricks of Python internals) and less straightforward steps.

I walked and took some steps, but my back was sore. The chair I am using seems to be the issue. I had to rest and read to get rid of the pain. Hmmm. Lunch was reheated leftovers of spatchcocked chicken, mashed potatoes, and wilted garlic green beans. It was excellent a second time.

I rose at 7 and soon had liberal coffee in my cup, dreaming of eight years of Harris as president, followed by the next Democratic president, Pete Buttigieg, for sixteen and twenty if you include Biden. And while some of you, dear readers, think there must be something more than coffee in my drink, yes, the dream is alive in liberal caffeinated hearts like mine. Twenty! When not dreaming (or delusual), I find yogurt and a banana to add to the coffee and get going.

I start my usual morning by reading emails and news (primarily political and the waring around the Middle East) and updating my Quicken transactions from my credit cards and banking. I then start on the blog and write much of the day as I remember it. I think I recorded much of it.

And that takes me to the whole of Saturday. Thanks for reading!