This was a really good game, but it was a little too complicated and we didn’t interact much. The game could have been different if we fought each other, and I had considered attacking Tina to stall the game. We all went the merchant route and Tina beat me, with Jeff in 3rd.
This morning I woke up to do some chores before Steph got up and got going. Then we headed to the farmer’s market on Cal Ave. The Bolani guy said he had missed us and called us the ‘pumpkin people’ which I like. Steph got some other stuff there, but I think I’m going to keep to Milk Pail mainly.
After a bike ride to Steph’s house and back I sat down for a nice pasta dinner. I decided to smother the noodles in a good helping of La Victoria’s orange sauce. It was really tasty, but before I could properly enjoy it Steph showed up saying that we needed to get out the door immediately to make it to Brian and Candice’s so that we could carpool to the Sabercats game. I ate the pasta in the car while extolling the virtues of orange sauce. When we got to their place we headed straight to San Jose for the game. On the way to the stadium we passed La Victoria, and Steph decided she had to try some of this orange sauce. She definitely understands now why I like it so much, but I’m not sure if she is quite hooked yet.
At the game we got to see the over the top entrance that we missed half of last time. It was just as outdone as last time, and fantastic. Steph and I took some strolls around the concourse for the exercise and to get away from the noise. Today was pompom day for the Sabercats, so we got some free pompoms.
They also had the family pack deal going on, which was 4 tickets, 4 hot dogs, 4 drinks, and 4 chip bags for $50, which is hard to pass up for such an entertaining sport with a good number of friends. We had Brian, Candice, and their neighbors, Jeremy B, Kerry and gf, other David, Tina, Steph, and myself. The Sabercats won by a lot, and when they were soundly ahead they tried some onside kicks. I thought the onside kicks were pretty harsh moves against a team that was already down 20 points or so, but it was still entertaining.
Afterwards we grabbed drinks at Firehouse, a bar close by the Stadium. It was a nice place to chat and I’m getting some great feedback on the kickstarter ideas from Brian.
I played the Volkare’s Quest campaign of Mage Knight and I played the crystal making dragon character. I was playing with Brian and Tina.
Brian got a really good early start to the game when he ran across a ruin that required one of each basic mana, and he was able to do it then keep going attacking the mage tower he was planning on attacking anyway. There were a few points where we did things wrong, but we will keep those in mind next time and work it out. The campaign took us from about a 2:30 start to a 10 pm finish. All in all that is a moderate time scale for Mage Knight as it can easily take much much longer.
Towards the end we got a good formation going around Volkare, and we had the cards set up so that we were just waiting for him to make a move. When he did I was able to take out all 14 green enemies, and then Brian and Tina split the 8 red and white. I had the perfect setup for taking down the little guys as I had 2 spells; the first removed the first wound from any attack to me, the second reduced the armor of all enemies I was fighting. I also had 2 units that could do 6 ranged fire damage each, and I also got 6 siege damage in there as well.
Thursday afternoon I took a ride down to Shoreline Lake to have a nice walk and listen to some of the audiobook. I sat down at one of the benches in the shade and several squirrels came up to me. One even climbed up my leg and sat on my knee.
This book was nice, but completely ignored several of my favorite characters. Nothing in the two rivers was mentioned in the least. Perrin and Loial are my favorite two characters and the seem like the most regular guys in the story now. The others have started going off the deep end in power and ability. The setup continues for the later books, but there was some really nice action in this one. I’m not sure all of what happened with the forsaken, but most of it seems to be going well for the good guys.
This morning Steph and I went by the Milk Pail Market. It was a nice bike ride and we filled up both of our backpacks for $25. I got some interesting lemon cucumbers, that I’m looking forward to trying. We got some Stilton for Steph, and I got a piece of jalapeno cheese, both of which were fantastic. We looked up how to harvest olives and walnuts as we have both growing in my backyard and they will be ready to harvest in a month or so. The walnuts are already falling of the tree and I’ll start grabbing them each morning and getting them starting to dry. I’ll brine a good number of olives once they start falling off the tree. Steph wants to try making olive oil, but I think I’ll stick to brining some jars of olives as that is much easier.
This was a pretty and bad movie. The visuals were good, but everything else was mediocre at best. This movie had a large number of gratuitous 3D scenes, and nonsensical action sequences. The characters were amazingly shallow, and the character development was done poorly in the few characters it was attempted. The acting was very sub par by all the major actors, and the dialog was wholly unbelievable. The green screen scenes were far too obvious, and the lack of color fading in the background one would usually expect for seeing something in the distance made most of the pretty scenes awkward.
This movie had some good parts, but most of it was ripping apart what we had already thought of the MIB universe, and gratuitous 3D scenes. I wasn’t watching it in 3D which made the gratuitous 3D scenes that much worse. The villain was impressive and understandable to a degree, which is pleasant in any movie. The 5th dimensional being and the Andy Warhol moment were the major redeeming parts of the movie.
It's an Exciting World 