It's an Exciting World

I invited people over for my Gigasecond on Saturday.   The gigasecond is your one billionth second on earth.  This is approximately 31.5 years.  Steph made some great samosa filling for the samosadillas.  I ordered some food from Rangoon Ruby.  The butternut squash soup I was planning took longer than anticipated, and wasn’t ready when people were ready to eat.

We played a lot of Jackbox party games, and it was a good evening.  I got to talk to most everyone there and enjoyed the conversations.

I spent most of Sunday playing board games.

I started out by heading to Tim’s to join him and Adam with some Mage Knight.  I had a really great game.  I played the unit friendly character, and got the extra unit ability early, then I got two banners including the banner of command.  I ended up with 7 units, which is unheard of.

I also picked up the Book of Wisdom and Learning early on, making my deck also quite good.

Adam and I then went to George’s for Gloomhaven, and were joined by Steph.  I got to play the quartermaster for the first time.  The character is very powerful, and I have a good idea of how to change him up to be a bit better as well.  The character is very fun, and can help out allies a lot so others will enjoy playing more as well.  I died pretty early on in the scenario, but they managed to win, just barely.

Steph and I joined Kevin, Lindsay, Andrew, Debby, Jeremy, and Adam at Lindsay and Kevin’s place.  We played a few games, some Jackbox Party Pack and three rounds of Secret Hitler.  I had fun playing, but was a bit more unpredictable in playing than was helpful to everyone else.  We got a really nice gift from Lindsay and Kevin of some really good turmeric, and a ton of oranges from Debby and Andrew.

The discussion for this book was one of the best we’ve had in a long time.  I think it was largely due to the change in format, allowing and requiring participation to be well thought, and minimizing the amount of rebuttal that could be done.  I referred to it as the “Lord of the Flies” approach, requiring a physical object to be held in order to be allowed to speak. We will play with this style over the next few months, and see how rigid it needs to be.

The discussion itself went much deeper into the book, the author, the characters, and the world than we’ve had in a long time.  The reaction to the book was lukewarm.

Tina hosted a lot of people at her place for her famous mochi waffles.  She cooked up a ton of them and had a very instagram worthy spread.  But I forgot to get a picture.  We got a game going of a new game Steph got for Christmas called Kodama.

In the game you build trees, and score based on how much the spirits like them.  The game was adorable, and we will certainly be playing it again.

We had a very chill New Years Eve with Adam, Candice, and Micah.  We played a game that Candice Brought, with me crushing the first game, and Adam winning the second.  It was called Letter Tycoon.  We then played a round of Ascension right before midnight.  We toasted at midnight and soon after everyone left to head home.

Steph and I were ready to get out after she had been sick for a week and a half, so we chatted up Kevin, Lindsay, Andrew, and Debby on hangouts and asked if they wanted to do dinner.  We got the day mixed up so Steph and I got a nice dinner together at an Indian place near Kevin and Lindsay’s apartment.

The next day we got a good dinner with them at a different place and got to have some good conversations in the hot tub afterwards.  Bonus pics of cats looking at cats…

Steph and I went through a dive training course for side mounted double tanks in preparation for cavern and cave diving. We ordered all the equipment through Diver Dan’s, and Mike was kind enough to walk us through the setup and pool practice for the fitting.  He also lent us a good bit of his gear, which was very useful in getting things measured and set up.

We did the online course before showing up for the classroom session on the 16th of December.

We stayed in SF that night as the first pool day was the following day.  We did four hours in the pool, and I was completely exhausted by the end of it.  That effectively marked the end of the smoothie diet.  If I was going to do four hour pool sessions for dive training I needed more energy.

The instructor Lexi was great, and very patient.  She was able to walk us through all the information and was able to help us get our gear set up correctly.

We did two more four hour pool sessions, then Steph and I jumped in the pool at Diver Dan’s for a few more hours of practice time.  She went back another day while I was at work and did a few hours more.