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Movie Night: Double Indemnity

Steph and I joined Lindsay, Andrew, Kevin, and Debby at Lost Colony for a movie night. They had leftover snacks from poker on Friday, and some ice cream. The stars of the night, however, were the new kittens. Ajani(AJ) and Kiora(Kiki) were adorable. I played with them a good bit, and they used my legs as a playground. The only not so great part is when they ran across my face, but it didn’t hurt that much.

The movie was good. As with many of the older movies, it is interesting to see what modern movies take from it. Watching it now without taking into account that this movie predates most others we’ve seen would make it feel like the movie is overusing tropes. The difference comes when you realize those tropes started with these older movies.

November 28, 2017 0

Long Games at Tina’s

Steph and I went over to Tina’s for long games. Steph was just there to hang out for a bit, and we all feasted on Thanksgiving leftovers. I jumped into a game of Feast for Odin with Adam, Tina, and Jon. I ended up winning with the pillage strategy, but there were lots of inefficiencies. The second game, Tina switched with Neta. Adam won that game by a lot, with a houses strategy. The third game I won by a lot with the Whaling strategy. We are still trying to figure out the limiting factor for the game, which makes it fun to play over and over.

The other table was playing a game called Spirit Island. After board games we played a bit of a multi-player puzzle game on a console, and they ordered pizza.

November 26, 2017 0

Thanksgiving morning I got up and got the turkey in the oven. I decided to go with Chef John’s recipe from Food Wishes; he’s never steered us wrong before. I had defrosted the turkey over the past 4 days, and made the herb butter. I got to use lots of the herbs in our yard for this including: thyme, rosemary, and sage. I also started up some of the potato and leek soup, another Food Wishes recipe. The turkey got 2 hours in the oven before we left for the Lee’s house.

I helped Mr. Lee with the TV, cleaning up the wires in the back and making sure everything was working properly. We got everything set up before heading to dinner. Jeff and Patty brought their baby, who was surprisingly well behaved. We had a nice dinner, and as it happens, the conversation tended to center on the baby. Stephanie’s cornbread went over really well. We managed to make it out of the house without piles of leftovers, which was nice, as we had a ton of food for the next get together already.

We got back and put the turkey back in the oven for another two hours. The drippings were more voluminous than I had expected and the bottom of the oven got a decent coating of turkey fat. We got everything cleaned up and set up, and got a little bit to relax before people showed up. We were joined by Lindsay, Kevin, Debby, Andrew, and Adam. Adam brought over some really tasty drink mixes. I want to make more of the ginger pepper mix in the future. It might be worth while to drop some ginger and pepper in a cider and see what happens.

The timing couldn’t have been better, as Andrew and Debby showed up as the turkey was ready to come out of the oven. It turned out much better than expected, and I would say it was one of the best turkeys I’ve had. I got the 16 lb turkey, and we ate about 2/3 of it. After dinner Lindsay had a great exercise in showing appreciation for each other, which didn’t go exactly as she expected, I think. It was still great to hear the appreciation that was shared. We played a special round of Scatagories that Lindsay planned as well, and it was a lot harder than I would have thought.

The guys and gals split after that; guys drafting mtg, and gals doing a kitty puzzle. We ended at about the same time and had another round of drinks and some pie. The pie was from Alexanders, and Debby was nice enough to bring them for us. We started playing some jackbox games after pie. We went through 5 different games, and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t win any of the games, but it was still great fun. We played another round of mtg with the cards we had drafted and it turned out almost exactly like the previous round. I was dealing a ton of damage, but I got focused down by everyone else.

It was a great evening, and I appreciated the great people I got to spend the day with.

Mage Knight at Tina’s

Adam, Lee, Tina, and I played a game of Mage Knight on Tuesday. The game didn’t start well for me, as I was handed starting cards 4, 5, and 6, insuring that I go last. The start saw me sitting back for Adam to leave the maze he was sitting on, then I got the only enemy I couldn’t kill. I ended up just sitting there most of the first day and doing nothing, putting me really far behind. Lee got into a few situations early on that gave him four wounds, which wasn’t great for him either. His bigger issue is he didn’t manage to recruit any good units, and the special cards he was taking had to do with healing mostly. I got some amazing spells and special actions, leading to me being able to take on a city earlier than anyone else. It took me a long time to defeat the city, but It worked out. I was still really far behind, and just ran to Lee’s city to finish the game. The scores pretty much said what we expected them to, once someone corrected Adam’s math. Adam won by a lot, followed by Tina. I was way behind Tina, and Lee was another large drop behind me.

November 24, 2017 0

Wednesdays at George’s

I’ve had fun going to George’s for Wednesdays. The board games have been fun, and the people have been good to spend time with. We played codenames with both words and pictures one week, then played terraforming Mars with an expansion the next week.

November 18, 2017 0

Jeff and Andrew visit

My brother Jeff and Andrew DeRussy came to town to visit me for the weekend. Andrew got in Friday night, right before I took Steph to the airport. Saturday morning we played with the cats before picking up my brother, Jeff. They didn’t really know what they wanted to do, so we played it pretty low key. We got lunch at my favorite restaurant, Rangoon Ruby, then went to Redwood Coast Cider. They got the full tasting menu, and really enjoyed it. We went back to my place and played with VR, FPV drones, and watched youtube. For dinner we went to Panda Dumpling and had lots of tasty dumplings. We decided to do an escape room in San Jose, https://quadraescape.com/events/remote-chance-a-cinematic-escape/. The escape room was well done, but not terribly well explained. We were ever so close, being one puzzle away from escaping. We didn’t do much after that, and went to bed early. They were still mostly on Eastern time.

Sunday I cooked some eggs, and Jeff made some tasty hash browns. It was especially tasty with orange sauce on it. We chilled for a bit Sunday morning, then grabbed lunch. After lunch I drove them to SF, which is a lot more driving that I normally do. It reminded me of why I hate driving so much. At least it was only one trip for the both of them.

November 6, 2017 0

Stephanie Time

I’ve been enjoying the time I’ve been getting to spend with Stephanie this week. She is back in town from China for a bit.

When she got back we had a very lazy weekend together, playing games, cooking, and lazing about. The game we mainly played together was Fortnite, a base building zombie killing game. We enjoyed our fire pit, and had some smores.

We got to go on a hike in a mostly empty park named Huddart Park.

And we cuddled kitties.

Lana got cuddles too, it was harder to get pictures of her.

November 1, 2017 2

Kitty Weekend

I had a decent weekend with lots of kitties involved.

Friday during the day I went to Jeremy’s place to hang out. We ended up playing a good bit of Super Smash. I did better than him on most of the levels, but it was still a great time.

I then joined up with Lindsay and Kevin at their place before heading to dinner at QQ noodle. Andrew and Debby joined us for dinner, afterwards we went to The Dancing Cat for henna tattoos and playing with cats. I had a great time there, and had a lot of cats following me around. One cat was acting like a princess, and she would his at any cat that came near her when she was playing.

The next day I got so many cuddles from my kitties. Then went to Jeremy’s for some Rock Band.

October 22, 2017 1

Karaoke

George hosted karaoke at his place on Saturday, and it was good to be social. I had a good time, especially with all the Lion King we sung. I love doing the voices for the stranger characters. I left a little early as I was loosing my voice and getting really tired for no good reason. I didn’t want to drive home when too tired.