Steph, Adam, Dan, and I played the expansion of Suburbia. The new tile format, borders, was interesting, but it became pretty unusable pretty quickly if the tiles didn’t match up with what you needed. The first game ended badly for me since I chose poorly on one tile. That pretty much ended my game. Steph won it by a lot, with Adam and I tieing. The second game was Adam and myself, and it turned out much better. I was able to pull out a decisive victory with 151 points, just off the end of the board. The game is getting more complicated with the new tiles, and keeping track of what changes on your board when other things happens is getting to be cumbersome.
This was my favorite of the shadows series. The setting and interactions are so different. The book is also shorter, and it makes me look forward sooo much to the two series coming back together. I enjoy all the contrary information provided by this book about the Hive Queens.
Lana is a hilarious cat and was attacking her own tail today. She got it pretty good too.
This book had a lot of great suggestions about leadership and how to get people to do the things you want them to do. This does a lot of good explanations on the how to do it, but the part that I tend to struggle with is the internal conflict of whether what I’m trying to get someone to do something that isn’t good for them. I’ll have to learn to convince myself of the great things that people will get from helping me.
This was a decent story, but didn’t have the kind of ending I would have liked. It had a lot of vague parts after Bean left the picture, where everyone just ended up getting along. That wasn’t the best of the stories in the series by far. I liked Ender’s Shadow the most with the rest going downhill from there. I am looking forward to the next book since there won’t be nearly as much baggage and it will be a completely different setting. I think it will have some really good elements.
I biked over to Nima and Caryn’s place and met Steph there for dinner. Caryn had cooked a really amazing spinach stew, and it was very hearty considering it was vegetarian. She also served some cheese and bread, with the cheese being a really good sour feta. They also gave us some really amazing tea and ice cream after dinner. Nima showed us his new toy, a quadracopter. Steph and I were able to do some basic control with it, but Nima had gotten very practiced and was able to show us an inversion trick.
Stephanie’s parents came over for dinner on Sunday and we made tom yom for them. They brought over some dishes from a Chinese restaurant, as well as a really tasty mango pudding. I helped Mrs. Lee set up her new Nexus 7 that Steph got them for Christmas. They talked about their plans for going to Patagonia and Iceland.
This morning I got up very early to meet up with a professional acquaintance. We talked for a few hours, and then I went over to Stephs and we headed to the farmer’s market on Cal. Ave. We got stuff to make Tom Yom for her parents this evening.
It is rare that I see the sunrise.
For anyone who wants to know the recipe it is here, below (1 person’s worth):
- Put 1 cup water and 1 cup broth into a pot and start it to boil. This could also be done as 1.75 cups water and 0.25 cups stock. This is done to taste and more broth/stock can be added later, but some should be added here for flavoring the other ingredients.
- If adding potatoes chop the potatoes and add them to the pot.
- Chop 1 stalk of lemongrass, only taking the bottom 1/3 of the stalk. Cut into pieces that maximize surface area, while still able to be kept in a cheesecloth bag.
- Chop 1 egg size piece of ginger like the lemon grass.
- Tear 3 sets of kaffir lime leaves from their stems
- Smash Thai chilis (or other chili peppers) for spiciness. For normal spiciness use 3 Thai chilis. Smash by putting them under the flat of a knife and pressing hard on the other side, until the chili splits.
- Put chilis, ginger, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves in a cheesecloth bag, then add them to the pot. These can be added before the pot comes to a boil.
- Chop 1 tomato into smaller than bit sized pieces.
- Chop 1/2 onion into nickle sized pieces.
- Chop meaty things:
- The meaty things that we found to work are mushrooms of any type, tofu, chicken, shrimp, full garlic cloves, and potatoes (added earlier for longer cooking – Step 2)
- The things we found to not work are sweet things like carrots and sweet potato
- When you can smell the spices in the steam add the meaty things plus tomato and onion, and squeeze in 1 lime.
- Allow the contents to return to boil for 3 to 5 minutes. Make sure the potato is fully cooked through. The only thing to really worry about overcooking here is the mushroom, the rest will tend to get better the longer it is cooked.
- Remove from heat
- Add 1 tablespoon of fish sauce
- Add 1 tablespoon of sugar
- Add 1 tablespoon of chili paste
- Stir and add more of the items in 14-16 to taste, plus more stock/broth if desired
- Add chopped spring onion and coriander/cilantro leaves right before serving.
After dinner Jeremy, Steph, and I went over to Andrew’s place to hang out. Lindsey was there with Andrew making some Japanese Curry. They were doing it the right way as well, so it was going to simmer for days. Andrew showed us his new Lego crane that actually had many working, moving parts to it. I was very impressed. We watched an episode of Myth Busters and then headed back to Beachhead.
It's an Exciting World 