I saw it with Jeremy, Steph, BTD, Kate, and two of their friends. It was enjoyable, I really like the Rey character. It had great parallels with Episode 4, but other than that I won’t talk about it in detail.
I went back home on a random Thursday for Grandaddy’s funeral. It was a really nice affair, and I got to learn about all the drama that had happened in our family over the years. It was really nice to see all the relatives together, and the ones I missed I’m hoping to see over christmas.
Steph and I had a few really nice date nights, both of which happen to go to Burma Ruby, which I don’t mind at all. We got some really tasty salads, and one we went to San Carlos, got some tasty sesame oil and white vinegar, then after dinner went to the Cidery that just opened up there. The cider they are serving is so good and not too sweet, I really love it.
Rocket had a great holiday party at Hog & Rocks
It was pretty neat to have a restaurant/bar closed for a private event that I’m a major part of. They had a few games set up, including two table games (blackjack and 3 card poker). I did really well at 3 card poker. The dealer didn’t really know what she was doing and I was able to take advantage of it with some more extreme bets. I won a ton, but then decided I was done with the gambling style games and put it all down until I lost.
I got to play some connect four and jenga, but I was a little to drunk for the jenga to go well. I was in a mood where I really wanted it to be one block layers starting at the bottom. The connect four went surprisingly well for me, mainly because I knew the few tricks to it that the others playing didn’t know. Steph wasn’t feeling too well that night so she didn’t end up joining, which was sad.
We did another Latkes party at Adam’s this year and it was fantastic as always. The gifts were actually pretty good this year. I got Adam’s set of poker chips that he got from Dropbox. It was funny because they actually said ‘Adam’ ‘Dropbox’ on them. I couldn’t fault him since all of his efforts went into the event prep. My gift hadn’t made it in from order, so I took the one that was meant for the Rocket Games white elephant. I think pretty much everyone got something they liked or was useful.
I was late showing up to the Mayfield company holiday party because of the late meeting I had at work. It was at Chantilly, and I had to get a lyft there. I got there just before dinner came out, and it was pretty delicious. We talked with everyone a good bit and the higher ups had a few good toasts to make to the team. Everyone joked that since Steph had been in Japan that she had a huge backlog, but it wasn’t really a joke. It was kinda funny because the others didn’t have a huge backlog, as they were just managers.
This was a great book, and I really enjoyed the re-read of it as well. There weren’t too many people who came to discuss it (only Andrew and Debby), but we still got a decent discussion of the book. A lot of what we talked about with the world portrayed in the book did leave a lot more questions than answers. I made some really tasty bacon wrapped asparagus, and it was a hit. I’ll have to make it again.
Steph and I went to her parent’s place to meet up with her family: Jeff, Patty, Elaine, Russel, Manfred, and Celine. It was a really tasty meal, and I’m pretty sure we left with more food than we went there with. It was nice chatting with her family and we ended up planning a trip to Peru because of the info they gave us with a 30% discount about on a travel package that was already a good deal. We made some salad for the lunch, and it was really good. We will certainly have to make more of it.
We then went to Andrew’s place for friendsgiving (not sure I like the term more or less than orphan thanksgiving). This was for the people who were from further away and didn’t go home for the holiday. I enjoyed the time and we ended up playing some Drawful, which was great. I got the most likes on the first one and won the second.
It has been a while since I’ve posted, so I’m just going to cover all the boards games I’ve played here. a few Thursdays ago I played a decent game of Lords of Vegas, and it was fun time. I ran up the price on Chris a number of times and he blocked me out a few times. We both ended up losing pretty badly because of that, but it was fun.
I also got to play some Mage Knight. This time it was actually with Steph. She took all the advice I gave her, and she ran things pretty smoothly after that. I took one shortcut in the game, I’ll admit so that I could get out of someone’s way that wanted to go to the village. It would have been better for me to stay, but I moved out into a fight that technically couldn’t have happened the way it did.
We got to do a magic draft of the remaining Battle for Zendikar. I had a pretty decent ally deck, but it wasn’t quite reliable enough to do really well. The three color deck worked well when it hit, but many times it didn’t hit at all. I had a great time playing it.
I got to play my first game of diplomacy. Chris was England, Adam was Germany, Bryan was Austria/Hungary, Erik was Turkey, Wit was France, Cynthia was Russia, and I was Italy. I didn’t get any good outs early game, but was able to inform on Bryan in mid game when he was about to stab Erik. Erik and I then joined forces and he was nice enough to not stab me since I had informed him about Bryan. He could have easily destroyed me, but I was holding the line against Wit and Chris. The game drew to a close when Adam offered to let us take over all his territory for a joint victory of the three of us. We decided it was fine, and we managed to corner wit in the Med at which point he and Chris surrendered. Had the game gone on much longer it could easily have ended with a total victory for Turkey. Below is a gif of the entire game.
It's an Exciting World 