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.
For book club we read “The God Delusion” and “Reason for God.”
We all felt like the books were a little poorly supported, with too many anecdotes for the subject matter they were discussing. The discussion was really good and Debby is going to send me some follow up material to look over in response to http://bibviz.com/. This is an area I’d love to dive more into, but it requires discussion with people on multiple sides, since I’m pretty agnostic.
Steph and I went over to Andrew’s place for some really tasty Japanese curry. We brought over some wine and bread and it was a really nice time. We watched the remainder of Naked and Afraid XL, which was pretty amazing. I really enjoyed it.
Liana and Ryan joined us for a paint nite event, and it was a really good time. The venue was a little cramped, but I was able to get over to them and chat for a bit. The painting was also the best one we’ve done so far, and I got a lot of comments on mine looking good. I really enjoy the simple paintings with really colorful backgrounds.
Steph and I made some really tasty food this weekend, and it was pretty healthy as well. The shakshuka is mainly tomatoes, peppers, onion, and egg. I really liked the flavor, and it is also fun to watch cook because the eggs go directly on top of all the other ingredients.
This was a fascinating book. The duplicity of the law was made starkly clear, with a decent backstory to how that duplicity came about in such contrast. The biggest thing I don’t like about the book is that is says nothing about what can be done.
It's an Exciting World 