winterbadger | Entries tagged with games

I feel as if I am always running to stay in one place in terms of so many things: keeping up with friends (especially LJ-only friends), correspondence and memberships, exercise and generally enjoying the outdoors (odd, but I've been having trouble motivating myself to go walking or cycling lately), paperwork (there are always stacks of things that I decided not to recycle when they arrived but that I haven't taken the time to do anything else with). But most of all, cleaning.

I often think that I'd like to have a small house of my own--a bungalow, especially a Craftsman, for preference. But if I can't keep up with sorting out this six-room flat, how would I ever manage with something larger? I spent this afternoon sorting out a couple of rooms. Not really cleaning, exactly, but making them less cluttery and more organized. Still a lot of that to do, and a good bit of cleaning on top of that. But hat will have to wait for another day. I did do a sweep through the game collection and came up with three dozen I'm going to send off to Noble Knight to turn into cash. Plus another two dozen that are going to get one more chance to impress me before they share the same fate.

I had the added pleasure of a morning filled with cats yakking up. Always fun. One thing I had meant to do for a long time is done: I took everything off the top of the fridge, threw away or recycled about 3/4 of it, and cleaned the top of the fridge before putting the rest of the stuff back. Not positive, but that *may* be the first time that's been done since Neta and I moved in.

I had a great party last night, to celebrate St Andrew's Day.

shy_kat and

redactrice came as well as their friends Nick and AJ, the gruff but amiable

gr_c17 and my friendly neighbours Krista and Erik. I had laid in a goodly supply of single malt (Edradour, Glenmorangie, and Ardbeg), which was well sampled, for the holiday, and we feasted on cheese and biscuits, raw veg, chips and a tasty spinach dip, lasagna, and takeaway from Pollo Campero (what holiday can survive without it? :-)

We also played a number of games (Melissa was insistent that AJ not be allowed to continue any longer in her Eurogame-virgin state), first Web of Power, then two rounds of Samurai. And Erik and Krista polished off a game or two of Fjords. We had Cantrip, Emily Smith, Silly Wizard, The Corries, The Tannahill Weavers, Battlefield Band, and Dougie Maclean on the playlist, with Old Bllind Dogs, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, Andy Stewart, and John McCusker warming up on deck.

Thanks to those who came out for a fun evening!

Current Mood: chipper

In going through papers, I found Busby;s original file from the adoption agency. Clem (as he was known before Neta adopted him) was a character even when he was young. The Animal Welfare League handler recorded that he got more rambunctious as the exam went on and also circled "jumped off the table a lot", "was stressed as exam continued", and "didn't like restraint but was otherwise OK" while noting that at no point did he try to bite or scratch anyone. He didn't tolerate "kid handling" (being held upside down, being patted roughly, or having traction applied to his tail), was "wiggly" went his claws were clipped, and was "tolerant of brief grooming sessions". The written comment was "really sweet boy if you're not trying to do anything to him"--so, obviously, the child is father tot he man, where cats are concerned no less than rainbows.

Also, I found the Cat Adoption Handbook that came with him from the AWL of Alexandria. It had a suggestion I had not come across before that I tried out this morning. "Try putting [a lightweight toy ball] in a dry bathtub," they suggest, "as the captive ball is much more fun than one that escapes under the sofa." I can only say that this suggestion is brilliant and an unqualified success. I don't know why I never thought of that before, but it has proven a huge hit. I suspect that their follow-on advice is also wise. "You'll probably want to remove the balls from the bathtub before bedtime, unless you can't hear the action from your bedroom. Two o'clock in the morning seems to be a prime time for this game."

Current Mood: amused

I've been waiting until all the moving was done (and the post-move cleaning had not) to take out my two window A/C units and put them away. That's done, and the cats have two more windows to sit in (plus we all have that much more light).

I also got fed up this morning with the permanent downward tilt that my cooker has always suffered from. Ascertaining it had extendable feet, I found an ingenious tool of leverage (a sloped wooden cat scratching board), got out my level, and proceeded to lift it into a position from which I could (with the help of a pair of pliers) extend the feet! It is now level, and oil does not pool along one edge of the pan when I saute or fry things!

Of course I also got a clear picture of how filthy the parts of the cooker one never looks at are. The kitchen is going to take a LOT of cleaning.

While watching the dismal DC United game from Saturday last night, I cleaned up some more figures (from the Khurasan Miniatures Felid warriors scifi line) and prepared them for undercoating. gr_c17 and Phil the Teacher are way ahead of me in preparing for the the release of the new Tomorrow's War rules from Ambush Alley. I must ready the battle circles of the felids for battle!

I also took the first step in executing a purge of the game collection, namely identifying ones that I haven't played, so I can try them and either keep them or sell them, and sorting out the ones that I've played enough to know I probably won't ever play again.

Now, to do the same things with books...

Oh, speaking of books:

33/50: The Sultan's Seal by Jenny White. A mystery set in late Ottoman Empire Istanbul. Slow to start but gets more interesting toward the end, and it gives the reader at least a little introduction to the culture and politics of the late Empire. Not great, but not bad.

Guest of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Current Mood: relaxed

An interesting concept I had not encountered before (as least labelled as such): Newsgames. Games that are "an application of journalism in videogame form", games that "simulate how things work by constructing interactive models. Newsgames can persuade, inform, and titillate; make information interactive; recreate a historical event; put news content into a puzzle; teach journalism; and build a community."

Current Mood: curious

So stiff! Not sure whether it was the running or all the housework! I think I might need a soak in a hot bath :-)

So, I got about 2/3 of the cleaning done that I meant to; it's so nice to have the place at least tidy, and I shall try to finish the rest of the cleaning (mostly vacuuming) today so as to be able to enjoy that too (for a day or two until it returns to its previous state :-( where does all the dust COME from? and how is it one can clean one day and everything is still covered with a fine layer of cat litter the next?

The Thespian came over, but we couldn't cook the delicious dinner she had brought for an hour or two, as the transformer that had blown Thursday night blew again, pouring blackness onto 10+ blocks of Montgomery County. Eventually the power came back on, we made dinner (green beans, pasta with scallops in a limoncello sauce, with raspberry sorbet and almond wafers for dessert), talked, and I taught her Fjords (which she promptly beat me at, three times in a row). We were feeling a little tired (OK, I was yawning...) and wondered what time it had gotten to--it was 1 am! We dallied a little longer, but then she headed home, and I collapsed into my (freshly made) bed for a good snooze.

Lovely sunny day today! Where shall I go, I wonder...

Current Mood: tired

I spent two hours reordering and resorting stuff in my study/workroom/wargaming treasure room.

*Almost* everything is either on a shelf, on the worktable, or under the worktable. Only a few things are still on the floor, and most of those are in the "getting rid of" pile. I need to make that pile larger, and I need to institute a more space-efficient storage scheme for some of my figures. I have a good idea how to do the latter.

As to the former, I got rid of almost all my 20mm figures a while back, as they constituted one of the scales I had very little in. I would like to get rid of my 25/28mm figures, but that will be more difficult, as (a) several of my friends also have figures in that scale, and (b) some historical subjects/ranges are only available in that scale. I also have a boatload of them, so it may be in the "too hard" pile. But it would be nice to rationalize down to two scales (6mm and 15mm) for land warfare (for naval I have 1/1200 sailing ships and 1/2400 WWI ships; for air warfare I have some 1/144 WWI and some 1/300 WWI and WWII--clearly I need to rationalize a little there too).

Of course, there's the 30+ Euro games and the ~400 wargames... Those probably need to be thinned out a bit too...

Oh, whoops, there's also two loads of laundry that need to be shifted to the dryers and two more loads of washing to do (forget to do the laundry one weekend and it mounts up...)

ETA: Oh, and I did a lot of clearing out in my Gmail account and freed up over 800MB of space!

Current Mood: busy

Lovely evening introducing the Huzzah Harries to a new game (TFL's Algy Pulls It Off), handing out a few pressies, and home to do my good deed for the day (putting out all the house's recycling bins, plus my trash bin, the bin for the housemates who are away, and the bin for the flat whose occupants just moved out--leaving their bin full to overflowing, of course!) Scored nice pressies (some festive beers from the neighbours whose cats I'm sitting, some sweet nibbles and a little bottle of apple brandy, I think from the neighbours across the hall).

Some relaxing and checking email now, a bit of telly perhaps, and then bed. Tomorrow some final food and drink shopping, then a good deal of relaxing (possibly a bit of dish washing). If they're open, call the vet and the car place to make appointments for next week (or after). Oooh, and I should put some baubles on the tree (I'd not so far, as I've been moving it around--cute pictures of cats with tree coming tomorrow!)

Current Mood: content

For those of you in the DC area, my chum Chris Huhn has decided to try launching a new hobby store in the northern Virginia suburbs. It's going to be called Huzzah Hobbies, and it will be located in University Center in Ashburn, VA, at the intersection of Route 28, Route 7, and the Loudoun County Parkway.

My understanding is that he's aiming for a September 1st opening. I'll post again with more news when I get it, but Chris is a fine chap and I'm sure will run an excellent store. I'd urge people to check it out once he opens the doors.

Current Mood: hopeful

I realise that, after joining the i-tech revolution when I bought my iPod Touch, I haven't really embraced app madness. I've downloaded probably less than a dozen apps (one for birding--the main reason I got the iTouch--one for football news, one for Metro maps and another for National Park maps, a couple for reading, one or two games). What are my readers' favourite apps? What else should I get?

Also, on the subject of things electronic, I have some music on my iThing, but anything there has to be bought from iTunes (which I try not to do, because I like having the CD itself to fall back on) or first burned to my laptop from CD and then transferred, the first of which is a big chore. That made me wonder; I gather from the popular press that actually buying recorded media is a concept swiftly going out of style. But to me it just makes sense. If I buy everything online and then have a drive crash, it's lost forever! At first I thought one could just go back to iTunes and reload it, but one of my friends who had that experience came in for a nasty shock--he had to pay for everything all over again! As far as Apple was concerned, they might have a record of what he had purchased before, but if he wanted to make use of it again, he had to buy it again. Do people really download all or most of their music? Do they spend their entire lives backing up drives? That seems like an awful lot of effort. Also, another of my friends found that a song she purchased could only be stored on a limited number of drives before it could no longer be copied. I can see that making sense from a copyright point of view, but it seems tough in this world where people are constantly changing machines, i-devices, etc.

Current Mood: curious

I had a very nice time with friends today.

We were all going to go to the Ren Faire with

gr_c17 and

soccer_fox, but then the weather looked like it was going to be bad, so I invited people over to play games instead.

As it was, the weather would have been fine, and Them Two went ahead and probably had a fine time.

redactrice and

shy_kat came over, as did

john_arundel and

ethanninis_mom and their brood. :-) We played Uno and Space Munchkin and Guillotine, and something involving pink elephants (honest!) and Carcasonne.

They've all wended (went?) their ways home now, and I'm here with the cats and a tidied-up apartment (well, the "state rooms" anyway).

I suppose I better do the homework for my class...

Current Mood: chipper

A simply spiffing couple of days. ( Read more... )

Current Mood: chipper

With thanks to

reabhecc, a cool page on playing historical games.

Current Mood: tired

Everyone be safe out there; the holiday wingnuts are already out in force; I was driving back from the Taylors' and there were all sorts of "no signalling", "suddenly changing lanes", "slowing for no perceptible reason", "weaving back and forth across the lane", "honking at people for no discernible cause" people on the highways.

Plus, there were people driving worse than they usually do around here.. *ba-dum bish!*

Very nice evening, with a tasty cookout (meat on a stick--best thing ever!) and some card games (Early American Chrononauts and Monty Python Fluxx) with Peter and Ethan.

Current Mood: concerned

Another post on recent wargaming in my gaming blog.

In addition to those battles,

gr_c17 and I tried out Python Fluxx and Agricola last night. As with regular Fluxx and other rule-changing games like Uno, the former is OK but not stellar as a two-player game. It would be much better with several players (or, as B suggested, with several drinks...)

Agricola proved most enjoyable. Despite its complicated processes, we learned and played the simpler ("family") version of the game to a photo-finish conclusion (he garnered exactly one more victory point than I did!) As a resource/action allocation game, it has far more stuff to do than you can ever accomplish, huge numbers of options (even without the minor improvements and occupations cards), and clearly a wealth of replay value. I *really* look forward to playing this again, especially with more people but one on one would be fine too!

Current Mood: calm

I'm clearing out a bit and have a number of CCGs that I no longer play that I would like to dispose of, including Legend of the Five Rings, Dune, English Premier League, 7th Sea, Legend of the Burning Sands, Dixie, War Cry, Warhammer 40,000, and others. Email me if you would be interested in a list of what I'm selling.

Current Mood: optimistic

That, I have to say, was really nice! Just like The Old Days.

redactrice and

shy_kat came over from the house they are sitting in Arlington and joined in the weekly Boyz Night with

john_arundel,

gr_c17, and LJless Nick B. The grrlz told us stories of their travels, the boyz recounted their favourite adult cartoon episodes, and we all ate, drank, and played Formula De. A really nice night was had by (I think) all--I certainly had a blast!

I hardly even mind that I need to get up in six hours...

Current Mood: happy

Police seize 'War or Terror' boardgame

More detail (and more reason for it to sound like a stitch-up) in this BBC article. The dangerous fiends are protesting the building of new units at a coal-fired power plant.

Current Mood: sleepy

aitkendrum, this one's for you...

Re-Route, The Marching Season Game

Current Mood: amused

john_arundel, I saw this and thought of you! janewilliams20 links to friend's shin-kicking prowess!

Current Mood: busy

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Page generated Jan. 10th, 2026 01:16 pm

"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

..."and you [sleeping] there like a winter badger."

Entries tagged with games

phew!

party!

Busby!

there's two chores down

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oooh ow!

catharsis (in a small way)

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a brave new venture

i-apps

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another lovely day in the north

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yikes!

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CCGs for sale

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oh, my...

ah, our medieval cousins...

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March 2024

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