Such a Long Weekend

So, I've sort of been off work since Thursday afternoon. I had a half day of group office party followed by a day off. I took the day off to help a co-worker move into his new house, but he finished before I even got as far as the loading of the truck, so I had a day where I was officially doing nothing. Rough, eh? So what do I accomplish on a 3.5 day weekend? Very little of use - but I've been having a lot of fun.

Thursday afternoon was Chipotle, followed by the group office party at Julie's house. There was unicycle riding, pictionary, pogo stick hopping, rope swinging, juggling, and other games. I have photos, movies even, but none of it so exciting that it's worth showing a detailed montage. I have to say, now that Erik and Sandy are gone, the beer drinking is way down. I think six beers were consumed, and three of those were mine.

Here's Bhavin playing Cathedral. I've owned the game for a long time and have discovered that anyone who really likes to think during their gaming loves it. How to play? Someone, anyone, drops the cathedral piece somewhere on the board. After that you alternately place your pieces, and if you seal someone's piece(s) off against an edge of the board, they're yours. End goal is to have as few pieces left as possible (and if you both have pieces, the smallest sized buildings as possible). If you trap someone's piece, you claim it, and they automatically lose that many squares towards the win. The cathedral is a place of calm and peace and cannot be used to trap anyone - if it is surrounded, you still can't be trapped if you're next to it, and you can still build next to it, even within the surrounded area. Bhavin really enjoyed it, and I was about to pack it in the trunk when I realized he might not ask to borrow it even if he really wanted to. So I brought it back to the house and said, "Do you want to borrow the game?" I don't think I've seen someone look so relieved since...well, insert an inappropriate metaphor here.


This is Julie on the unicycle, with Corpy (not a reference to corpses for a nickname, just relax) juggling. That's right, my group party involved unicycles, juggling and pogo sticks. We're a freaking circus act.


Friday, I spent time with Eryn and Jen and finished up the evening by taking my old team lead and her husband to see my old in-reserve tech lead play with his band. I've posted a few of their tunes before, and there are two more below (sorry if they target Erik, Aqua City Motel folks, but he's the co-worker). This time they added quite a bit of extra guitar work, which seemed to go over well. During the first song, when Will was singing, one girl's face lit up when they finally broke into a heavy guitar riff.

They added a few new songs as well, and I have to say I'm a bit disturbed that one of them has to do with London Bridge, as on Thursday I sent Erik a link to the most annoying song I've heard in what seems like forever, Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas "London Bridges". Damn is that a piece of crap (Fergie's song, not Erik's). I apologize for any feedback in the videos - not my fault, the sound system's fault, and I'm not gung-ho enough to edit things out.

I told Erik that if I make it to too many more of his sets, I'm going to start having favorite songs, and that probably makes me a groupie - that's disturbing.



As a funny aside, during the set, a girl walked by our table and she reeked of pot. My ex-team lead's husband looked up and smirked and Sandy just could not figure out why he was amused. Apparently Iowa is not the place to go for your degree if you want to get a worldly view.



And then yesterday, I drove up to the northern burbs to play board games with my friends. Most of us hit Flameburger for breakfast first. I hadn't been there before, I'd just seen the place while driving around the neighborhood during another game day when I'd arrived too early and it looked to be stocked with locals. Selection, very limited. Price, damn decent. Food, really pretty good. The hashbrowns are made on a limited size grill with the weight on top of them - that's always good. And if you like pancakes, the full stack is six, not four, for about four-fitty. I told everyone I'd buy the pancakes next time if they could eat all of them.

We spent the day playing cards, Settlers of Cataan, Zombies, Illuminati and whatever was floating around the back of my car and Sean's frontroom. We actually had two tables going, and Ming, Dan'l, Kyle and Matthew all played the copy of Fortress America Pooteewheet picked me up on eBay. Ming played the U.S. and the other three played the rest of the world, determined to take down the U.S. (if you haven't seen the game before, it's a celebration of Reagan's SDI coupled with a bit of isolationism. On the front of the box is a very angry Saddam. The game actually dates back to 1986, before the first Gulf War, which makes it very humorous. Gameplay is great, as pitting three players against one makes for some very different gaming). I think they played for almost 5 hours before they were done, as the control of a few cities (Denver or Boulder seemed to be the crux of the matter) swung back and forth until Ming finally couldn't regain one. Looked like a blast.

Today...just recovering from the drinking that accompanied gaming, building blanket/pillow forts on the deck, watching Pooteewheet run all over the cities trying to find me a new coffee pot (my old one leaks...always has, it's a piece of junk. I blogged about it some time ago - it's very shiny, it's just got a bladder control issue), and doing a bit of work. Not much of a long weekend if I'm doing work at home on a Sunday, but at least I'm doing it from home now with the fast connection, I don't have to wander over there.