Monthly Archives: October 2005

Game Day 10/16/2005

Game #1

Pig Pile

Another trip up North, the far far North. We started the supposedly meaty game day with Pig Pile. A light, fluffy and chaotic game. In this game, the Pig God hated me and gave me poor cards. But it still remains a fun and quick game for me.

Game #2

Conquest of the Empire

Finally a somewhat meaty game was played! I really tried hard to convince people to play Struggle of Empires. Unfortunately, no one would have anything to do with it. They wanted to play the supposedly lighter version. Sigh. I am beginning to loose faith in this game group. Still, we got to play with plastic army pieces.

I made sure that everyone knew that Mike would be untrustworthy in this game ;). But what was surprising to me was that no one allied in this game for land battles. Naval battles were pretty much a waste of time as well. Another weird thing was that the alliances did not change during the whole game. Except for a tiny bit at the end.

Hopefully, I can find enough interest in a game of Struggle sometime.

Disc Golf 10/15/2005

disc golf

Another round of disc golf. This one was interesting because we first scheduled it for Old Settlers’ Park. We then changed the location to Cat Hollow. When I got there, I saw that the Hairy Man Festival was going on in the park next door. I parked a ways away to avoid the road closing. Fortunately, the others were not deterred and showed up as well. On the first hole, we spent a good twenty minutes trying to find my lost white disc. I had just about given up the search when Adam finally found it. Man these discs are hard to find!

I also rode my bike this morning in my usual route. I was passed by like a hundred bicyclers! Man my bike is slow. But I like it because I feel like I get some good excercise compared to a faster and easier to pedal bike.

Game Day 10/13/2005

Game #1

Fairy Tale

The first game of the night is usually a light, filler game. And this night was no exception. We haven’t played Fairy Tale in a while, and I am glad we opened it up.

Game #2

Goa

Our first meaty game was Goa. It had been a while since this game was played last. I played a three player game with Doug and Adam. I probably was under bidding on the tiles as Doug would usually bid one more than my bid. Very annoying ;). Adam went for the route of collecting a lot of expedition cards and won the game.

Game #3

Tichu

Ahhhh… we were looking for a short game to end the night on. With four people at the table, I quickly suggested Tichu. After all, John was a Tichu newbie and we needed to get another convert to this game. The bad news was that I picked John as my partner, and the good new was that we were not officially recording the score. What was weird was that I almost never was passed the Dog. I think that John started to understand some of the game play and strategy that goes on in Tichu.

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Disc Golf 10/09/2005

disc golf

Now that the temperatures are more reasonable in the day, we played another round of disc golf. The morning low was 47 degrees so it was rather chilly. So I broke out some long clothes for my bike ride. I got back in time for a little rest before heading out to the course. It was beautiful out and the temperature was in the high seventies at the end of the game.

Game Day 10/06/2005

Game #1

Trendy

We started with the typical filler while we waited for more people to show up. And I was the best dressed tonight. One of these days, I will start a long game on time and screw who ever is late!

Game #2

Euphrat and Tigris

And then we had four. A perfect number for many games. And a hard number to have many times. So I was happy. I suggested E&T and everyone agreed. We had one new player so an explination of the rules was required. I started out, but when someone else started saying how I should talk about this other thing first, I just let that other person finish explaining the rules. Less stress that way.

I just could not get the tiles I wanted. Green was very scarce for me. And when I finally got some, all the spots to place that had many green were well defended. This late into the game I wanted to start an external conflict over green to get caught up. And then Mike started a battle between myself and John over only black which I lost. So then I was hurting on the black score. Sigh. Still a good game.

Game #3

Mc Multi

And after that brain burner, I suggested Mc Multi. This game suffered from a horrible economy. The consumer market was low for most of the game. This hurt Jon as he tried a different strategy and went for all gas stations on his island and buying gas from the markets to sell into the consumer market. At the end of the game, I needed to roll some good numbers in order to sell of my equipment. Unfortunately I rolled poorly. The scores were rather close. I was pipped by one dollar! And the winner was ahead by 56 dollars! This game could have beed determined by dice rolls.

Cellphone reuse

cellphone

I buy new cellphones to quickly. But technology progresses and the new phones have cool features. Part of being on the cutting edge, I guess.

At least there is a use for old phones. I dug up the box and manual for my old Sanyo 8100 phone finally. And dropped it off at the yoga place. Hopefully, it will find a use with the Blue Santa group helping battered women.

New sprinkler puzzle

sprinker-before

I redid the plants in the bed in front of the house in the spring. During the summer, I notice that the sprinkers do not water in one area and one of the plants is looking pretty toasty. Fortunately it is drought tolerant and doesn’t die.

So this weekend I decide to add another sprinker to the bed. I dig a hole where I know the sprinker line runs and where I want to add a T intersection. But then what to do? I can just cut a small section out and plug the T in. The sides will not bend for me to add the T snugly. My next thought is to see if I can just dig up one end of the line and hope to pull the line out enough and push it back when I need to fit it in. But when I dig up the sprinker at the end I realize that this is not the end and is in fact comes from where the sprinkerler water main is.

sprinker-after

So I sit and think for a while and come up with this solution. I glue the elbows into both ends of the original pipe. Then I glue the rest of the contraption together and then I glue the other sides of the elbows and push the contraption into place. Phew, it was tough but it worked enough. After it dried, I ran the sprinkler section to test for leaks. Fortunately, there were none.