First Week in February 2010

Welcome to February 2010. One good thing about time moving faster as you get older, winters are quicker.

Monday night I finally had my first guitar lesson. I noticed something interesting between my seeing pictures of me when I first started dancing, and my lessons and practice so far. When I started dancing I looked at my feet the whole time, now I am looking at the guitar strings the whole time.

Tuesday replaced Wednesday as the usual mid week date night. The plans changed at the last minute due to circumstances being my control (had to work late). When I finally left work, I headed over to VK's and she made spaghetti with meatballs. I ate a lot. We then watched Lost, or she did anyways. I can see why people like it, but sitting through all those inane commercials, oy vay.

Wednesday I went home from work and pretty much did nothing, then I went to bed. Yawn.

Thursday was game night at CJ's. Last time there was a game night at CJ's, there was a snowstorm. This time, there was a snowstorm. Not of course that it's been really hard lately to pick a random date and get a snowstorm, but it did lead to the most interesting moment of the evening. I went to pick Kevin up at his house, I turned into the driveway under five mph, and just slid. I had plenty of time (15-20 seconds) to consider what to do before I hit the garage, so I kind of turned into a snow bank to slow down, it worked. Kevin and I then drove to Troy and Merinda's, piled into her four wheel drive vehicle, and she drove to CJ's.

I turned out to be more social for me than actual game playing. I ate a bunch of tacos, watched, and talked. Eventually I played one game of Shadow Hunters with the expansion pack, I didn't think my character had much of a chance of winning due to the number of players (we had nine in an eight player game). My opinion on the expansion will be held for a while until I've played a few times.

After this we played few large games of Fluxx with both the regular Fluxx game cards and the Monty Python Fluxx cards mixed together, it was the usual chaos. I learned to play Fluxx on Stoner Fluxx, and I like that best. I realize this may be heretical, but I really don't like Monty Python Fluxx. I love Monty Python because of the absurdity, and I like Fluxx in part because of the randomness, and both for the humor. For me, the combination of the two is neither fun nor funny.

Then we played a new game based on a book (or series) that Merinda had read, Pillars of the Earth. I think this game has potential to be a real favorite. Simple enough to learn quickly, complex enough to want to play again, and my favorite, there seemed to be many valid strategies. I haven't been so interested in a game since I started playing Ra. It was myself, Merinda, Ben, and Kaleb playing the game. Kaleb was the one that knew the rules ... yes, Kaleb won, and yes, the usual happened with a mid/late game rule clarification/implementation, I may need to start reading the rules prior to playing anything new. These circumstances aside, I really enjoyed this game, I may have to buy it.

Friday night The Grand Marquis was playing live at JNO and let me tell you, I was ready to dance. So much so that I had my camera, but didn't take any pictures. I had a good time dancing, and did a little talking too.

Saturday during the day I moved my first load over to the new house. I figure it's about 15% of what I need to move. I'll be moving things slowly over the next few weeks, and then try to finish with a flurry on the 20th.

Saturday evening VK and I went out to dinner. We discussed about forty places before we ended up at Vivace. I got a steak panini, and it was quite good. Unfortunately, VK's meal was not quite as good, it was called lamb piadini, and it tasted like the lamb was marinated in pickle juice (my words). So, both times I've been to Vivace, someone has had an unacceptably bad meal (first time it was me). It's going to be difficult to get me to go back.

After this we went over to visit with Matt and Vivian, and have some goatcheesecake that she made. Yes, Viv insisted that she made it with goat cheese, I'm not buying that, but regardless, it was tasty. We also had some fun with Matt's MacBook camera, it might someday see the light of youtube.

Sunday "morning" I got up and went to church. I went to "scout day" Mass, so the church was full of Scouts. It was fun. I was not a scout, I just didn't like it, although looking back, it's one of two things I would have liked my parents to make me stick with, that and piano lessons. In any case, if I ever have children, I would like scouting to be a part of their lives.

The last time I looked at Foursquare on Saturday, I was winning for the week fairly handily. I wasn't obsessing, I just hadn't won amongst my friends since I started playing (except for the first week). I was looking forward to the victory, which, of course, means nothing. However, when I checked the score early Sunday afternoon, Ben C. was winning. Huh? So I did what any American would do when confronted with someone cheating at a game. I stretched the rules as far as I could, and ran a bunch of unnecessary errands. The result, victory!

The final event of the day was the Super Bowl party at CJs. We had a good combination of football fans and non-fans. In the first quarter of the game we had a drinking game that was take a sip every time someone said "Manning or Brees", it wasn't how much I drank, it was how fast it kept coming. VK wisely quit that game after the second drink. At the start of the second quarter it went to every first down, but by then I was done. I then went off to play airhockey with Lydia. Pool with Tom and Tony. I came up at the end of the halftime show, no Who for me, and missed the onside kick. We then as a group missed the interception because we were DVRing the 'Green Police' ad to see if that was a monkey or an anteater, it was an anteater. Many thanks to CJ for hosting and the food, I think I speak for all when I say a good time was had all around.

A final word on the football season. The predictions I made for the season can be found here, as you can see, both of the Super Bowl teams were in my playoff prediction, but not the ones I chose for the big game. Congratulations, I am happy for the Saints winning for three reasons:
1) they are the NFC team, I like that.
2) they seem human, the Colts are robots.
3) New Orleans makes for a good story.
Next season doesn't seem to offer much hope to Bears fans, so I'm not sure I'll enjoy the off season. Also, thank you CBS for doing such a good job on the game, it was football-centric, and you kept the camera off of those stupid 'family reaction' shots.

Until next time...