Fourth Week in January 2011

Monday was a very busy day at work. After work I managed to have a few minute dinner with VK, and by a few minutes, I mean a like ten, I met her at Whole Foods, and we had the pizza special. She had to go to an appointment. I went home and literally slept as soon as I got home. Tuesday and Wednesday were normal days, and then Thursday was the next edition of Mass Chaos Bowling. I bowled a 399 series, this makes my average 136 so far.

Friday after work I went to Jillian's for dinner. Lee, Maggie, Anna, and David were there also. I don't think any of them quite believed how much food I ate. We then went to the dance. I had a funny moment shortly after we got to the dance where I was out of breath after one short dance, but later in the night I was just fine. It took me a couple days, but I figured out that I just ate a lot before hand.

After the dance, I joined Joe, James, and Vesper at the UNMC ice rink (who even knew they had one) for a benefit skate-a-thon for Parkinson's. It was a magical experience, not too cold, you could see stars, there was a group of skaters who did 'Thriller' on ice, and we also did the chicken dance!

The view from the skate house. Not pictured: Joe on his butt.

Saturday was Beddescon. I figure you may not know what it is, but that's okay. It's an all day board gaming event. I wanted to go last year, but I was on call. This year, I was not. It was in the conference room at a hotel, and there were probably about 40-50 people who came and went, maybe more.

I played six different games starting with Castle Ravenloft. This is the second time I've played it, and the heroes won again, this time fairly handily.

The second game that was played was Tsuro. It can be played with up to eight players. We played three games, and I did not win. It seemed to be very popular game, at one point there were three different sessions going on.

Surprise, Annette showed up. Well, I wasn't surprised, but she was that I was there. Jess and I got some lunch ... okay I got lunch and she went with me. Afterward, CJ showed up and we played a game of Puerto Rico. This is the #2 game overall on the site, and it's a good one, but it's not my second favorite. CJ won, but for the first time I can remember, I did really well. There was a table in the corner that seemed to be playing all games with a betrayer in it ... I decided not to befriend anyone there ... you know, just in case.

We then played a game called Vikings that was new to me. I didn't win, I came in second out of four. I liked it, but I may have gotten really lucky with how my game went, so I can't really say much about the game until I play a few more times.

The next game was a game that Kevin liked to play, Empire Builder. This is an old school game (1980) of railroad building. I generally suck at this game, and this time was no exception. In my opinion, it relies too much on luck, but like life you have to overcome your bad luck. I started out bad, but closed well.

The last game that was played was a favorite of mine, here. We played the five player game, and it was really interesting. In the end I didn't win, but I thought it to be quite exciting. This game is easily in my top five. I like that so many different strategies can be played by different people at the same time and all can work, in other words, it's a well balanced game. In the end, I only won the first game, and only as a group, but it was very fun.

CJ, Jess, and I left immediately after the Ra game and went to the Maple Road location of La Mesa for dinner. VK, Bente, and Amber were already there, and Chris joined us shortly after that. Yes, that's a mixed group of friends. CJ and Bente had not met before, and they were very entertaining to listen to talk ... very entertaining.

After dinner, Chris, CJ, and Jess went back to Beddescon. While VK, Bente, Amber, and I went over to Boondockers for karaoke. It was a big crowd, Joe (the instigator, I mean organizer), Lindsay, Merinda, Troy, Amanda, Chris, and Ben ... I'm sure I am missing someone. I sang Moondance ... badly, I need to get a few songs and practice them. The best part was five of us dancing behind Bente when she sang Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. And that was Saturday, it was a very magical day.

Sunday was the latest installment of Mass Chaos. Afterward we went out to eat at Village Inn, our 40 minute wait time was about ten minutes. I took the camera in and took some artsy monochromatic pictures.

You can see the rest of my Village Inn pictures here. The rest of Sunday was spent being nappy.

Next week: snowmeggedon!