The Weekend in Review

An article by Don Quixote    4 Comments

Another fun filled weekend has come and gone. Here are all the exciting things you missed:

Saturday –
3:00 AM Headed to ye ol’ Journal Gazette to do that job thing that everyone’s always talking about.
8:00 AM Done doing my regular job so I messed around playing some rounds of Tigris and Euphrates online at the Board Game Geek.
10:00 AM Played some of the online games I installed at the Andrew Peterson Message Board.
11:00 AM Headed home.

Afternoon Time kinda sped away some in there. Michelle and I had lunch and watched a movie or two. I recall having watched the 25th hour for the first time. That was rather interesting. I certainly liked it, I was suprised to find P.S.Hoffman in this one as well. I am impressed every time I see that guy act. 25th hour stars Edward Norton and is basically about his last 25 hours before he goes off to spend the next 7 years in prision for being a drug dealer. It’s a very human story with lots of grime, so if you’re a sensitive viewer, most likely this isn’t a flick for you. Oh and I made beef tips and noodles for dinner and it turned out really well. I’ve kinda taken up cooking over the past year or so, and while I haven’t ventured out into many things, it’s always a good time.

Sunday -
3:00 AM UGH. Crummy newspaper job again.

6:16 AM Kara and the boys called. This upcoming week is family camp at Hilsbrough and every year Kara and the boys go. This year however wasn’t off to a good start. The Steiner’s van had broken down on the side of the road and Sam had spent 4 hours replacing the water pump only to find out that most likely the head gasket was cracked so they ended up spending the night at a Truck Stop. The boys seemed to be doing fine though I could tell Dafyd was a little stir crazy (I know I would be). Even though I offered to come and get them on Saturday and again this morning, she declined with assurances that everything was going fine and someone was coming to tow them to the camp (which was still 3 hours away as I understood it). I’m glad the boys get to go on things like that as they love camping with their cousins, but I hate having to be away from them for a week.

7:00 AM Started working on graphics for a new project that I came up with and then dumped off on Tom.
8:36 AM Called and work up Tom (told him it was time for church- 9:36 AM EST). He was a little grumpy since his church didn’t start until 5:00 PM. I mean come on, really is it that much of a sacrifice to getup before 10:00 AM to go to church? Any how I informed him that his site was ready for him to play with: glccalumni.com.
10:45 AM Headed home and on the way there stopped at Kroger to get a few items (including but not limited to: KK Doughnuts, Soda, Wheat Thins, Cheese sticks, Chips, fruit and something that I cannot recall at the moment).
11:30 AM Arrived at home. Commenced some snacking.

Afternoon – We had made plans today to go to a lake with some friends do to some jet skiing and tubing, but thankfully (since I really didn’t want to go), it was cancelled do to the cold weather. Michelle and I played a game of Dos Rios which was rather fun. “This latest entry from the creator of Trans-America is simple to learn and fun to play. While some will compare Dos Rios to Settlers of Catan, it should be noted that similarity will be at best cosmetic. Both games shared a board that is random thanks to use of hex tiles. In the case of Dos Rios it is actually a triumvirate of three hexes per single tile that seats into a larger game board framework. Instead of settlements and roads, Dos Rios features Campesinos (farmers), dams, Casa’s and Haciendas. Each turn players must decide whether to move their Campesinos, build buildings or erect dams to divert either or both of the rivers. With outright combat still not existing persay, the ability to chase away opponents Campesinos in order to claim the best locations is a key component of play.

Also making things difficult is the Desperado element that can turn up unexpectedly in a harvest phase of the game. During the harvest, cards will tell players which properties will produce goods or cash. The cash eventually is turned into Casa’s or the ever potent Hacienda.

The game is won by being the first to either build 3 Casa’s and one Hacienda along a river bank, or build all 5 buildings anyplace on the board. Although it seems simple enough, or group had the rivers turning and twisting so often and to such extreme levels, that at two different times in the game the rivers fused into a single waterway which starved out most of the Valley.” – From Derek Wagner @ Board Game Geek.com

We certainly enjoyed the game, but it most likely would have been a lot more fun with 3 or fout players. After watching some exciting UnSolved History on the Discovery Channel, it was time for the Sunday afternoon nap.

Upon awaking Michelle and I got into a heated game of Settlers of Catan the Card Game (which is how a two player game should be played – when Tom came to visit we attempted to play Catan with two players and it wasn’t even a contest). Afterwards we wrapped up the evening by catching up on some stuff on TiVo: Punch-Drunk Love and The Swimming Pool.

I’m not a fan of Punch-Drunk Love. Physically the movie is unsettling to me, the music/sound just puts me in this heighten state of tension. I understand that’s the point to which they do a great job, I just hate feeling that way and it took pretty much all I had not to just stop it. Thankfully the movie was shorter than normal and ended soon. However, I must say, some of the closing lines in the movie were true classics, “So I have a lot of pudding which can be redeemed in 6 to 8 weeks for a lot of frequent flier miles, so if you could just give me 6 to 8 weeks, then I could travel with you and we’d never have to be apart.” Another movie with a cameo by Philip Seymore Hoffman as well, fine acting.

The Swimming Pool was an interesting movie (I guess if you can call it that). I was overly suprised at the amount of nudity in this film and all or almost all of it unneeded. But the twist at the end made the ride worth the wait. I’m still pondering how much of it was the thread of reality and how much of it was the story she was writing. So if you’ve seen this movie and have a better clue than I do, I’d be more than happy to hear it.

IN OTHER NEWS:
GLCCAlumni.com – Coming to you soon. Currently this un-official Alumni page is a work in progress, it’s being created in hopes that it will become a place for fellow alums to reconnect to their GLCC roots. Feel free to check it out as, no one has posted, it’s a rather empty place.

Hobofat – So I got an email from this guy from Colby College from Waterville, Maine. Aside from wanting some help with his blog template, he asked if he could link my site (which I thought was cool), apparently he accidently found a link to my site from the Bblog home page (BBlog is the script I use) and liked what I had to say. So there you go. I’m now famous to small group of folks in Maine – so shouts out to Jonathan and the rest of the crew from Hobofat.

Tour De’ Lance (which has been used everywhere) – Congrats to Mr. Armstrong and his 6th straight Tour de’France victory.

We’ll as the late great Dennis Miller, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…”