Weekend Roundup
This was a beautiful spring weekend. Rain on Saturday, sun on Sunday, and good fun no matter what the weather.
Well, perhaps less fun on Friday, when the downstairs neighbours had the second birthday party for their daughters. This wasn�t the loudest party they�ve every had, due largely to the fact that the father supervised, but they didn�t warn us and they couldn�t manage to keep the bass speakers turned down low after the second request. The walls weren�t shaking, but the bass thumps didn�t exactly soothe us to sleep either.
Before all that nonsense, however, we had a good evening of watching Eco-Challenge: Fiji (disappointing overall, compared to their earlier efforts, but the course was so difficult that it levelled all the teams to the point of homogeneity. Still, congrats to Team Subaru Canada for their eighth-place finish!) and the watching the season (series?) finale of John Doe. Now that I know the identity of the head of the Phoenix Foundation, I want the series to be renewed all the more!
Are you listening, Fox? Bring back John Doe!
Saturday was a quiet, rainy day. We cleaned. I rebuilt a set of Lidless-Eye cards. We watched taped shows. I spoke to Scott before his trip to San Francisco to meet up with his CEGEP buddies. I prepared a breakfast strata for Sunday brunch from the America�s Test Kitchen cookbook. And then we went over to Maggie & Andrew�s place for dinner with Terence, Irene, and Derek, and enjoyed an evening of good food and conversation.
We slept in on Sunday, and enjoyed a fantastic sunny day. The breakfast strata was fantastic. We cleaned the apartment a little more, and I rearranged my gaming supplies in the dining room (which Dina is allowing me to slowly transform into a game room. I have the best wife in the world, let me tell you), and Maggie came over for a cuppa. Ramsay also dropped by on his bicycle for a traditional visit. The bike had a flat tire, which is part of the tradition.
You see, Ramsay has a history of vehicular difficulty when he gets around my residence. Either he can�t drive, or the car breaks down, or something happens, but he�s always swung by and we�ve helped out. So, we had a good nostalgic laugh over the flat. He said that he just wanted to drop by for a quick Hello. Obviously, the fates were telling him to stay longer!
Actually, the timing was perfect, because Dina and I were set to drive out to Hudson to pick up a grow light/plant stand system. So, after a longer visit than Ramsay anticipated, we put the bike in the trunk of the car, drove him to a repair shop, and then headed down to Hudson. After a generous application of elbow grease, Dina and I disassembled the stand, and a short while later we arrived home, but not before we stopped off for our second ice cream cones of the season. Yum!
In the evening, we returned to the Fellowship of the Ring special features, and ended up watching the WETA Workshop documentary because we forgot where we had left off! I left ourselves a note for the next time!
Guess!
I went shopping at HMV today. Guess the theme of my purchases:
Out of Sight DVD
Grosse Pointe Blank DVD
White Blood Cells & Elephant by The White Stripes
First correct guess wins.
Ritualized Wednesdays
�Who are you? And what have you done with Steve?�
Any gaming night that features a recurring phrase must be a good one. As much as I enjoyed last week�s gaming, last night�s session was one of the strongest and most enjoyable in recent memory.
First, Jon�s new Brotherhood deck faced my new evil Vesten deck. Both decks were designed for boarding attacks and not much else, which made for messy conclusions. In the first game, the game ended on a third or fourth-turn boarding attack. I thought I had the advantage, but Jon had a fantastic draw of cards, and ended the first boarding round with more cards in hand than he began. So much for my ship.
The second game was another story, as I managed to get my high-quality swordsmen out early, boarded, held off his counterattacks with my smaller crew, and then went in for the kill with my First Mate and Captain.
The basis of the Vesten deck is simple: no one has cannon, and everyone boards. All of the unaligned crew in the deck were Swordsmen, and the main Vesten crew were either sailors, or boarders. My favourites are the Eisen Mercenaries with their Commander: each Mercenary gets inflicts two extra hits for every other Mercenary in play, and the Commander lets each Mercenary absorb extra hits. Unfortunately, there�s no way to start with a Mercenary and a Commander in play. Perhaps with the other Vesten Captain.
But I really like this Captain. Jorund Guttmornson has a goofy ability: he doesn�t have any cannon skill, but he allows me to pay any amount of influence to inflict generic hits on another ship equal to half the influence produced. All of the sudden, the high-influence crew can now pull double-duty. I didn�t build the deck to exploit this ability, but I certainly will keep it in mind for the next iteration.
After that, I played Warlord with Rhett. First, my Black Tom deck met up with his Sorceress Ygraine deck. Rhett couldn�t roll well at all, but my double-team of Black Tom and Kobassi rolled right over his army in four turns. That was the first of the �Who are you, and what have you done with Steve?� comments.
Then, I played my Slayer deck against Jon�s Sceth deck (it features Siege cards, and he�s built it so that it can be played with one of two Warlords. He let me pick, because he honestly didn�t care. Now, that�s intimidating!) Again, there was some confusion as to my identity as Slayer cast a flurry of spells and won the day, despite the sounds of Ballistae and Trebuchet fire.
I came back to earth when I played Slayer against Rhett�s Sir Robert deck. My dice remembered exactly who they were rolling for then. At least it was over quickly.
Jon and I concluded the evening with another set of 7th Sea matches: Khered-din vs. Reis. Each game was different: a quick loss each, a win for me on the attack, and then another win after a prolonged buildup.
My Reis deck is the inverse of the Vesten deck: everyone has cannon, and a lot of it. Reis gives all crew a cannon bonus, the ship gives a cannon bonus, and the letter of marque gives a cannon bonus, and a chantey that gives my gunners a cannon bonus. I have crew that I can hire by spending cannon, and items that are discarded to give cannon bonuses. But, the most important cards in my deck are the reacts that let me play one cannon attack after another.
That�s how I won the games: by stringing together three or four cannon attacks in a sequence. In the last game, I produced 55 points of cannon as part of four separate cannon attacks as a react between Jon�s entry into my sea and his next action.
Only Khered-din survived, which suits the story. But he only survived until the start of the next turn.
Weekend Roundup
This was a long, eventful, and busy holiday weekend.
So busy, in fact, that it actually began on Thursday, when Guislaine popped over to enjoy an early Spring barbecue, show off her pottery achievements, and watch The Road to Perdition on DVD (both the movie and the graphic novel take very different paths to arrive at similar destinations. This was an excellent adaptation for the screen, as opposed to a failed translation.)
Friday was a quiet day at the office, more than offset by the impending frivolity in the evening. Dina was off to her book club with Elizabeth, and I welcomed Dave, Jen, Tall Dan, Pete, Rhett, and Michel over for an evening of board gaming. First, I forced everyone to play Taj Mahal, Dina�s most recent Christmas gift to me. We needed about three turns to get up to speed on the strategy and the bidding, but those who stuck with the game had a great time. I started the final turn in first place, but ended up in last after the bonus scoring, thanks to all the synchronicities in the game. Those types of last-minute swings are fantastic! I hope I don�t have to wait another year for the next game.
After that, I pulled out Roborally and we divided into teams. Michel, Jen and I were partners. While I moved for the third flag, Jen headed for the second, and Michel headed for the fourth, but took a wrong turn on an express conveyor belt and ended up off the board. All in all, this was a typical, introduction to the game! Naturally, we stuck with it, and learned the following: radioactive waste induces favorable mutations at a reasonable price, you can�t stay in front of flamers for an entire turn and expect to survive, and, if someone locks your third register as a Move 1, and you have a chance to repair the damage, repair the damage!
This last point applies to me. I chose to leave the register locked because I thought it would be funny. And so it was. Two turns later, I neglected to account for the third move, and ended up in a pit. I laughed hardest of all.
Despite all that, we won the game, and had a great time doing so!
Saturday was designated as our quiet day. We spend the morning lounging about, and then planned on an afternoon of shopping. We drove to the West Island to exchange a defective food mill and intended to go shopping for ink cartridges when we noticed that we had a gas leak! Scrapping all other plans, we drove down to Dina�s emergency mechanic, only to find that it was closed. Then we drove around looking for another mechanic, but it was late in the afternoon, and we weren�t having much luck. Finally, we found a place that was open, and the mechanic said that the problem was probably a hole at the top joint of the tank. Once the gas level went down, the leak would stop. So, we took him at his word, promised ourselves not to fill the tank too full, and have the problem fixed at the next checkup.
After that excitement, we bought a pair of Easter lilies for Dina�s mother and grandmother, I picked up the Lord of the Rings cooperative board game in anticipation of the next Game Night, and then we retired for an evening of fussing and television watching.
And then, the best part of the weekend happened. At around 10:45, I felt the baby kick for the very first time.
“Hello, Dad.”
Baby. “
Easter Sunday marked a long family visit. We drove back to the Townships to visit Dina�s parents, put on her summer tires, wash her car, and set up her parents on the Internet. We also had an Easter egg hunt, spent a couple of hours visiting with Dina�s grandmother up at the farm, and enjoyed the fabulous weather. We picked up dinner on our way home, and caught up on our videotaped shows for the week.
We hoped for the same kind of fantastic weather on Monday, but were disappointed to see rain everywhere. So, instead of walking to Chez Cora, we ended up driving. At the restaurant, we saw Rhett and Tall Dan, and joined them for breakfast. During the entire meal, we watched Tall Dan try to get a second cup of coffee without success, and then laughed ourselves silly when he got two cups at the same time. Very amusing.
We spoke of our plans to go see Bulletproof Monk in the afternoon, only to have Dan and Rhett stare at us. We remained undaunted.
In the afternoon, we did a modest amount of spring cleaning. Everything went smoothly, save when I demolished a lampshade while flipping the mattress (oh well, we needed a reason to go to the new IKEA store). When we weren�t cleaning, Dina watched TV while I played Diablo II or built new Warlord and 7th Sea decks.
When it came time to choose our movie, we changed our minds and saw Laurel Canyon instead of Bulletproof Monk. This was the correct choice. Frances McDormand, Kate Beckinsdale, Alessandro Nivola, Natasha McElhone and Christian Bale were all uniformly wonderful in this Six Feet Under-style tale of miscommunication and disappointment. The characters weren�t categorized in this film�they simply were, and that made all the difference.
We came home, watched the first installment of Eco-Challenge: Fiji. Sarah Boardman doesn�t appear to be in the running, which is too bad; David Duchovny�s narration is pretty flat compared to Holly Hunter�s efforts last year, and the commercial breaks are popping up at the worst possible times. But that doesn�t make the show any less enjoyable. We expect to be glued to the set all week long.
Ritualized Wednesdays
Last night featured new decks and another surprise Dina visit! She had just come back from participating in a pregnancy study at McGill University, and popped by the Croissanterie to say hello!
She came by in the middle of a great series of 7th Sea matches between my Jeremiah Then deck and his new Khereid-Din Freedom�s Key deck. We split four games, and they were all a tremendous amount of fun. Each game featured one key card (or absence thereof) that swung the game. Dina watched as Jon inflicted a 24-point Artifact Cannon attack on me�an attack I survived thanks to Well-Equipped Sick Bay, but which I could have prevented outright if I�d managed to play the Experienced Celedoine. Other games hinged on the presence/absence of an extra topman or gunner.
Fun stuff!
What I like about his Freedom�s Key deck is its versatility. Every game was challenging, but different in scope or style. There was no one way I could change my playing approach because the threats were always different. Sometimes I played against a strong Boarding threat, sometimes I played against a ping deck, and sometimes Khereid-Din threatened multiple 15-point cannon decks.
Earlier, Jon played his Castillian super-duel deck against my Jeremiah Then deck. This deck only does one thing well: fast boarding attacks thanks to the special power of the ship. Jon can discard two cards from his hand to start a boarding attack. In the first game, I had a great opening hand and played almost every card I had. Jon then boarded my ship and defeated me because he had far more cards than I did. In the next game, I took the fight to him right from the beginning, and earned a much better result. The Castillian deck is focused and strong, but also a little brittle.
We only played one game of Warlord�but what a game! I brought my revamped Slayer the Avid Reader deck to play. Based on last week�s experiences, I brought lots of high-skill, multi-hit point characters into play while I build up my wizard.
Jon played Azhraan the Foul, one of the new Deverenian warlords and, in the storyline, one of Slayer�s enemies. His deck is also a slow builder, and is appropriately named “The Undead (but not Unliving) Armies of Deverenia.” You see, Azhraan�s power allows him to turn one deck character of third or lower level Undead, keeping that character in play with all wounds removed. Add to that the fact that these characters come back as Ethereal (can only be hit on even die rolls�also known as “Immunity to Steve”), and I ended up seeing all the same characters much longer than I imagined!
It didn�t help that I could only kill one character a turn, and couldn�t hit the Ethereal characters. Jon had effectively twice as many characters as I had. Which isn�t to say that Slayer didn�t acquit himself well, but he just couldn�t stand up to that many zombies. Especially the zombie-fied Lord Joxanus, who destroyed one of Slayer�s key items each turn.
This game took a long time to conclude. Jon and I both drew through our decks, which is a rare event in this game, and when Slayer finally succumbed, we didn�t have the energy for a rematch. Instead, we discussed deck improvements.
A long weekend�s coming up, and I�m all kinds of inspired for deckbuilding. We�ll see how it goes!
Back to Internet Radio
The network at the office is now sufficiently robust to allow me to peruse the wide world of free internet radio again. I was getting tired of rotating through the same four or five CDs over the course of the day and needed some variety.
After going through the all-80s stations in a fit of nostalgia, and some of the elevator jazz stations, I’ve been listening to Virgin Radio UK. Although it lives up to its description in Iain Banks’ Dead Air, it’s still better than any Montreal pop station! The DJs are less annoying, the adds aren’t geared to middle-aged frat boys (thought I may only be listening to the Internet-broadcast ads instead of the live broadcast ads), and there’s a better variety of music.
Plus, I get a kick out of the traffic reports.
And if I get tired of this station, I have hundreds left to explore!
Be Kind to Student Drivers…
…I have a long memory!
Yes, I have a learner’s permit for the second time. My first permit expired in 1992 after I flunked my practical test twice and the minimum requirements for driving lessons changed. So I spent the last decade taking buses and cabs everywhere, which is perfectly suitable behavior for a city boy such as myself.
But, it’s beyond time that I be legally licensed to drive with the impending fatherhood, so I’ve taken the theory courses, and am waiting for the practical lessons to start. I can’t practice with Dina’s car for two reasons: one, it’s a standard, and I’m learning on automatic; and two, it’s her car. So, even when I get the license, I’ll have to get my own car!
I left the office early yesterday to write the theory test and pick up my learner’s permit. The SAAQ’s offices were packed, but the process was fairly painless: I presented my identification, they found my old records in the database, I was photographed for an ID card, I wrote the test at a computer terminal, and then paid my fees for the license. In and out in about an hour.
Because I’ve already had a learner’s permit, I don’t have a minimum waiting period between obtaining my learner’s permit and taking the practical exam. I could have taken the practical exam the same day!
I think I’ll sit through the twelve sessions at the driving school.
If all goes well , I’ll be licensed by mid-June!
Better start saving up for that car!
Six Months on the Job!
Today marks six months since I started my audition with Hexacto. I’ve learned a great deal from my initial projects, and that experience is certainly going to pay off in my next round of games.
This is the first writing job where I’ve seen projects from inception to completion, without any intervening transfers, delays, cancellations, or layoffs, and I have to say, it feels great!
Vote Early! Vote Often!
I still get a kick out of voting in elections and plebiscites and referenda. One of the good things about the Quebec electorate is that the voter turnout for provincial and higher votes is always in the high 80s-90s percent range. That’s a good sign of an involved citizenry.
Municipal and school board elections leave me cold, but maybe I’ll start paying more attention now that I’m paying more municipal and school taxes…[grin]
I knew I had to work late tonight, so I worked from home this morning and voted as soon as the polls opened. The entire process took ten minutes: present ID, get my ballot, enter my choice, put ballot in box, and go to work.
No hanging chads, no mechanical devices, no trouble.
Weekend Roundup
The weekend began and ended with dairy products.
On Friday, Dina and I met Bill after work for milkshakes and burgers. I showed up first, Bill showed up second, and then joked to the waitress to keep an eye out for my wife. The waitress just scurried away, and we had a big laugh when Dina arrived.
After the tasty, tasty milkshakes, Dina and I went over to Terence and Irene�s for Geek Night, Terence�s regular festival of geeky sci-fi shows. We started watching trade show commercials for Mego action figures (circa 1973), watched another installment of a Mounties serial, a Harvey Birdman, an Isis-Shazam crossover episode (which had Golden Age porn-calibre acting and directing�we couldn�t stop laughing!), and ended with the acid flashback episode of UFO. There was more to see, but we turned into pumpkins around midnight.
Saturday was bright and sunny. First, Dina dropped me off at the driving school, where I took a practice theory test and scored a pass at 84%. I went home and worked on office projects while I waited for Dina to come back for her errands. When she did, I made lunch, and then we drove down to rent a pair of DVDs. In the evening, we watched Far From Heaven, which was an enjoyable exercise in reworking the tropes of the women�s weepy film with a modern sensibility. But I couldn�t think of it as anything other than an exercise, so it wasn�t an entirely immersive experience.
Sunday was bright, sunny, and full of adventure. We drove down to the Townships and watched the speed traps catch all manner of unwary drivers. Then we had a chance to be watched as we got nabbed for Dina�s first speeding ticket in a small town along our route. Fortunately, I had just reviewed the demerit points, so I knew about how many she�d lose, and how big the fine would be (not much, to be sure).
We had a good visit. Dina�s dad turned 80, and we bought him a new camera as a gift. He was thrilled! Then, we took them over to the States for lunch, and nearly had another automotive altercation when a dog jumped in front of the car! Fortunately, Dina�s car has good brakes, so we were only jostled, but no one was injured.
On our way back home, we noticed the skid marks on the street, and saw that the dog was tied to the front porch. Good!
Back at Dina�s parents� place, I set up my old Macintosh for them, and we discussed which ISP was right for them. Dina had the great idea of having her mother practice her mousing skills on the freeware Solitaire game, and her mother took right to it! Next week, I�ll hook up the modem and set up their email, and they�ll have a great time.
We drove home without any incident (phew!) and enjoyed the extra daylight. At home, Dina finally made her macaroni and cheese (delicious!) and I barbecued for the first time this season! Yum!
We watched the celebrity edition of Trading Spaces, and then fell asleep.
What a great weekend!