Wintery weather

Yes, I know its not technically winter yet, but it sure feels like it here! The high for today was in the 40's - and of course, today was the walkathon at A's school. It had initially been scheduled for last Saturday, but they postponed at the last minute when it looked like it might be raining. As it turns out, the rain had ended by around 8 am, so by the start at 11, it would have been fine. Well, today wasn't rainy, but it was awfully cold.

I was scheduled to work in the food booth for half an hour and boy was it cold there - no sun under the tent, so we all had a tendency to huddle just outside the tent in the sun when no one was there to buy baked goods.

I couldn't believe that they didn't have any hot drinks for sale! We could have sold many, many cups of coffee and hot cocoa today. It seems that last year (when it was quite warm - many kids in short sleeves) they offered cocoa and only sold about 5 cups, so they decided not to offer it this year. Even though it was in the upper 30's while I was there. I was very surprised that they didn't find a way to offer hot drinks once they saw (yesterday) how cold it would be today. Luckily I had brought some hot cider in a travel mug - I had assumed they would have drinks, but was afraid it would only be coffee. I was VERY glad to have that cider!

Another thing that was surprising was how few people showed up for the walkathon. And not just because of the cold - they said that only 70 kids had signed up to walk - out of a population of over 500 kids in the school. Big difference from last year. Last year I think they had over 200 kids signed up. Our school population is changing somewhat, but I don't think its changing that fast. I suppose some of it may be the economy also, but I'm still surprised more people didn't sign up to participate, even if they didn't raise much money - there wasn't a minimum to raise to walk.

Because of lack of participation, I ended up working at the food tent for 2 hours instead of the 30 minutes I had signed up for. They really wanted me to help longer, but A was cold and ready to go home (me too). My mom had come by to see A and visit the bake sale (hoping for some coffee) and she ended up staying and helping out for a while after I left.

The lack of participation worries me about the school. I keep hearing that they are having problems getting volunteers for various things. I was at the school Friday helping to take down the book fair and there was only 1 other parent there helping, whereas previous years have usually had 3-5 other parents. I'm not too surprised when I hear of problems getting people to run programs or take on big commitments, but when they have trouble getting people to help out for 30 minutes - that does surprise me.

A managed 15 laps around the track in the 30 minutes they had to walk. And to make that many laps, he alternated running and walking. Way to go A!

After all that cold, I decided a nice big fire would be just the ticket tonight. And it was. It was quite cozy tonight, sitting in front of a roaring fire, playing San Juan.

Idiot, the game

M taught us a new card game this weekend that he learned at Scout camp this summer.  They call it Idiot and evidently they played it a lot over that week.  Actually, he taught us how to play just after camp, but I had forgotten some of the rules.  He had played it enough that he remembers them, though.  It's a fun game and generally a fairly quick game, at least if you don't try to play out to all the places.  We've been playing for 1st and 2nd place only.

Rules: (this works for 4 people playing, you might need to change the number of cards with a different number of people)

Deal out 4 cards face down to each person.  On top of each of face down card, put a card face up.  Then deal 4 cards to each person's hand.  The rest of the cards go in a stack in the middle of the table.

The goal is to get rid of all of your cards.  You have to play an equal or higher value card on top of what is in the discard pile.  If you have multiple of the same number card, you can play them all at once.

2, 4, 10 and joker are wild.  Ace is high.

2 and 4 can be played anytime and will "reset" the discard pile, think of them as being a zero, every other card is higher than them

10 can be played anytime and will "burn" the deck - take the discard pile out of play and you get to play another card to start a new discard pile

joker can be played anytime.  The very next card to be played must be LOWER than the card previous to the joker.

First person starts off with any card from their hand (they will probably want to start with their lowest card).  Then they take a card from the deck.  Next person does the same, playing any card from their hand that is equal to or higher than the top of the discard pile.  If you can't play a card from your hand, you pick up the entire discard pile (and do not have to take a card from the deck).  Soon you will run out of the deck, that's ok.

Once you have played all the cards in your hand, you can start in on the cards face-up in front of you.  Once those are done, you start playing the face-down cards - blindly!  At this point you are very likely to end up picking up the discard pile at some point.  If, at any point, you pick up the discard pile, all cards go into your hand (with the exception of face down cards, which goes back face-down) and you have to empty your hand again before you can use any cards down in front of you.

Super Smash Bros Brawl

The kid's newest diversion:

 

It was released today and M has been bugging us all weekend about wanting to get it. Finally after checking that Target had it and getting all homework done, (and checking to see whether the Teen rating was one we should be worried about (answer: it doesn't seem to be a problem)), I took the kids to go and buy the game. I was impressed that A voluntarily offered to pay for half the game. I realize that it was perhaps self-interest, in that if A pays for half, then he can rightly argue that he gets equal playing time. But I was still impressed.

M wanted me to live-blog the action in the game, but I'm not going to go that far...

Game looks cool. It has the possibility of playing tournament style with up to 16 or 32 players (depending on something..). Initially they had problems getting the second Wiimote to activate. I found some instructions online that seemed to do the trick.

M and A are having great fun with the game.  They insisted that D and I should try it.  We're both lousy at it.  D managed to kill A once, then A promptly killed him 5 times in a row.  The game is set to 5 kills.  When I played M, I think maybe he died once.  While I died 5 times, at least 2 of those when I managed to let my character get scrolled off the screen.  Oops.  

M wants me to play again.  I told him only if he can give me a handicap.

Later:  M says he set up a handicap, but I think it will only work once I've lost some and am using the same character.  Not sure.  Anyhoo - they wanted me to play again.  

1st game: I played M and lost - Badly.  Not so much that he beat me as that I kept killing myself by falling off the platform.

2nd game: I played A.  Amazing.  I won.  It was a very close game though.  I think he died 5 times to my 4 times.  I also didn't kill myself at all.  Maybe I'm learning...

Munchkin

We went to game night last night. Somewhat reluctantly, on my part, as I've gotten rather tired of dominoes. I haven't even managed to go to game night all that often recently, but dominoes have lost their luster. But the kids and I went, taking Blokus in the hopes that we could convince someone to play that with us. No takers at first, but M and I decided to play a 2 person game, with each of us playing 2 colors.

In the midst of the first game, E (college age) and his dad arrived, and agreed to take over our extra hands. They were rather enchanted with the game and quite good at it. E plays much more defensively than any of us have tended to. After playing another game, where E and I managed to tie, with only one 4-square piece left each, I inquired about the game they had brought.

They showed us Munchkin. At first M wasn't interested in playing - he would rather read his book. I persisted and said he needed to come try it. It looked like it might be interesting in the way that various games we have from Uncle D are. Well, it is. It's somewhat like a card game version of D&D. But without any arcane knowledge needed. It was really fun. And funny - many of the cards are puns, like the Maul Rat, or wordplays ( Buckler of Swashing on Cotion of Ponfusion). Then there are other monsters with strange powers - like the lawyer (won't attack thieves - professional courtesy). The deck we were playing with was the original Munchkin plus expansion pack 3 (clerical errors). M and A (who had ditched his dominoes game to come watch us) were thoroughly entranced by the game - and started insisting that we MUST get it.

So, this afternoon found us at Borders purchasing the original game. They are hoping for expansion packs to follow. After that, they felt a need to visit Baskin-R*obbins to redeem their Christmas gift certificates. Today was even warm enough to feel like eating ice cream.

Then, once back home, we HAD to play Munchkin. It moved along a bit slower at first, compared to last night - partly because we weren't quite as sure of the rules and partly that our deck wasn't well shuffled (and maybe that we didn't have extra cards from an expansion pack, who knows?). As we got to the final rounds, that part takes a long time, as everyone gangs up on the person who is about to win. We each had about 3 turns of "I could win this time", but were successfully prevented - until finally I prevailed. A bit on an anti-climax as I had 2 great cards to help me be sure to win - and I ended up defeating a level one monster, with my level 18 warrior. Piece of cake (or as the card might say, peace of cake).

Today's workout

Wii boxing. Technically training with the punching bag. I could tell it got my heart rate up. Twice. Plus I did a round of power bowling and batting practice. And another session of fitness training. Seemingly I am not so fit as a few days ago - then I was 34, today I was an elderly 49. Oh dear. My tennis seemed particularly off. Maybe it's my cold. yeah, must be... D and A were both down there playing too. A beat us both on boxing with the punching bag.

Saint Petersburg

No, not the city, or at least not in real life. We got the game Saint Petersburg and played it yesterday afternoon. It was a lot of fun, though it took forever - closing on 3 hours! Of course, some of that time was reading the rules and trying to learn how to play the game. And then during the game, we would occasionally come across new cards that none of us knew what they meant - so we had to dig in the rules and find out.

The story behind the game is that you are building the city of St. Petersburg - you have to collect workers, buildings, aristocrats and rubles. As you go along, you can upgrade the workers, buildings and aristocrats - while collecting rubles and points.

It was a bit complex to play the first time, but I'm sure it will go faster in future playings. I think, though, that the game's guidelines of 45-60 minutes is a bit optomistic.

Happy Birthday D!

It's been somewhat of a birthday weekend for D. His twin brother, Uncle D, and wife were here for a wedding in her family and they spent some extra time with us. We all had a great time.

We had a birthday dinner of ribs on Saturday. Uncle D brought - Arkadia for D/us. We played it Saturday night.
We had birthday cheesecake on Monday.
Today the 4 of us adults went out for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Jamaican place.
After they left, the kids and I gave D our presents.
Then after Scouts, my mom came over with presents for D and we had more birthday cheesecake.

Arkadia is cool. We had a good time playing it. It plays much faster after you've played it once and figured out a bit. We also played San Juan and Bohnanza (aka the bean game). A really enjoyed playing the bean game.