Boardgames Are Awesome (despite two-player woes)!

OK, maybe I'm not a huge boardgame player, but I do enjoy getting together with friends for the occasional evening of play. This most frequently takes the form of La Roja and I getting together wih Guillotina and El Topé to play something like Settler's of Catan, Starfarers of Catan, Puerto Rico or Carcassonne.

However, there are plenty of evenings and weekends when it's just the two of us and we'd still like to spend an hour or two at the gametable. So, we've recently been looking into the games that are out there which support two players. We already have a copy of the two-player Puerto Rico spinnoff San Juan - however, I think I'm fundamentally not that into card games, so we haven't really ended up playing much of it.

But we have picked up a couple of games recently that support some two-player action: Power Grid and Ticket to Ride: Europe. We're still getting a feel for them, but initial experiences are generally positive. One consistent drawback we've noticed so far is that the games tend end in pretty close scores. This may be due to our both ramping up at the same time and using a similar playing style or it may be that playing with two players fundamentally precludes some of the more interesting interactions and strategies you might see with more players. Investigations shall continue. And maybe one day we'll work our way up to having as extensive a game collection as El Perdido's!

On a final note, I've found it interesting that you can get online access to a lot of these games - for instance, you can play Ticket to Ride and other games online at the publisher's site. I also found an online version of a purely two-player game I was looking into, Hive. And then there's the recent addition of Carcassonne and Settlers to Xbox Live Arcade. Too bad my Xbox 360's out of service at the moment, being repaired for an out of warranty DVD failure :-P

Lucky "Game Hat" Mauled, Local Dog Suspected

Ok, I never intentionally made the decision that this particular red hat was going to be my lucky "Game Hat". However, if you look at the photos from most Games I've been in to date, I've worn this hat. Perhaps that's how lucky Game hats come to be.


Anyway, why am I even mentioning this? Well, after I got back home from Shinteki Decathlon 3, I did a pretty lazy job of unpacking - basically, stuff was left wherever I happened to drop it. In the case of my hat, I left it on the coffee table rather than hanging it back in the closet where it normally lives. Unfortunately, this was easily within the reach of curious dogs. When I wandered into the living room the following morning, I found my hat in the middle of the floor - and it had what appeared to be some relatively minor dog chew (detail in photo), but clearly dog chew nonetheless!

My two dogs Bounder and Daisy were each looking a bit guilty but there was no clear evidence who was to blame (other than me for leaving it out and vulnerable). But based on prior experience, I suspect that Bounder may have been the midnight hat molester. He's somewhat notorious for absconding with inappropriate items - I've even managed to catch him in the act on occasion:

A Somewhat Puzzly Sculpture

La Roja and I have been on vacation the past couple of weeks. Rather than travel, etc. we've been staying around town and playing tourist, catching up on a lot of the stuff that we've been too busy to get around to over the last year or so.

One instance of said stuff is the fancy new Olympic Sculpture Park. It's quite nice - the park is a significant improvement to a piece of Seattle waterfront that previously was just a parking lot at the south end of Myrtle Edwards Park. An unedited camera dump of our visit can be found here.

Anyway, one particular sculpture caught my attention due to the way it encodes its title in the sculpture itself. The piece is Roy McMakin's Love & Loss, which is a set of concrete benches and tables, a tree and a giant, neon, rotating ampersand. Some of the pieces are painted white, spelling out the word Love, while the remainder of the concrete pieces spell out Loss. My photo here doesn't really do it justice. The Stranger has a rambling podcast with the artist about the piece, but the page also has a nice mockup image of the sculpture.

Offical Beer of Los Jefes?

I happen to find myself down the street at Hales pretty frequently (yes, it's true!) and I've always thought that their hefeweizen might be a good candidate for the official Los Jefes team beer. Here, maybe you can see what I mean:

Strangely, I've never actually ordered an El Jefe - when at Hales, I'm much more of a Mongoose IPA fan and I tend to stick with what I like. Maybe if the label were a little more interesting, I could get more excited about it. Perhaps something along these lines?

Costumes Are Awesome!

One of the great perks of participating in puzzle events is that there are often opportunities for dressing up. Most recently, La Roja and I attended Guillotina's birthday hunt as Strike Force Pink, in accordance with the James Bond-like theme and assigned team color. In the photo we're delivering a Top Secret communique (actually a birthday card and puzzle for Guillotina) upon our arrival.

Prior to this event, we also had the opportunity to dress up for our roles in the Microsoft Intern Puzzleday event. Annoyingly, we didn't end up with any photos, but you can catch glimpses of us occasionally in the Puzzleday videos (see the Los Jefes links page).

Also, part of the fun of costumes is getting to go shopping at places like Display & Costume. The hard part for me at least is resisting the temptation to buy loads of cool stuff, regardless of whether or not I need it for satisfying the costuming needs at hand.

However, I'm not sure that the rest of Los Jefes always shares my particular love of costuming. Every time I start talking about how freakin' awesome it'd be if we were to show up at a Puzzlehunt kickoff in full wrestling regalia (mask, capes, boots, tights, etc.) I get more eye-rolling than enthusiastic nods. However, I understand that El Topé actually owns a mask!

When daydreaming about awesome Mexican wrestling costumes, I often find myself wondering how difficult it'd be to actually make one myself. I like the notion of having complete creative control over the design, but there's also this unfortunate fact that I have zero sewing skillz. Perhaps I'll start on a small project to see what's involved and if it's something I might enjoy.

Note that I do have some experience with the textile arts. For example, check out this cross-stitch I finished during my vacation this week. I just need to go out now and get an appropriate frame; I'm thinking ornate and gilded. Oh, and the design's from Julie Jackson's book Subversive Cross Stitch - highly recommended!