MOTN Musings #1
Jan. 10th, 2022 03:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
onepageatatimeOne of the times I find I come here to write is when I wake up in the middle of the night, so let's see if it becomes a thing. (MOTN = Middle Of The Night)
So… yesterday was a… day. It was actually a good one. We had our usual fortnightly visit with B (H's adult daughter, who lives with her dad in a neighboring city to ours). Instead of the usual (B drives here, we go out to lunch, B drives home), we tried something else out: a board game cafe has opened in B's city, so we tried it out (picking her up on the way). We really liked the place. $5/person/day fee for playing games (or a $15/month membership). Their food menu is a little sparse, but I think we all found something we enjoyed for lunch. We played two games: Calico ("a puzzly tile-laying game of quilts and cats") and Forbidden Island (a cooperative game that we actually own but had never played).
Verdicts on the two games? I found Calico difficult to wrap my brain around, because tiles have colors and patterns and you got points for linking a certain number of each color together and, you could get points for linking tiles with the same pattern together (though the patterns required different numbers of tiles to score points, with the ones requiring more tiles scoring more points than those requiring fewer tiles)… and then you had patterns within your playing tray where you received points for arranging tiles surrounding a given tile with combinations of colors and/or patterns. But I also think it was a case where the second time through the game would have been much easier. But H found herself fried by all the different things to pay attention to, and said (when we were discussing it on the way home) that she could never imagine playing two games in a row of that game.
Forbidden Island was a real winner with us. We came close to playing it again, I think, before realizing that one of us had a prior commitment which wouldn't allow the time. I also found that this game was good, because the back of the card telling each player's particular role had the information about what you could do and in what order when it was your turn. (Without it, I think it would have been slightly complex, but having that info in front of us, helped us keep on track.) I definitely look forward to playing it again some time. (And perhaps there. There was talk of this becoming "the usual" for B's visits.)
I also watched two ⚽️games. (Emoji used, because I feel weird about using either name for the sport, since so much of what I watch is coming from places where it's called football, but of course, when you say football in North America, everybody's brain jumps to 🏈) Spurs had a… scare in their FA Cup match, coming within a few minutes of losing to a lower-tier team. I also read this morning about a Canadian player, formerly of Toronto FC, who is moving to Nottingham Forest. So I watched their FA Cup match today also (even though Laryea wasn't in the lineup). It was a good day for that, as they upset Arsenal. (I'm not sure how many Nottingham Forest games I'll see, since only a handful of Championship games are available over here each week. The team have paid audio and video streaming options for international fans, but… they are higher-priced than I am currently willing to pay.
I really hope I get some more sleep. I woke up at midnight, sneezy. I know that's not enough sleep. But I'm not sure if I can make sleep happen. But I think, once I finish this post, I'll try (because once daytime comes, I know sleep won't for me).
I'll end with a bit of Kristin weirdness: because my main tracking of reading is currently via Goodreads and because their tracking is based on their server's time (Pacific time zone)… it is close enough to my own that I don't want to log reading that will be recorded with the wrong date. So I forbid myself from reading between midnight and 3am Eastern. That also helps a bit with me not so often getting out of bed too early, because if it's before 3am I "can't" read yet.
So… yesterday was a… day. It was actually a good one. We had our usual fortnightly visit with B (H's adult daughter, who lives with her dad in a neighboring city to ours). Instead of the usual (B drives here, we go out to lunch, B drives home), we tried something else out: a board game cafe has opened in B's city, so we tried it out (picking her up on the way). We really liked the place. $5/person/day fee for playing games (or a $15/month membership). Their food menu is a little sparse, but I think we all found something we enjoyed for lunch. We played two games: Calico ("a puzzly tile-laying game of quilts and cats") and Forbidden Island (a cooperative game that we actually own but had never played).
Verdicts on the two games? I found Calico difficult to wrap my brain around, because tiles have colors and patterns and you got points for linking a certain number of each color together and, you could get points for linking tiles with the same pattern together (though the patterns required different numbers of tiles to score points, with the ones requiring more tiles scoring more points than those requiring fewer tiles)… and then you had patterns within your playing tray where you received points for arranging tiles surrounding a given tile with combinations of colors and/or patterns. But I also think it was a case where the second time through the game would have been much easier. But H found herself fried by all the different things to pay attention to, and said (when we were discussing it on the way home) that she could never imagine playing two games in a row of that game.
Forbidden Island was a real winner with us. We came close to playing it again, I think, before realizing that one of us had a prior commitment which wouldn't allow the time. I also found that this game was good, because the back of the card telling each player's particular role had the information about what you could do and in what order when it was your turn. (Without it, I think it would have been slightly complex, but having that info in front of us, helped us keep on track.) I definitely look forward to playing it again some time. (And perhaps there. There was talk of this becoming "the usual" for B's visits.)
I also watched two ⚽️games. (Emoji used, because I feel weird about using either name for the sport, since so much of what I watch is coming from places where it's called football, but of course, when you say football in North America, everybody's brain jumps to 🏈) Spurs had a… scare in their FA Cup match, coming within a few minutes of losing to a lower-tier team. I also read this morning about a Canadian player, formerly of Toronto FC, who is moving to Nottingham Forest. So I watched their FA Cup match today also (even though Laryea wasn't in the lineup). It was a good day for that, as they upset Arsenal. (I'm not sure how many Nottingham Forest games I'll see, since only a handful of Championship games are available over here each week. The team have paid audio and video streaming options for international fans, but… they are higher-priced than I am currently willing to pay.
I really hope I get some more sleep. I woke up at midnight, sneezy. I know that's not enough sleep. But I'm not sure if I can make sleep happen. But I think, once I finish this post, I'll try (because once daytime comes, I know sleep won't for me).
I'll end with a bit of Kristin weirdness: because my main tracking of reading is currently via Goodreads and because their tracking is based on their server's time (Pacific time zone)… it is close enough to my own that I don't want to log reading that will be recorded with the wrong date. So I forbid myself from reading between midnight and 3am Eastern. That also helps a bit with me not so often getting out of bed too early, because if it's before 3am I "can't" read yet.