Gonzai Gallery

The gaming was back in my neighborhood today, so Dave and I both gave it out best shot despite both of us having colds and not much sleep. We didn't do too well. Dave won the the grand debut of my new Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries and after that we descended rapidly. Tried a game called '3 Commandments' which was awful (Jamie doesn't think it was worth the $1 she paid for it), got our backsides handed to us at the kids' version of 'Wits & Wagers', then Dave played (and lost) to a six year old at a couple games and I was badly beaten at ''Esalund' or whatever that was called. We decided to call it a night early. Ah well. We got out of the house for a while.

More adventures in art shows, although this time it's more the buyers than the artists (aside from the guy who sent his art to the hotel instead of the art show). But we've had buyers taking photos with their cell phones, and a lot of quick sale adventures. Mostly people seem to think they can personally write 'quick sale' on something and it's theirs. Even if there's already bids on it. Even when the signs specify you must bring it to a staff member. We're counting them as regular bids for now.

Meanwhile, I hit the dealers room and landed a copy of Ticket To Ride: Nordic Countries, which is out of print and going for outrageous prices on Ebay. I got it for MSRP, no tax or shipping :) Happy me! And a stuffed squirrel, he's quite cute. Obviously my netbook works in the art show, which had been a concern. Speaking of concerns, had an interesting conversation with the conchair of Shore Leave. (jslinder I'll e-mail you.) Back to it...

After a hellish time trying to get out of the house (which included smashing my head into a kitchen cabinet), I managed to go to the wrong hotel. Then I discovered, after I was there, that there were no concessions at said hotel. You bring you own (which I hadn't) or go to Chili's. Not a big Chili's fan. But at least I got a big, caffeine laden soda out of it.

Also failed to play much, with most folks opting for the 3+ hour mega games and/or preoccupied with the silent auction. I had a list of things I wanted to bid on; 2 didn't make it to the auction, and all but one of the others were also targeted by BSFS, so I didn't want to bid against them. Since I play their game sets at Alphabet Soup, it is to an extent bidding against myself. And I was sniped on the one non-Hal Haag game, a Star Wars game I thought the nephews would love. Final tally? Qwirkle. That was it. Did snag some GCOM swag, pretty purple dice and assorted accessories, and I'm picking up the original Settlers of Cataan tomorrow, but in the end I didn't spend nearly what I expected and my hands are much emptier than I thought.

Did at least get to wrap up the evening by finally playing some games I like (Ticket to Ride & Stone Age) with people I knew. I think that one day of Game Days may well be plenty for me, but we'll see how I feel next year.

Made it down to Alphabet Soup, almost for the entirety this time. Problem was, I was taught Stone Age - and it took 3 hours. Followed by a round of TTR Europe with the world's slowest player, which made it a 90 minute game. I skeddaddled on home but too late to catch Rick on his way back home, so no visiting. Mom is rather depressed from visiting Jim, his whole right side is paralyzed and he can't talk. It didn't go very well, apparently. But she's back safe & sound, which, given the weather, is a plus. Watched a couple movies last night - 'Spiderman 3' could have benefitted from a few *less* villains, I think; and 'Dreamgirls' wasn't what I was expecting, I thought it was just about the sixties girl group and didn't know it was going to cover several years worth of their lives. And the lip synching was painful. Going to knock off early tonight, as Roxie kept me up half the night last night. And back to the grind tomorrow.

Didn't really do a whole lot other than laundry, vacuuming and cleaning up ITunes. And the vacuuming and taking out the recycling did nothing for my poor shoulders, nor did computering help my poor right hand. But I did figure out where the problem is in my ITunes library - the upper level folders are fine, it's the lower level ones that for some reason duplicated or triplicated the files - and started working on deleting all the extra files. I cleaned 30 GB of music off the drive over the weekend, 1-2 songs at a time. Yippee. Probably have another 60-70 GB to go, then redo the library and fix whatever weird stuff ITunes does to it. Did make it down to Alphabet Soup for a bit, where I learned to play Qwirkle and went from newbie to reigning champ at Ticket to Ride in 4 weeks. (I learned the game at the previous AS; yesterday I won two games, both by exceedingly large margins. That'll teach 'em to teach me a game...) And I conceded defeat and figured out a way to re-attach the DVD player to the TV so we could watch Being Human & Bill Maher.

Maher had the line of the week, BTW: "The health care summit was so boring, a curling match broke out."

The original game plan for the weekend was a dog show Saturday and/or the World of Pets today. The snow scotched that. I'm glad I didn't go out yesterday, as apparently the driving was lousy and the other drivers worse. I considered today, but by the time I finished shovelling the driveway, my back & shoulders were killing me. We will not go into how tight and painful they are right now, but it's bad.

So instead I spent the weekend camped in front of the TV and/or computer. Watched all TV shows, and am fully caught up in that regard. Watched everything remaining on the DVR. Saw 4 episodes of 'Men of a Certain Age' - had to let Mom have the telly at some point. Also watched 'Iron Man', 'Aliens', 'Disturbia' and on '1408' now. Played a LOT of Ticket To Ride, mostly without success. But I did finish my drawing of Amy Pond, did Dr Horrible in his entirety, did half of Abby Sciuto, put away a lot of stuff and finally found my dog show tote, which has been missing since October. So not a total loss of a weekend, but I do miss my furry pals.