Playing Around
Last Saturday marked my last Japanese class before the final this weekend. I'm looking forward to Saturday, but possibly more to after the final - we're going out for Sushi! *happy dance* After that, I'll be heading back home, meeting up with Bryce, and then heading up to ROBA for hours of happy game playing goodness!
Last Saturday was also filled with games. I headed out to Ann Arbor and met up with David, Sasha, and Kevin. First we played a game Kevin had made - Under Growth. It was lots of fun, though I think partly because it had never occurred to me to up and create my own non-computer game. But now I'm wondering, why not? I think I'll noodle this over a bit further. (Note: noodle as in "to think", not what Misty was considering.)
After Under Growth, we played Ticket to Ride, a personal favorite of mine, though I hadn't tried playing it much with other folks as I wasn't certain that anyone else would like it. I was first introduced to this game at ROBA last year. My parents gave me my own copy of the game as a Christmas gift. If memory serves, I asked Bryce to play it with me a couple of months ago, and he seemed to enjoy it. With that in mind, I introduced Andrew & Alyssa to it when they were in town last month. They too seemed to have fun with it. Buoyoed by those successes, I took it along with me on Saturday. As fate would have it, we ended up playing it.
We finished up the night by playing RoboRally. What could be more fun than a game based upon putting together program instructions to decide robot movements? Unfortunately, I fell into a pit early in the game, setting me back quite a bit behind the other players. In the end, I decided my chance of winning was sufficiently close to zero that it would be more fun to unleash my special weapon on the other players. I spread the joy equally. I managed to replace each of the other robots programs with my own.
Yesterday evening, Bryce and I played a game of Quiddler. Now that he's been through it once, I wonder if it would be too soon to kick it up a notch, and start adding in random rules good for only one round. I do know that there's one variation I'll stay away from - all card are worth 15 minus the number shown on the card. It's not a bad rule, but it's hard to score when one is tired. ^_^
Well, sort of. It seems that I haven't plateaued, as I'd thought that I had. The minor step forward this week: I passed Frozen Ray on heavy with doing the turn around thing that Jen & Mike are so fond of encouraging others to do.
And, I now have a copy of DDR Extreme for home, so I've completed my set (for now) of dancing games. W00t!
I was quite glad last Tuesday that I'd bought Pump It Up for home. Julie and I went out for sushi, after which we stopped by Lucky's and played a couple of games there. Had I not played before, I'd have been completely lost. As it was, I think I just barely made it through the songs we played, some of them anyway. *smile*
My spring/summer pottery classes start this week! Tomorrow night I'll be getting dirty with the Wednesday crowd. I'm more nervous about Thursday. By the end of the last Japanese pottery class, 9 people had signed up. Two semesters of Japanese are now (almost) behind me, and I'm still too nervous to say anything in Japanese! *frustrated sigh*
As for other classes, I've decided not to take another drawing class until fall. The weather has been so lovely lately that I've been having a large desire to plant things. Actually, that's not quite correct. I've never been very good at planting things. I much prefer to weed. Basically anything where I can get dirty seems to make me happy.
Last Saturday was also filled with games. I headed out to Ann Arbor and met up with David, Sasha, and Kevin. First we played a game Kevin had made - Under Growth. It was lots of fun, though I think partly because it had never occurred to me to up and create my own non-computer game. But now I'm wondering, why not? I think I'll noodle this over a bit further. (Note: noodle as in "to think", not what Misty was considering.)
After Under Growth, we played Ticket to Ride, a personal favorite of mine, though I hadn't tried playing it much with other folks as I wasn't certain that anyone else would like it. I was first introduced to this game at ROBA last year. My parents gave me my own copy of the game as a Christmas gift. If memory serves, I asked Bryce to play it with me a couple of months ago, and he seemed to enjoy it. With that in mind, I introduced Andrew & Alyssa to it when they were in town last month. They too seemed to have fun with it. Buoyoed by those successes, I took it along with me on Saturday. As fate would have it, we ended up playing it.
We finished up the night by playing RoboRally. What could be more fun than a game based upon putting together program instructions to decide robot movements? Unfortunately, I fell into a pit early in the game, setting me back quite a bit behind the other players. In the end, I decided my chance of winning was sufficiently close to zero that it would be more fun to unleash my special weapon on the other players. I spread the joy equally. I managed to replace each of the other robots programs with my own.
Yesterday evening, Bryce and I played a game of Quiddler. Now that he's been through it once, I wonder if it would be too soon to kick it up a notch, and start adding in random rules good for only one round. I do know that there's one variation I'll stay away from - all card are worth 15 minus the number shown on the card. It's not a bad rule, but it's hard to score when one is tired. ^_^
Well, sort of. It seems that I haven't plateaued, as I'd thought that I had. The minor step forward this week: I passed Frozen Ray on heavy with doing the turn around thing that Jen & Mike are so fond of encouraging others to do.
And, I now have a copy of DDR Extreme for home, so I've completed my set (for now) of dancing games. W00t!
I was quite glad last Tuesday that I'd bought Pump It Up for home. Julie and I went out for sushi, after which we stopped by Lucky's and played a couple of games there. Had I not played before, I'd have been completely lost. As it was, I think I just barely made it through the songs we played, some of them anyway. *smile*
My spring/summer pottery classes start this week! Tomorrow night I'll be getting dirty with the Wednesday crowd. I'm more nervous about Thursday. By the end of the last Japanese pottery class, 9 people had signed up. Two semesters of Japanese are now (almost) behind me, and I'm still too nervous to say anything in Japanese! *frustrated sigh*
As for other classes, I've decided not to take another drawing class until fall. The weather has been so lovely lately that I've been having a large desire to plant things. Actually, that's not quite correct. I've never been very good at planting things. I much prefer to weed. Basically anything where I can get dirty seems to make me happy.