JeffCon Friday, One Fortnight Later - I'm a Good Planner
I want this to be as full a record of JeffCon as possible. If you can think of a correction to something I've written, or have a story of something I missed or forgot, please leave it as a comment and I will incorporate it into the full entry.
For me, the story of Jeffcon really starts after gaming on Thursday night. (For others, including Brian's really good bread, it starts before that - but I'd like to have that told in the voices of more direct participants hint hint.) I left gaming and went to Dominicks in Palatine, which now closes at 1AM. So I made it and picked up my last ingredient list. I had already determined to switch from chocolate chip cookies to oatmeal scotchies, based on comments by Rich - but I didn't have a recipe. The Quaker Oats I picked up had a recipe - inside the box, it said! Aargh. Luckily, the Nestle people had me covered - the butterscotch chips bag had the recipe. I picked up the few bits I still needed (and I snagged some butter-flavored shortening to use instead of the butter), and went home.
I puttered around a bit, putting stuff away and cleaning, and really only got cooking around 3AM. I wanted to try my hand at making a buttercream frosting with maple extract for the cookies, given that the recipe offered by Alton Brown on Good Eats was pretty darn simple. Half-cup sugar, half-cup dark Quarren syrup, check. Heat up until it makes a loose syrup, check. Put four eggs in mixer and beat until fluffy, check. Use bulb baster to put syrup into mixing eggs...um...not check. The syrup has cooled off a bunch, and it's stuck in the bulb baster like a glob of rubber cement. Okay, so I need to heat it up again, I also need to loosen up the glob in the baster, so I'll stir the syrup with it. Stir stir stir *shrink* - hey! Oh yeah, the baster's plastic. Kind of looks like a really big spent match now.
*toss in trash*
Okay, backup plan. Get spoon, use spoon to drizzle in syrup. Problem - some syrup getting caught up in the top of the beaters, turning the syrup into spun sugar. Top of the mixer turns into a cotton candy machine. And I have to keep reheating the sugar syrup, but I'm taking syrup out. So I'm probably burning it a bit. And I think I'm only getting about 2/3 inclusion of the sugar into the eggs, so it's not as sweet as it should be. Well, cooking is a learning process. Let's see how it comes out. Oh, wait - I'm having a routine blood draw tomorrow, and it's supposed to be a fasting blood draw. So I can't even taste it. Well, let's finish it up. Put in the butter, slowly but surely. Mixture cools down enough that it stops melting the butter, so the pace gets slower as the butter has to be smoothed into the mix now. But at one point, it literally seems to just *gel* together and suddenly comes to resemble (in slightly more liquid form, perhaps) what I recognize as frosting. Mix in maple extract, finish, smell it.
Hmmm. Smells kinda like burnt maple. Let's see if fridge time will let it set up nice. Pour into one of the endless supply of Gladware plastic containers I have courtesy of Mr. Selk, and then I get to go to bed. Yay! :)
Friday morning at work passes relatively uneventfully. My schedule is to go get the blood draw - routine and should be quick. Then pick up one of Brian's folding tables from Christi, then go shopping again and come home. Unpack, clean, start cookies, hand people oven-fresh cookies as they arrive. Yay!
Um, doesn't quite work out that way. First, I haven't coordinated with Christi -nearly- enough, so I have only a "let's meet up at 3" plan rather than a more sophisticated call-and-rendezvous approach. Secondly, I only barely make 3 - because the LabCorp facility I stop at is one often used for workman's comp claims and pre-hire drug screens, so it's swimming in bureaucracy. It takes an HOUR to get out of the waiting room, and then my famously reclusive veins once again defeat more than one challenger. It takes about another hour and three different phlebotomists to get a good draw. I leave with my usual collection of band-aids. *sigh* I remember Ernie saying that he'd be free today, so I text him and ask him to meet up early to help me set up. He agrees, but he's out right now - be a bit of a wait. Fine, I gots shopping to do. I go home, start setting up the batter, and realize that I've probably missed Christi. I fire my backup plan, asking Rich to bring his cardtable. Good man, he agrees. I then test the (now cold) buttercream. Iffy. Could be amusingly sweet, but has a funny tang to it. I let it warm up on the counter, not committing to whip it up yet. I go to Dominicks, get pop and meat and tomatoes and the like. I see a new kind of Mountain Dew called Voltage. Looks cool, pick it up. (Totally don't notice the words 'blue raspberry'.) Get home, realize I forgot ice. I call Ernie, ask him to get it - he's happy to, but it delays him. In the course of five trips from car to door, I transfer the shopping trip's contents out of the car, including eight of those goofy-heavy fridge packs. I then gradually move the stuff up into the kitchen, Ernie managing to finally find the apartment when I have three fridgepacks left and all the other stuff is done. *sigh*
I talk with Ernie as I start finalizing the cookie batter. I load up Portal for the PS3, since it's so new and awesome. (By the way - this is an official testament to the awesomeness of Portal: Portal is awesome.) I get the cookies started, and Mssr. Polonsky arrives. He is happy to watch Ernie and I demo some Portal features, and cookies start emerging. I tell people I'm happy to whip up the maple buttercream, but I don't want to dirty the mixer bowl again unless they taste the cool frosting and deem it worthy. All applicants at this stage of the game decline, as the scotchies are already pretty sugary. (I swap out half of the vanilla for maple extract - I do so love maple flavor.) Then, a few hours early, Rian and B. Walker arrive! Yay! I give them both cookies for their troubles in travel (Rian had only a little bit less sleep than myself, and Walker rousted him at NOON to tell him it was time to go). Rian immediately sags into the couch, moans in an apparent orgasm of culinary energy, and declares in a low breathy voice that it's one of the best cookies he's ever tasted.
Go me!
So now I have four or so players, I figure I can swap out from Portal now to Carcassonne for the 360. I set up a game for Ernie, Barry, Walker and me (Rian requiring an immediate nap after his intense cookie experience). I make more cookies and play a few games. I'm happy that some of my investment in gaming tech goodness has finally paid off in a way I meant it to - with the oohs and aahs of my friends. :) I believe this is about the time when Kat, Rich and Noel arrive. (Noel had previously assured me she would be painting a figure and unable to attend, but attends anyway. I am assured this day that she attended to see my reaction to their completely awesome TTR cake. I know they posted the picture at the end of the preflight post, but posting the picture again here would be good too, people. :D I figure we can finish out the current Carcassonne game and switch to Super Smash Brothers Brawl - my game of choice for JeffCon opening night. It is at this point that B. May arrives. His arrival is notable for two reasons.
He has arrived just after we have taken time to show more Portal moments (which I started showing him on Tuesday after Star Wars Minis, but he had to leave), and after we played a few rounds of Carcassonne, which he also enjoys. His record for enjoying SSMB is...um...sketchy at best. But he puts on a brave face for me, good lad.
Secondly, that brave face is put to an unsurmountable challenge when Brian becomes the first person to accept the buttercream challenge. I inform him that I would only whip the frosting after someone eats a whole spoonful and still requests that I do so. He boldly takes out a spoon (a blessedly small spoon), loads up with frosting, and takes half of it as a bite. I now paraphrase his reaction, but will swap it out for his own words if he so supplies them.
Hey, kind of sweet - maple-y.
Hmmm.
Whoa - was that wire? Naw, it's crunching enough. Maybe it's burnt something.
Okay, just swallowed the first bit. Not too...
Um, that aftertaste is starting to...
AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
Oh dear god! I don't think I've had a taste in my mouth that bad since Gore lost!
This is clearly weapons-grade frosting, dude. And...
Oh, no. I told him I'd eat the whole spoonful, didn't I?
Oh, no.
Well, let's get it over with.
*slurp*
Hey, kind of sweet - maple-y. Maybe it would work as a gumball exterior with a horseradish interior to immediately kill the aftertaste.
Mr. May, you are a trooper. :)
We settle into Smash. The good news is that you can put names on top of fighters now, so it's really easy to pick out who you are. The bad news is that I'm still the only one who really plays - so I tend to win. (I think next year, I -may- switch to a 360 Carcassonne tournament. Brawl just might be a game for me, not for so large an audience. Or maybe Taria and Joe will show up this time, hint hint. :P ) Walker puts up a respectable fight, as does Noel. However, one moment among the Brawl games will be my triumph for a long time to come.
I believe the players in this game are myself, Walker, Kat and Rich. We are playing a lives match rather than a standard time match - lose enough times, and you're out. I note aloud that Walker seems to be running away from me. Kat (I believe) responds that Walker is the only one who hasn't died yet. I casually remark that "Oh, I should do something about that." I jump down off a wall, and punch him.
And, in a response I swear I had NO IDEA was coming - he immediately flies straight sideways off the screen and dies. I catch the barest glimpse of his damage percentage - something like 220% or something. However, I manage to summon just about every drop of aplomb contained in my hearty frame, and react calmly.
"Okay. Took care of that." Meanwhile, the inside of my head is holding a ticker-tape parade. WHEEEEEEE! SOOOOO COOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!
Rich comments that it's cool to watch me play, because I can decide that I want to get something done, and it actually gets done. I calmly nod, smile, and continue sweeping up my mental confetti.
We play Brawl for a couple of hours, alternating between that and Peggle. Oh, Peggle - thou damnable unicorn you! (But that's a story of another day, and not yet to tell.) I also sneak in some Level 2 Jeffcon initiations, with a particularly funny Brit drug-humor short video. Nobody required a Taco Town revisitation, oddly enough.
People start to peel away at this point, Rian has returned to bed, and Brian is tired and needs to retire if he is to join us for Walker's the next day. So we close up Brawl and, as he is leaving, begin plans to form up a game of Puerto RIco, also a game he loves. Brian has, for this day, entirely missed the things he might have enjoyed and has put up with my SSMB love with some perfunctory play. He is such a trooper, Mr. May.
I continue to marvel at the depth of Puerto Rico. It is a real thing to say that the expansion really adds a lot of depth to Puerto Rico - to say that on top of the BGG's eternal #1 game is significant. I -believe- the game was myself, Rich, Walker, Ernie and Noel - but it was kind of late. Anyone with a review of this game, including remembering how we did? I think I did well. Ernie shipped a lot of indigo, using his Aqueduct to make even more.
And then, exeunt all but Mssrs. Rian and Brian. I toddle off to bed. And thus did Friday draw to a close.
Next entry coming soon. Saturday: That's-a SPIIIIIICY meat-ball-ah.
For me, the story of Jeffcon really starts after gaming on Thursday night. (For others, including Brian's really good bread, it starts before that - but I'd like to have that told in the voices of more direct participants hint hint.) I left gaming and went to Dominicks in Palatine, which now closes at 1AM. So I made it and picked up my last ingredient list. I had already determined to switch from chocolate chip cookies to oatmeal scotchies, based on comments by Rich - but I didn't have a recipe. The Quaker Oats I picked up had a recipe - inside the box, it said! Aargh. Luckily, the Nestle people had me covered - the butterscotch chips bag had the recipe. I picked up the few bits I still needed (and I snagged some butter-flavored shortening to use instead of the butter), and went home.
I puttered around a bit, putting stuff away and cleaning, and really only got cooking around 3AM. I wanted to try my hand at making a buttercream frosting with maple extract for the cookies, given that the recipe offered by Alton Brown on Good Eats was pretty darn simple. Half-cup sugar, half-cup dark Quarren syrup, check. Heat up until it makes a loose syrup, check. Put four eggs in mixer and beat until fluffy, check. Use bulb baster to put syrup into mixing eggs...um...not check. The syrup has cooled off a bunch, and it's stuck in the bulb baster like a glob of rubber cement. Okay, so I need to heat it up again, I also need to loosen up the glob in the baster, so I'll stir the syrup with it. Stir stir stir *shrink* - hey! Oh yeah, the baster's plastic. Kind of looks like a really big spent match now.
*toss in trash*
Okay, backup plan. Get spoon, use spoon to drizzle in syrup. Problem - some syrup getting caught up in the top of the beaters, turning the syrup into spun sugar. Top of the mixer turns into a cotton candy machine. And I have to keep reheating the sugar syrup, but I'm taking syrup out. So I'm probably burning it a bit. And I think I'm only getting about 2/3 inclusion of the sugar into the eggs, so it's not as sweet as it should be. Well, cooking is a learning process. Let's see how it comes out. Oh, wait - I'm having a routine blood draw tomorrow, and it's supposed to be a fasting blood draw. So I can't even taste it. Well, let's finish it up. Put in the butter, slowly but surely. Mixture cools down enough that it stops melting the butter, so the pace gets slower as the butter has to be smoothed into the mix now. But at one point, it literally seems to just *gel* together and suddenly comes to resemble (in slightly more liquid form, perhaps) what I recognize as frosting. Mix in maple extract, finish, smell it.
Hmmm. Smells kinda like burnt maple. Let's see if fridge time will let it set up nice. Pour into one of the endless supply of Gladware plastic containers I have courtesy of Mr. Selk, and then I get to go to bed. Yay! :)
Friday morning at work passes relatively uneventfully. My schedule is to go get the blood draw - routine and should be quick. Then pick up one of Brian's folding tables from Christi, then go shopping again and come home. Unpack, clean, start cookies, hand people oven-fresh cookies as they arrive. Yay!
Um, doesn't quite work out that way. First, I haven't coordinated with Christi -nearly- enough, so I have only a "let's meet up at 3" plan rather than a more sophisticated call-and-rendezvous approach. Secondly, I only barely make 3 - because the LabCorp facility I stop at is one often used for workman's comp claims and pre-hire drug screens, so it's swimming in bureaucracy. It takes an HOUR to get out of the waiting room, and then my famously reclusive veins once again defeat more than one challenger. It takes about another hour and three different phlebotomists to get a good draw. I leave with my usual collection of band-aids. *sigh* I remember Ernie saying that he'd be free today, so I text him and ask him to meet up early to help me set up. He agrees, but he's out right now - be a bit of a wait. Fine, I gots shopping to do. I go home, start setting up the batter, and realize that I've probably missed Christi. I fire my backup plan, asking Rich to bring his cardtable. Good man, he agrees. I then test the (now cold) buttercream. Iffy. Could be amusingly sweet, but has a funny tang to it. I let it warm up on the counter, not committing to whip it up yet. I go to Dominicks, get pop and meat and tomatoes and the like. I see a new kind of Mountain Dew called Voltage. Looks cool, pick it up. (Totally don't notice the words 'blue raspberry'.) Get home, realize I forgot ice. I call Ernie, ask him to get it - he's happy to, but it delays him. In the course of five trips from car to door, I transfer the shopping trip's contents out of the car, including eight of those goofy-heavy fridge packs. I then gradually move the stuff up into the kitchen, Ernie managing to finally find the apartment when I have three fridgepacks left and all the other stuff is done. *sigh*
I talk with Ernie as I start finalizing the cookie batter. I load up Portal for the PS3, since it's so new and awesome. (By the way - this is an official testament to the awesomeness of Portal: Portal is awesome.) I get the cookies started, and Mssr. Polonsky arrives. He is happy to watch Ernie and I demo some Portal features, and cookies start emerging. I tell people I'm happy to whip up the maple buttercream, but I don't want to dirty the mixer bowl again unless they taste the cool frosting and deem it worthy. All applicants at this stage of the game decline, as the scotchies are already pretty sugary. (I swap out half of the vanilla for maple extract - I do so love maple flavor.) Then, a few hours early, Rian and B. Walker arrive! Yay! I give them both cookies for their troubles in travel (Rian had only a little bit less sleep than myself, and Walker rousted him at NOON to tell him it was time to go). Rian immediately sags into the couch, moans in an apparent orgasm of culinary energy, and declares in a low breathy voice that it's one of the best cookies he's ever tasted.
Go me!
So now I have four or so players, I figure I can swap out from Portal now to Carcassonne for the 360. I set up a game for Ernie, Barry, Walker and me (Rian requiring an immediate nap after his intense cookie experience). I make more cookies and play a few games. I'm happy that some of my investment in gaming tech goodness has finally paid off in a way I meant it to - with the oohs and aahs of my friends. :) I believe this is about the time when Kat, Rich and Noel arrive. (Noel had previously assured me she would be painting a figure and unable to attend, but attends anyway. I am assured this day that she attended to see my reaction to their completely awesome TTR cake. I know they posted the picture at the end of the preflight post, but posting the picture again here would be good too, people. :D I figure we can finish out the current Carcassonne game and switch to Super Smash Brothers Brawl - my game of choice for JeffCon opening night. It is at this point that B. May arrives. His arrival is notable for two reasons.
He has arrived just after we have taken time to show more Portal moments (which I started showing him on Tuesday after Star Wars Minis, but he had to leave), and after we played a few rounds of Carcassonne, which he also enjoys. His record for enjoying SSMB is...um...sketchy at best. But he puts on a brave face for me, good lad.
Secondly, that brave face is put to an unsurmountable challenge when Brian becomes the first person to accept the buttercream challenge. I inform him that I would only whip the frosting after someone eats a whole spoonful and still requests that I do so. He boldly takes out a spoon (a blessedly small spoon), loads up with frosting, and takes half of it as a bite. I now paraphrase his reaction, but will swap it out for his own words if he so supplies them.
Hey, kind of sweet - maple-y.
Hmmm.
Whoa - was that wire? Naw, it's crunching enough. Maybe it's burnt something.
Okay, just swallowed the first bit. Not too...
Um, that aftertaste is starting to...
AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
Oh dear god! I don't think I've had a taste in my mouth that bad since Gore lost!
This is clearly weapons-grade frosting, dude. And...
Oh, no. I told him I'd eat the whole spoonful, didn't I?
Oh, no.
Well, let's get it over with.
*slurp*
Hey, kind of sweet - maple-y. Maybe it would work as a gumball exterior with a horseradish interior to immediately kill the aftertaste.
Mr. May, you are a trooper. :)
We settle into Smash. The good news is that you can put names on top of fighters now, so it's really easy to pick out who you are. The bad news is that I'm still the only one who really plays - so I tend to win. (I think next year, I -may- switch to a 360 Carcassonne tournament. Brawl just might be a game for me, not for so large an audience. Or maybe Taria and Joe will show up this time, hint hint. :P ) Walker puts up a respectable fight, as does Noel. However, one moment among the Brawl games will be my triumph for a long time to come.
I believe the players in this game are myself, Walker, Kat and Rich. We are playing a lives match rather than a standard time match - lose enough times, and you're out. I note aloud that Walker seems to be running away from me. Kat (I believe) responds that Walker is the only one who hasn't died yet. I casually remark that "Oh, I should do something about that." I jump down off a wall, and punch him.
And, in a response I swear I had NO IDEA was coming - he immediately flies straight sideways off the screen and dies. I catch the barest glimpse of his damage percentage - something like 220% or something. However, I manage to summon just about every drop of aplomb contained in my hearty frame, and react calmly.
"Okay. Took care of that." Meanwhile, the inside of my head is holding a ticker-tape parade. WHEEEEEEE! SOOOOO COOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!
Rich comments that it's cool to watch me play, because I can decide that I want to get something done, and it actually gets done. I calmly nod, smile, and continue sweeping up my mental confetti.
We play Brawl for a couple of hours, alternating between that and Peggle. Oh, Peggle - thou damnable unicorn you! (But that's a story of another day, and not yet to tell.) I also sneak in some Level 2 Jeffcon initiations, with a particularly funny Brit drug-humor short video. Nobody required a Taco Town revisitation, oddly enough.
People start to peel away at this point, Rian has returned to bed, and Brian is tired and needs to retire if he is to join us for Walker's the next day. So we close up Brawl and, as he is leaving, begin plans to form up a game of Puerto RIco, also a game he loves. Brian has, for this day, entirely missed the things he might have enjoyed and has put up with my SSMB love with some perfunctory play. He is such a trooper, Mr. May.
I continue to marvel at the depth of Puerto Rico. It is a real thing to say that the expansion really adds a lot of depth to Puerto Rico - to say that on top of the BGG's eternal #1 game is significant. I -believe- the game was myself, Rich, Walker, Ernie and Noel - but it was kind of late. Anyone with a review of this game, including remembering how we did? I think I did well. Ernie shipped a lot of indigo, using his Aqueduct to make even more.
And then, exeunt all but Mssrs. Rian and Brian. I toddle off to bed. And thus did Friday draw to a close.
Next entry coming soon. Saturday: That's-a SPIIIIIICY meat-ball-ah.