The Week in Review (6/19/06-6/26/06)

Food

Friends: On Friday night, Brian, Tammy, Mark, Katie, Anne and I went over to Will and Dennis' place for dinner. It was sort of a late birthday celebration (for Mark, Katie and me). They made a very nice pork tenderloin with a balsamicy type marinade/sauce and some roasted veggies. For dessert, we had a strawberry buckle. We had the etymology of the name explained to us, but now I forget what it was. I'm sure it was fascinating, though.

Saturday night, we had Mark and Katie over for dinner and Anne made a tri-tip with a spicy marinade/rub that we served with tomatoes, pita, spinach and a greek potato salad. Brian and Tammy joined us for dessert, which was an apricot crumble.

Finally, on Sunday night, Anne and I went to Mark and Katie's place for dinner and games. We had chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese and various goodies, roasted veggies and some edamame for snacks. After games, we had some macerated strawberries and ice cream for dessert.

Everybody's food and homes were very nice (including ours, if I do say so myself). It's good to have friends.

Pacific Coast Brewing Company: Will and I grabbed a bite here during our lunch break from the Settlers of Catan tournament (see below). Pretty average pub food. I had a BLT with slightly burned B and unripe T. The L was fine. While we were there, Argentina scored a goal in the world cup and people started screaming. Very unpleasant. At first I just thought that everybody was really excited that I had managed to fold my napkin into the shape of a horseshoe crab, but sadly that was not the case.

Asian Pearl: On Sunday, we went out to dim sum for my mom's birthday. This place was next to the Ranch 99 market in El Cerrito. It was actually pretty nice. The food was fresh and hot and it moved around regularly. The space was clean and not too noisy. Even Anne, who is not a dim sum fan, endorsed the restaurant. I think we will likely return.

Board Games

Shadows Over Camelot: After the aforementioned dinner at Will and Dennis', we played a 7 player game of Shadows. Tammy decided to sit out, even though will has the extra super special eighth knight who defies the proclamation on the box of 3-7 players. Anyway, we dealt out the traitor cards and for the first time, actually had a traitor in the game. We had gotten into a situation where we needed to win by a large margin because we hadn't identified the traitor and the two black sword swing could have hurt us. But we had a good plan to win the 3 sword grail quest last, which would have guaranteed a victory for the good guys. I had narrowed my suspicions as to the traitor down to Mark, Anne and Dennis when Mark suddenly decided to call me out. This clued everyone into his despicable nature and when Will, in turn, accused him of the being the traitor, victory was ours. So yay for everyone. Except for Mark.

Settlers of Catan World Championship (Northern California Regional Qualifier): Will and I thought it would be fun to play in this tournament, which was being held at our local game shop, Endgame. If you haven't been and you live in the area, you absolutely should drop by because it is an excellent store. Anyway, we entered, along with about 18 or so others. Klaus Teuber's kids were there to help officiate the event.

It was, for the most part, fun, though I had a couple frustrating moments. At one table, it appeared that two players were favoring each other because they were friends, screwing me and the other fellow at the table. And my final table, an inexperienced player kept hitting me with the robber when I hadn't even built anything yet. In the first 3 or 4 rounds, I got hit with the robber 7 or 8 times. His justification was that, even though the other guy was doing much better, he didn't want to place the robber on a space that wasn't a 6 or an 8. I'm afraid that I did tell him to "Fuck off." That was probably not called for, but what can I say. It was upsetting.

Anyway, I ended up with two seconds and a third, which wasn't enough to get me to the final table. Will, who had some frustrating experiences of his own, nevertheless won all of his games and made it to the final table. Of course, there he, too encountered the collaborators, who were joined by a third and he went down to their unethical play. What can you do. He can't really complain though, because he made out like a bandit. He got the signed Catan mug, the signed river expansion, the custom wood box for the Settlers of Catan Card Game along with the Card game upgrade expansion. And he doesn't have to go to Indianapolis (the grand prize, playing in the Nationals). All in all, a fun time.

Elchfest: In between games of Settlers, we had some downtime, so Will and I played a game of Elchfest. For those of you unfamiliar with this game, it involves flicking little round wooden pieces (they represent stones or something) to form a bridge for your moose to cross the river. It was actually a lot of fun for a filler game. I won in what was an extraordinarily tight game. If you knock over either moose with your flicking, your opponent gets three free flicks. We were both one step away from victory when I knocked my own moose over trying to set up the winning move. It seemed like all was lost until Will, with his second free flick, knocked down his moose too! That gave me just enough time to take some risks and get my moose across.

Blokus: Another filler game played in between Settlers rounds. This time Will and I were playing with Annie and Joshua, two other tournament entrants. I got beat up pretty badly, as Annie and Joshua both directed their attention towards my little corner and I was unable to break through into any open spaces. Will won this one quite handily.

Travel Blokus (two player Blokus variant): More filler. Will and I squeezed in a couple games of this smaller version of Blokus. It plays similarly, though the dynamics are obviously a little different with two players and a much smaller play area. Going first seems like a pretty big advantage. We both won one game.

Ingenious: Mark, Katie, Anne and I played this one after dinner at their place. We had played it on a prior occasion, but Mark wasn't paying attention for half of that game because he was working on food prep. This time around there was a much more liberal use of the tile discarding rule, though Anne got screwed a couple times because she didn't have a definite low scoring color. I managed to max out every color except for one, but came in last because I wasn't able to move yellows at all. Mark and Anne tied for second at 10 points and Katie was victorious with 13.

Pueblo: After Ingenious, we played a game of Pueblo, the 3D abstract where you try to hide your pieces. Everybody played well, but Anne destroyed the rest of us, at one point not even having anything good to do with her neutral block because all of her pieces were so covered up. In the end, it was closer than it appeared in the late game, but Anne still won handily.

Video/Computer Games

Nothing new on the electronic gaming front. Tetris DS continues to hold my attention. I really want to sell my DS and buy a DS Lite. If you're interested let me know. It works great, but has one dead pixel on the non-touch screen. I'll even toss in a few games. I thought about putting it on eBay, but there's a real glut on the market right now. Everybody wants the Lite.

Comics

Spider-man unmasked! Oooh! So, as a result of Marvel's Civil War storyline (in which Congress passed an act requiring that superheroes register with the government and receive some sort of training and licensing to fight crime), Spider-man, has revealed to the world that he is Peter Parker, photographer, scientist and school teacher. I'm not, in all seriousness, certain what it is he does for a living any more. Anyway, all of fandom is up in arms about it crying about how this ruins the character, blah, blah, blah. I think it's a nice progression. Maybe they'll finally let him grow up a little bit.

Oh and the Ultimates continue to kick ass. Albeit, on a very tardy schedule.

Books

The Historian: Mark and Katie gave me this for my birthday. I don't know much about it, other than that it involves vampires and correspondence. Sounds good to me. I'm assured that I will enjoy it, so I'm looking forward to getting into it.

Movies

Indiana Jones : Will and Dennis gave me the Indy box set for my birthday. What fun! I watched parts of The Last Crusade and some bits from the bonus material disc. I actually swapped out the Last Crusade case with a PS2 game case because the little nubbin that holds the disc in was busted. Stella Deus can roll around in the case. The Last Crusade must be protected.

Other

The Apple Store: On Monday, I walked down to the Apple store on my lunch break because Anne had been having some trouble with her iPod. It seemed like a problem that might not be fixable, from what I had read, but I figured that it doesn't hurt to give it a shot. Anyway, I walk all the way down there (about 15-20 minutes) and I find out that they're all full at the help desk and that I have to make an appointment to talk to someone. So I use their "Genius Bar" thingy and end up making an appointment for after work. So I walk back to the office and don't even have time for lunch. After work, I march back over to the Apple store and talk to some guy who is oddly compelled to use the phrase "give up the ghost," which he uses in reference to the iPod at least 4 times. Maybe as many as 6. Regardless, there's nothing that can be done for it, so now we have to figure out if we want to buy a replacement or what. It's quite a dilemma. The new video iPods are really more than she needs, but the Nanos just don't have enough storage space. She doesn't want to buy a used one, for fear that it will just crap out on her and it doesn't make sense to get a non-iPod since we're invested in iTunes. I guess, as problems go, this isn't the worst one to have, but what can I say? It still sucks.

*****

So, that was the week. Despite the down note of the Apple store visit, a good week overall. Lots of food, friends and games. You can't ask for more than that.