Rowan Tree and Red Thread

We're in Fitzgerald Park for lunch at the museum café before Rowan burns off energy at the playground. I haven't been here in ages, it seems, the recent weekends being more exercises in thinking up indoor diversions for the kids while avoiding the rain.

Today, however, is dry and very much February. Rowan is off school this coming week and her birthday falls neatly in the middle on Wednesday. I hope the weather holds good and we will go for picnic in Fota wildlife park as part of the celebrations.

The big party has to wait until Sunday, when we're having a birthday party for Rowan at Monkey Maze, one of the several soft-play centres in and around Cork. I forsee lots of sugar-high kids and three-storey slides. I've laid in a supply of paracetamol and ear plugs for the parents.

Rowan will be five years old on Wednesday. It seems like an age and just a beginning at the same time.

We had alaimacerc[1] round last night for a spot of gaming, sammywol having finished her marking and in need of some unwinding. We decided on Tongiaki, a game tile-laying, island hopping in the Pacific, in which the object is get at least one of your boats on to as many, and as high scoring, islands as possible.

The tile placing rules make for some peculiar arrangements of islands, and this time was no different with a long chain of islands all connected and one poor little outlier across open ocean.

There was an initial mass migration off Tonga to the North (towards the couch) which I curbed by an early, and lucky, declaration of Tahiti as a royal island, after which most of the expansion was to the south, in a sequence of islands that formed a rough circle.

I pulled a couple of good, if cruel, landings that forced new migrations, using them as opportunities to push my opponents off high scoring islands, and this seemed to work for me. The final score was 36 to me, 26 to sammywol, and 16 to alaimacerc.

[1] Alaimacerc has requested that I use only his LJ name in the blog, in a roundabout sort of meandering way that couldn't be mistaken for any other enormously tall Scottish gamesplayer of our acquaintance.

It's a long weekend and we're in the park again. The weather's looking up
and we may even risk a barbecue later. I'm watching a gang of boys try
various methods of football retrieval, one of their number having kicked
their ball in the pond. Stones thrown, dares about swimming and wading, even
negotiations with a passing dog - all have been tried without success.

I'd recommend getting the park warden, but given that he had to improvise a
250 ml waterbottle into a firebucket the other week I suspect he's lacking
the tools too.

After a brief expression of interest, Rowan has decided collecting daisies
is more compelling. I have to agree with her.

A lazy(ish) Sunday. I managed to finish something for Alarums & Excursions
for yesterday's deadline, and rewarded myself with re-watching an episode of
Bones with a murder victim who was boiled and had all her bones removed. Why
did I re-watch it again?

Anyway, Sunday has been slow paced, with the most strenuous moment coming
when I had to fit two flat-pack shelves into the back of our Punto. It's not
a large car but that staple of Irish farming, baler twine, came to my rescue
as I tied down the hatchback boot door. Rowan, who was with me worried that
people would laugh at our car. It's a Punto, love. They're already laughing.


Shelves safely delivered home, we're now in the park enjoying the closing
light of the weekend.

Work tomorrow but I'm ignoring that for the moment.

It's a quiet Sunday and we're all at home watching the weather cycle from
sunshine to blustery through downpour and back to sunshine again. Each time
we've mentioned heading out of the house the skies darken and the peppering
of rain rings on the roof.

So I made chocolate chip cookies. It seemed like the proper response in the
circumstances.

*munch*

It's the weekend after the solstice and the Lord Mayor's picnic in the park
is on again in Fitzgerald park. It's a warm if overcast Sunday and the park
is teeming with kids and families wandering from the acrobats to the bouncy
castle and onto the food stalls, the face painting and the puppet making.
People are scattered in groups around the grassy places, picnicing and
hanging out.

It's pretty pleasant so far and I'm taking the opportunity presented by a
long and slow-moving queue for the face paining to write this. Rowan and Sam
have headed off somewhere in the park, the queuing left to a parent while
the other follows Rowan through a sequence of discoveries and strange
sights.

We've watched a fun three person acrobatics performance and had two goes on
the bouncy castle already and I suspect more queuing by the bouncy castle is
on the agenda. Rowan loves to bounce. I wonder what it would cost to refloor
the living room with a trampoline?

Last Sunday we had some friends over for boardgaming and trotted out two short games as a change of pace. For a while now we've been playing only a single game in an evening, fitting it in between about 9.00 and 11.00pm. This time though the votes were for Bohnanza and TransAmerica, both short games that work well with the five player numbers we had.

In the interests of fair reporting, unlike previously I lost miserably in both games. In the first, Bohnanza, I just wasn't forceful enough in the trades and lost out to Marie storming her way to win with a final score of 15, 13, 10, 9, 9. Those '9's were alaimacerc and me. Sigh.

Never mind, I thought, I'll play TransAmerica and do better. No such luck. I lost that one as well, diving off into the sea (or just about; we had to end when I was one space from the game end condition) while sammywol was barely out of the train shed at the start of the track. Nonetheless a fun game, and I think I enjoyed the TransAmerica more, as it was that bit shorter and had better pace. We must play it against the clock again. It adds some spice to the game.

Anyway. I still like Ra.