Rowan Tree and Red Thread

In other news I appear to have caught the sun on my shiny pate today after a trip to the beach. In April? I fear this nice weather is the best we'll see for the year.

Busy enough little weekend with a trip to Fota on Sunday for Rowan's school's Easter Egg hunt. Bitter winds did not deter the kids from crawling and climbing all over practically every tree in the park, rooting out eggs as they went.

It was also a weekend of boardgames, with three under the belt. On Saturday Sam and I played a 2-hander of Ticket to Ride: Europe, which was something of a battering for Sam. I scored 129 and she scored 92. It was mostly the luck of the tickets. She had a rotten spread and never really had a shot at the longest route, and had to fill a lot of short hops to connect things, which don't score big points.

On Sunday night we had Alai around and played first Ticket to Ride the Card Game. This despite the weak reception it got the first time at the table. I'm afraid it didn't win over many converts this time either, though at least Alai didn't feel like he'd been taken to a Greek wrestling match like the last time. Final scores: M 145, A 109, S 81.

And then we madly took on a quick game of Race for the Galaxy at my request. This was a good game, with almost no production and very little consumption. Despite this we ended up with respectable scores across the board, with Sam taking the crown after a game where she explored almost exclusively. Final scores: S - Doomed World: 46 (with improved logistics,, grr! *shakes fist*), M - Epsilon Eridani: 38+2 cards, A - Separatist Colony: 38+0 cards. Maybe we're getting the hang of this after all.

On the strength of our recent upsurge in boardgaming I've also ordered some new games from Boardgame Guru. I'm getting Dominion, Tempus, Incan Gold and a copy of Battle Line for those quiet evenings when Sam and I want to smash Greek armies together (ha! It's a Knizia. The Greek army theme will be pasted on, but the GMT cards look lovely). Anyone had any experiences of any of those they'd like to share?

I've just had a cup of tea and two slices of a lovely Polish wheat-rye bread, toasted and buttered. Yum.

Well it was a lot of boardgames by our standards. Firstly on Saturday I played a couple of 2-handers with sammywol Race for the Galaxy for an easy win for Sam, with 41 (Terrforming Guild 16!) as the Damaged Alien Factory and 31 (New Economy for 10, Free Trade Ass. for 2) for me as the Ancient Race. This was followed by a game of Roll Through the Ages, which was another walkover for Sam, who scored 36 points to my 20 (another 8 pts of disasters!).

On Sunday we got alaimacerc in. We played three games in a row, which in retrospect seems like one too many for a school night. Our games were Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy and Roll Through the Ages.

Puerto Rico was pretty good. We hadn't played it together for ages, but time had not dulled our skill and we went at it at speed. The craftsman was more commonly picked than I remember us doing for a long while, and the 10 point buildings all got snapped up in short order. I ran out the game on colonists and we scored Sam 45, Myles 43, and alaimacerc 23. Not Alai's game, I think, and I was pipped at the post by two points by the once-again victorious Sam.

A theme for the weekend's gaming should be becoming apparent.

Next was Race for the Galaxy. Starting worlds were Alpha Centauri for Alai, Old Earth for Sam, and Doomed World for me. We got kicked off early, with a series of Settles, but I fell behind one beat on Developments. Nonetheless I swapped out the Doomed World for the Lost Species Ark World and I got my Alien Tech Institute and three Alien Windfall worlds down alongside my nice Novelty/Genes engine and I thought I was on for my first victory of the weekend.

However, Sam had other ideas. She stormed forward in the last couple of Development phases, with Galactic Federation and New Economy for a final score of Sam 40, Myles 39 and Alai 23. This despite a healthy extra 6 VP for me in the last Consume 2X phase.

Right! One more game we decided. Roll Through the Ages was brought out and we barrelled through that. Fat chance; final score was Sam 27 (31 -4), Myles 22 (30 - 8) and Alai 11 (25 -14).

Note to self: get Medicine first!

So by my reckoning that was a good weekend's gaming for sammywol who won 5 for 5. Nice play, love, but we have to have a rematch soon. :)

sammywol and I played a quick 2-hander of Roll Through the Ages last night. I rushed for seven cities in record time, and still lost, having sacrificed developments and had to settle for the Hanging Gardens instead of the Great Wall. Still it was close: sammywol 25 and mylescorcoran 23.

In other news, I've taken Monday off work to make a four-day weekend. Yay! I took DD swimming for the first time in ages this morning and my, how she's improved. She's diving in the pool and touching the bottom, swimming like a little torpedo, and generally having a ball in the pool. Good kid!

As part of my recent splurge on boardgames I got a copy of Ticket to Ride Europe and we had a chance to play it last night with alaimacerc. I was surprised that the play was distinctly different to the original TtR, and I think I like the map as least as much as the original. I'm not convinced the tunnel rule with its additional random element is all that great, but I do like the long tickets being separated from the standard tickets.

As it happened in our game we didn't see the need to use the stations, so I don't know how much impact they'd have in play normally. Our play did seem to split the board down the middle, with me the only player really laying track in the west, and sammywol and alaimacerc fighting it out over the eastern Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. As it turned out the lack of competion in France and Spain didn't help me much. I placed last.

Final scores were sammywol 131, alaimacerc 101, me 97. With an additional +12 to everyone for stations unspent.

We had my daughter's school's winter fair yesterday and had a good time of it, with plenty of baked goods, Christmas decorations (see previous post) and sundry stuffing of faces. My M&M cookies all sold so I'm pleased.

After the chaos of the fair we had friends round on Sunday night for a board game. We had our first play of Trias, and found it an interesting game, though one with potentially painful end conditions that may screw the player to the left of the one who draws the comet. I loved the little dino pieces (Meenosaurs I suppose, if the little fellas in Carcassonne are Meeple) and the gradual separation of Pangea that the tile movement rules produce.

Final scores were Myles 29, sammywol 27, irishkate 19 and alaimacerc 17.

We had irishkate and alaimacerc round last night and played Ticket to Ride. It was irishkate's first game of TTR, which explains why she creamed us. Final score something like irishkate 130+, me 100, sammywol 98, and alaimacerc 50+.

A good draw of a late game ticket helped irishkate, but really she would have won handily even with her starting tickets. A good run all across the Canadian cities at the top of the board secured her big tickets and gave her a good reach to lots of other cities.

Beginner's luck, obviously. I'm scared to play Puerto Rico with her, at least for the first time, as she'll probably buy the whole island.

It was lovely to meet fjm and chilperic this weekend, on their holiday visit to Cork. sammywol and I enjoyed a very pleasant meal and excellent conversation at Isaac's, one of Cork's better restaurants and a favourite of our before the kids cramped our eating out habit.

My mother was down from Dublin too, bringing swag for the kids and providing much welcomed babysitting for our meal out on Saturday night.

In all a good weekend marred only by the onset of a cold. I need more ginseng!

I had a very pleasant weekend. sammywol and the kids and I went down to Castletownsend where we stayed overnight with James Wallis, his wife Cat and their delightful little girl, Eliza. We ate well, drank well and talked the talk of well fed, well watered folk 'til late.

One of the things that came out of the talking was an idea I had for coolness. Why not cross a Wikipedia-like repository of knowledge with a MMORPG set in Borges' Infinite Library. Everybody gets to hang out, build an edifice of human knowledge and kill the Orc shelvers in 636.8

It was a family sort of day. I took Rowan swimming in the morning, before we dropped her to a party at Monkey Maze (handily also in Glanmire). We came home for a while then and let Oscar get thoroughly dirty and wet messing about in the garden. He loves the trickling fountain. We arranged to meet I and S, who were in Tipperary for the weekend, in Glanmire around the time we had to pick Rowan up from her party.

In glorious sunshine we spent some time at the park and playground in Riverside near Glanmire, catching up with old friends I and S. They brought their kids into Cork for a couple of hours to meet our kids, climb on things, spin around and slide down other things and generally have a good time. Yay!

Today the whole family are off to Rowan's school's winter fair. I'm under instructions not to spend all my cash buying back the lovely marzipan treats my wife made for the fair.

Bah.

We're out at Supernova, Ballincollig, another of the several 'soft play' centres around Cork. This one is larger than the others and boasts an ice rink upstairs but after my last encounter with skates (inline rollers) years ago I'm not going anywhere near them.

Instead I'm watching Rowan and her old crechemate, Alex, scoot about the place in a state of high excitement, climbing on and jumping off EVERYTHING. I'm exhausted just watching them.

Another family Sunday. Home later to wrap up my zine for A&E and collapse.

sammywol and I took the kids out to Farran Woods forest park today. A lovely patch of woods, complete with deer, ducks and a playground for our adventurous daughter. A lovely day out where we made the best of the clear weather.

It's been a busy weekend.marzut was back on Thursday and attended the D&D game; we hacked some stirges and some orcs. My character, Grann Faloon the long-suffering cleric, got swarmed by a gang of stirges and dramatically blood-drained. Sigh.

We went for lunch in Little India with friends on Friday, chatting and such. I was pleased to see that marzut liked the Indian food. We all had a jolly good chat too. It's really good to get back together with friends and catch up, so I count that a very good lunch in all.

On Saturday my mother, Sally, was down for a flying visit and and old friend from college and her husband were in town for part of their Ireland and UK vacation tour. Hadn't really seen them for years, certainly since before I moved to France, so it was good to catch up. They're living in Cluny in Burgundy now, rebuilding a place to live and a gallery in the town to show his photographs. Both seem happy and secure together. After lunch at Milano's (thanks Sally!) Rowan got to go to Waterstones where Sally bought her books.

On Saturday night after Sally had flown home and Rowan was in bed, marzut was over and we chatted until nearly 11pm. More catching up and talk about future plans. She sounds like she'll stick with the UK as long as her boyfriend sticks with the job in Lancaster.

Then we had Sunday and went out to Lumpyland, yet another softplay play centre, located near Ringaskiddy. Rowan climbed a few things and slid down a two storey inflatable slide, while Oscar crawled about a soft blocks area. He had fun tasting everything.

He's started cruising now, very unsteadily, dragging himself up onto furniture and grasping onto whatever he can reach. He's also crawling, delighted to have the mobility to really get around and cause trouble. He's on antibiotics now too for a persistent cough and the doc suspects we've all got something bacterial and opportunistic after the viral dose of colds we only recently fought off.

Atchoo!

Played a game of Babel with alaimacerc last night. It's pretty confusingly written and it took us a couple of turns to figure out what we were doing. Maybe we shouldn't have bothered, as the Hittites made the game end a couple of turns later with an anticlimactic temple grab that switched the score from 10-10 to 15-9 in a fell swoop. The game is interesting, but there's a fair dollop of chaos in the actual play. Not bad for a filler though, and there's plenty of scope for jokes about your favourite ancient nation or tribe from the Fertile Crescent (queue Asterix and the Black Gold).

A pool of sunlight nestled in the trees, a slight breeze runs over the
brightly-lit grass and the sleeping cheetahs. A flick of an ear, the twitch
of a tail, and the breeze passes by.

I'm back in bed after a brief attempt at facing the day. I seem to have
contracted some infection that's left me shivering and achy and unable to
string much of a sentence together.

Sammywol has taken the kids to the park there to rendezvous with
grandparents while I slink back to bed to see if I can sleep this off.

Bah.

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.

It's been a quiet weekend at home with my family and I've taken the
opportunity to do a little baking. I've done a bog standard white loaf so we
had something for lunchtime sandwiches, and which may end up in lunches for
me at work during the week, and I tried a Welsh honey cake (tisen fel? Can't
remember the name in the book). This was a success, if perhaps a little dry
- though could be because I left it out to cool and promptly went to bed, so
it was out all night - and that was remedied by a bit of butter on't. For
this honey cake was more a tea cake sort of thing and benefitted from a
little something spread on top.

However even better than the eating was the scent of the cake cooking. All
through the house the smell of baking mixed with warm honey. I spent some
time just standing in the kitchen inhaling as it baked.

Yum!

We're off in the car down to sammywol 's parents for a few days.
The weather of the last couple of weeks, days of sunshine and record
temperatures, has disappeared into the rainclouds, leaving us to drive along
wet, greasy roads, spraying plumes as we go.

Many people in town have been caught unprepared for the traditional Irish
summer to reassert itself and are plodding about in damp summery clothes.
Perhaps they are not so much unprepared as disbelieving, refusing to except
the meteorological truth, clinging to the memory of sunshine despite the
'soft day'.

The three of us are heading down the country today, but I'll be back in Cork
tomorrow night, ready for work on Monday. Wife and daughter are staying on a
couple more days to enjoy grandma's membership in a local gym with a
swimming pool. Met Eireann promises the return of the good weather for
Monday, so there may be beach picnics in the offing too.

We played Edel Stein und Reich last night with Alex, Utz & Marie. It was the popular choice, though I had private reservations 'cos I've had trouble with the group-think irrititation when selecting actions. However it did seem to go alright once we got started.

In the end I found I won fairly handily without realizing that I was in that strong a position. Final scores were 72, 57, 53, 49, 37.

I think I did well by making money on the certificates every round (24 in total from them) as well as making a steady profit from gems and cash in each round. I don't remember playing it with 5 players before. The extra action was interesting but didn't seem to be as popular as I thought it would before we started play.

Yesterday, a Sunday, an old friend came to visit from Dublin. wwhyte was in town to present a talk at a symposium here in UCC and dropped round to see us. It was great to see im and he gone on fabulously with Rowan. They share an interest in the can-can, apparently, and the sudden exposure of their navels. We chatted happily too, in the unforced way you do with old friends, swapping news and catching up as we went.

sammywol had prepared sushi, which ate with none of the gracious style I associate with Japanese cooking, but plenty of gusto and that's what counts.

After dinner I polished and buffed Rowan and sammywol settled her down for bed with some bedtime stories. Meanwhile some other friends (Marie & Utz) turned up and we started a quick game of TransAmerica. We didn't get to finish this game as the fourth friend (alaimacerc) arrived after the second hand, but I do know I didn't win. It was fairly close, but I think wwhyte and Marie were joint first when we wrapped the game.

Next we batted a couple of other game suggestions back and forth but eventually settled on Ra, even though this meant that sammywol didn't get to play. (She did offer to sit it out, so we weren't too cruel.) We opened Marie's copy of the game, its first play in fact, so there was som gratifying tearing off of plastic wrapping and sealed bags.

As ever, we had a good game with plenty of tough choices. It was wwhyte's first time playing but he got into the play without problems. Marie, our resident Ra champion, lost her groove and spent too soon in two epochs, leaving her out of the running for once. (She usually romps away with our games of Ra.) There was some tight play and, as usual, a couple of 'last sun left' attempts to run for big scores that didn't always work (I was screwed once in such a fashion. Greed doesn't pay).

Final scores were fairly close, with alaimacerc on 36, wwhyte on 34, me on 33, Marie on 31 and Utz on 28. A good game. Thanks Dr. Knizia!

Last game of the evening was a six hander of Apples to Apples. This doesn't get many outings in our house as at least one of our regular players doesn't like it, but he was persuaded this time. As ever it was a fun and very silly game. alaimacerc won again, which may soften him towards future plays of the game.

So in all, a good night for alaimacerc and a fun time had by all I think.

I spent the weekend down with my wife's parents in the wilds of West Cork. This morning I took Rowan to the beach while T&P walked the dogs along the head at Courtmacsherry. It was a cold morning with a stiff sea wind coming onshore.

I had forgotten the bucket and spade so we made do with a bucket T found and some makeshift spades in the form of flat stones. Armed with these poor tools we managed to build two sandcastles before Rowan grew tired of it and headed off for the woods. I carried her along the beach for a stretch until we found the crumbling steps up from the beach to the path in the wood. Over the slippery stones and weed we climbed until at the top Rowan made her choice of directions and took off to the right, knowing that her favourite hollow tree stump lay ahead of her, waiting for her to take up residence again.

T&P arrived back along the path just as we came on the tree stump, so Rowan hid inside, hunkered down to deliver her trademark 'jump out and shout "boo!"' Duly surprised by the sudden appearance of her granddaughter Patty took Rowan by the hand and we all walked back to the cars. (Two cars because three dogs and four humans is slightly too much for one car.) On the way I trod in some dog crap left hidden by the path. It was the only shitty thing about the trip really.

In other news, Rowan has discovered tree climbing. She showed me that she was a "funky monkey" in T&P's garden by climbing up the branches of a Chinese lantern tree until her head was level with mine. She peeked out between the branches with a huge smile spread over her face.

We also got to use the swing, dutifully waiting tied up out of the way under the carport until Rowan returned to play with it again. Rowan love swings with all the passion her three year old soul can muster. The fix she got from the swing under the carport wasn't enough apparently. Later she jumped at the offer of a trip into Clonakilty to the playground there where Rowan got in some more quality swing-time. She also attacked all the slides in the place. She's getting too big for the little slide, but she's increasingly keen to tackle the big slide that runs down the side of an artificial hill.

All this was obviously hard work and an ice-cream after we left the playground went down well.