weekend

[cellio]

Dani's car died (again) Saturday morning. This is not the ideal weekend for finding open service places, so he ended up having it towed to a place that came recommended, and is within walking distance. They were closed, but he left a note and his key. With luck, they will call on Monday. (All of this happened before I got home from Shabbat services.)

This meant that for one outing this weekend he drove my car. Ouch, my poor clutch. I think he took off a chunk of its remaining lifetime. Today I did the driving, even the night-time driving that I'd rather not have done, because it beat the alternative.

For those who are keeping track, he's not sure if the current problem is related to the last mysterious car failure. That time, he took it to the Saturn dealership and they said they couldn't find anything wrong with it. They had no explanation for why it wouldn't start for him; worked for them, they said. My opinion of Saturn is dropping. They weren't likely contenders for my next car anyway; they don't make a hatchback as far as I know. But even if they did, I'm losing confidence in the local dealer.

This Shabbat there was no bar/bat mitzvah, so we were able to take our time with the morning service. After that we had a discussion about the new format; more about that later.

Saturday afternoon we headed to KlubKev to play Advanced Civilization. This was our first time playing with this group, which consisted (this time) of us, Kevin, ralphmelton, and two other people (named Dave and Steve; I failed to obtain further identifying information). It was a fun game, though we ended a couple turns early after one of the players had to leave. I was initially doing well (playing Egypt), but a few turns before the end I got clobbered by some bad calamities (including civil war, which is much worse than its position as a #4 calamity would suggest -- give me flood any time!). I never really recovered after that; I usually built up to 7 or 8 cities but then got knocked down again. (And the pirates kept taking my cities; grumble.) I ended up coming in fifth out of six, I think. Still fun, though.

A non-player named Elaina was also there, and she fed us a very tasty cake after dinner. I suspect she was also responsible for the multitude of cookies that were out all day. I initially felt like a slacker for bringing minimal food contributions; I needn't have worried. :-)

After the game ended and most people left, Ralph, Kevin, and Dani decided to play out their end of the next D&D session. (The party was split at the end of the last game, and they had a session scheduled this week to do this. But everyone was there and no one felt a burning need to be elsewhere, and no one cared that I would be overhearing this, so...) I was surprised by some of what happened (and didn't happen), but the overall outcome is pretty much what I expected. (No PC death yet -- prisoners.) I have a partly-baked idea for rescuing them, but it might come at the expense of, among things, the wizard's spellbooks. We'll see.

Sunday we went to my parents' house for the quasi-Christmas get-together. My father just joined the beer cooperative, so I took him his first case and he was quite enthusiastic about the variety. (I also took a 25-oz bottle of Delirium, which he opened and shared. He liked it quite a bit.)

We briefly visited their neighbors, Jim and Kathy. These folks moved in a couple years ago and they and my parents get along well. They're a younger couple -- closer to my age than to my parents'. Jim is apparently a beer enthusiast, so my father is looking forward to sharing his new stash with him. Jim is also really into model trains and sets up a display in his garage every winter (this is where the visit came in). We went and saw it, and we listened to him talk about the models and some of the history of the hobby. It was a neat display -- but loud. :-) (He shut it down at the end of our visit and the contrast was quite noticable.)

We got and gave loot. :-) Most of the DVDs we picked out for people were big hits; I was particularly pleased that my father did not previously know that his favorite TV show (CSI) is out on DVD. My mother was also enthusiastic about the books we got her; for her birthday I had gotten her the first two books in a series by Vince Flynn. (I think that was celebrin's recommendation; thanks!) She really liked them, so we got her the rest of the series.

My niece and nephew were pretty deadpan about the gifts we got them. I was disappointed that my nephew, in particular, didn't seem to care. He's really into Japanese stuff, and has taken a couple of years of the language in school, so Dani picked out an anime title for him that fits in well with his D&D/fantasy interests. He can listen to the audio in Japanese or English, with or without subtitles, and it looked like a story he would enjoy. Maybe he will once he sees some of it or maybe we bombed; I don't know which.

I would actually like to find some way to extricate ourselves from the gift-exchange thing with the kids specifically. They don't seem to be into it, and they can be hard to select for, and, well, shrug. With both my parents and my sister there's a closer relationship; my sister's kids have never shown much interest in getting to know the rest of the family. And they're 18 and (almost) 16, not little.

Dinner was nice. My mother had planned to make lamb, but ended up making chicken and fish. This was handy: I could eat the fish, skip the chicken, and not have to worry about what had dairy in it. (I suspected that most of the desserts would, but as it turned out, so did the two vegetables.) The latkes we took were well-recieved, and apparently putting sour cream on them was a new concept for my family. My sister made an abundance of tasty cookies, and also some yummy fudge. We ended up with some of the fudge; we'll try to not eat it all at once. :-)

Oh, and I'm behind on LJ. I'll try to catch up soon.

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Dani picked out an anime title for him that fits in well with his D&D/fantasy interests.

Just out of curiosity, what was the anime title? If it's Record of Lodoss Wars, and he was blah about receiving it, I'm going to have to get up a mob of geeks and lynch him. :) (That anime is both one of my favorites and essentially D&D in anime form. Good stuff.)

Too bad this didn't come to my attention previously--I would have written out "Merry Christmas" or "Happy New Year" for you in Japanese, and you could've seen if he's actually been learning anything. :)

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Hey-- so, we're in town until Sunday. Are you up to meet at some point?