weekend round-up

[cellio]

Saturday we invited three other people over for gaming. We started with Iron Dragon. One player had never played any of the crayon rail games; in retrospect we should have offered EuroRails instead. It's an interesting trade-off: with EuroRails the map is real so in principle you know where the cities are, but many of them are rendered in the local language instead of the names you might know them by, so maybe not so much. Iron Dragon is a fantasy map, so you don't know anything going in, but there's a pattern to the layout, so it's a little easier to find any particular city. (We don't own Empire Builder, which uses a map of the US, but it's less interesting geographically than the other two I've mentioned.) The new player had the usual learning curve but picked it up reasonably. She felt bad for slowing us down but she wasn't, really. It's hard to be the single new player. I think she enjoyed it once past those bumps.

It ended up being a weird game in one respect: the spread at the end was very wide. Usually when one person goes out at least one or two others are making the final runs that would have won it for them if only they'd gotten there first. This time that didn't happen and I didn't notice until the end.

One person then had to leave, so after dinner we played several games of Pandemic. One player was new to this game but we played the standard game (five epidemics) instead of the learner game anyway because we figured it'd work out fine. (It's a cooperative game and not new to the other three of us...) We won the first game amazingly easily; it might have been the fastest win I've ever participated in. I think we had two epidemics and had eradicated one disease. Our new player said that didn't seem hard and we said it was atypical. To make that point, fate then dealt us two games that we lost on the first round, before everyone had had even one turn. With that over-compensation out of the way, we then proceeded to have a couple normal games (one win, one loss).

Sunday was barony meeting and A&S wars. This was fun; groups in the barony sponsored four champions each (archery, thrown weapons, fencing, fighting), and the champions competed for glory and booty. Each group provided an assortment of booty; the winning group and its champions would get to determine how all the booty was distributed. The choir sponsored a team and our booty included music-themed items. The cooks' guild provided food, and the brewers had some (non-alcoholic) drink syrups. I didn't see what the other teams provided. The choir also sang our champions into their tournaments; we had talked about singing for them every round but that turned out to be too complicated.

It was a fun afternoon, though the competition ran longer than I expected and we had to leave before it was over. I think the experiment we've been trying over the last year or so to make barony meetings more social and less tedious is working well.

Also, while there I gave byronhaverford's son a partially-working boombox, since he likes taking electronics apart and trying to improve them, and was amused to see this early report -- and he hasn't even applied tools yet! This should be fun. (Not too long ago he rebuilt a broken coffee-maker; it was no longer as compact as it had once been, but it again made coffee.) Oh, and look: pictures. :-)

In the evening we went to a cookout hosted by friends from my synagogue. I had a good time, though found I felt a bit tired (maybe from spending so much of the afternoon in the sun and heat).

I found myself reflecting on social dynamics. I had assumed that the attendees would be a mix of synagogue friends, neighbors (since they actually interact with their neighbors a fair bit), and coworkers, so I was surprised that everyone there was Jewish. Then I thought about the times I've tried to integrate my various social groups, which has pretty much always been a failure -- people tend to gravitate to the people they know and start talking about their common interest, which, if it's something like SCA heraldry or synagogue operations, pretty much precludes anyone from "outside" joining in. So maybe our hosts have the right idea in planning a guest list.

And tonight, to celebrate Dani's birthday, we went out to Casbah for dinner, where we learned that sitting on their (enclosed) patio during a thunderstorm still poses challenges, primarily acoustic. (But also some dampness because it's not completely enclosed; we ended up asking to move to another table partway through the meal.)

One of Casbah's standard appetizers is a cheese plate. The specific cheeses vary, but you can always get an assortment. Tonight all three of the cheeses we got were clear winners. Dani wrote the names down, though we've tried in the past to find cheeses we've eaten there and it's never worked out so far. Maybe this time will be different, but I'm not holding my breath.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Which cheeses were included? (I'm curious, and there's always the chance I'll have seen a kosher-certified edition somewhere....)

Oh, and I agree with fauxklore, that it's possible. Critical mass is something to avoid, plus finding, if possible, people who are likely to have other common interests.

[cellio]

Roth Kase Cheese Co.: Buttermilk Bleu Affinee, Wisconsin.
Raw cow's milk, firm. We found this for sale by the wheel, but we'd like smaller quantities.

Montesinos: Capricho de Cabr, Spain. Goat's milk, soft. This was excellent and I'd like to find it. 90% of the search results are in Spanish. But the people who hosted the cookout also had something similar, so I'll ask them where they got it and what it was.

Cypress Grove: Lamb Chopper, Holland. Sheep's milk, semi-firm. What a name. I found their site and they claim this is "suitable for vegetarians", but they don't clarify whether they really mean fake rennet (and it's not under supervision, or at least not obviously). At $30/pound we won't be mail-ordering this one.