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Mother’s Day
It’s nearly at the end of my Mother’s Day here and it’s gone pretty well overall. This morning, the Scientist and I drove up to take his mum out for lunch at an Indian restaurant that has some nice food. The boys opted to stay home, which was okay as it was far less expensive without hungry teens to feed. :) The restaurant was mostly empty so it seemed like we should get good service, at least at the start. However, the woman who served us was as unsmiling as on our previous visit. The food took a long time to come but it tasted good, so was worth the wait. The Scientist got the meat thali (a combo of three small dishes of meat curry plus dahl and a couple side dishes…and a small dessert slice). His mum and I both got the vegetarian version and the curries were quite nice. There was a lot of rice served with the meals plus a naan bread and a pappadam…they were all very nice. We should have gotten a can of soft drink with our meals as they were lunch specials… but completely forgot until after we were on the way home…Anyway, it wasn’t offered. The Scientist recalled this happened on the previous visit too although we did remember to ask for it then. The two previous times I’ve eaten their food, it was incredibly hot but this time it was quite mild…Had we known we could have asked for more heat…anyway we will know for next time. We then took his mum home and hung out for a short while before coming home.
We went to the gym soon after we returned home then came home to prepare for the evening. The plan with the boys was to play some board games and watch Doctor Who at 7:30pm. The decision as to which game(s) was rather difficult due to the significantly increased choices now available. I finally decided upon Discworld and used the special day as an excuse to encourage Lego Lover to play this time. I wasn’t sure how that would work and it seemed like it might go a bit pear-shaped as he was rather crotchety about it at the beginning. We’d tried to insist once before and he was totally uncooperative and uninvolved so we switched it to just three players that time. Today, however, he did take a bit more part in the proceedings and I think he kind of liked the game even if he never admitted it. It went pretty well this time but was quite interesting as the dynamic changes quite a bit with the extra player. The Scientist won this time and it was time to decide on another game.
In an act of some goodwill towards Lego Lover for taking part, I asked him which game he thought we should play next and he chose Puerto Rico. It’s a fairly long game so I wasn’t too sure about playing so late in the day when we had a tv program to watch afterwards. Game Fanatic wasn’t at all keen to play as he finds the game kind of boring due to the theme of it. I decided to make a go of it since Lego Lover was so put out…Obviously this meant we wouldn’t be watching Doctor Who tonight…which makes it every episode we’ve watched after the broadcast this season. What I had forgotten most was how terribly long the set up for the game is…There’s no good way to hurry it along either. Once set up we also had to refresh our memories of how to play. Eventually we got into the swing of it and all went pretty well. Lego Lover particularly enjoyed it and I noticed how much better his game play was this time compared to earlier games. Game Fanatic had a fair bit of bad luck so eventually stopped making much effort at the game and I just plugged away at it. After nearly two hours, we reached the end and the Scientist had won again…so  it was a good night to play for him.
Last night I also played a second game of Summoner Wars with Game Fanatic since it’s one of his favorite games right now. It’s only a two player game  (can be expanded though) so it’s not had a lot of play as yet. It’s only been a few weeks but I’d forgotten most of the game play. Also I had a different deck of cards this time which made it a bit harder. Our first game only took about 45 minutes but we went well over an hour last night and I managed to win by some luck and a bit of help from Game Fanatic…he didn’t let me win but he did point out a few moves in the course of the game. I told him we have to play more often so I don’t forget and so that I learn to play well enough to be properly competitive. I found the game a lot easier than Magic the Gathering was when we last played nearly two years ago.
Now it’s late night and I’m hoping to get in touch with my mom soon to wish her a happy day. Or I will wait until tomorrow morning and catch up with her.
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Fun times
We are continuing to play more and more board games as a family and the latest additions have been some of the most fun yet.  I will point out I rejoined Quickflix (sort of Oz version of Netflix) and have felt obligated to watch the dvd that arrives instead of what we really want to do to make it decent value for our money. After one month on a low price, I opted to cancel so we just have a couple more dvds to watch when they arrive and then they go back…so we can soon play the games as we want to do. A couple weeks ago, Discworld: A game of Ankh-Morporkh arrived in the mail and we eagerly looked forward to having time to play. For the Scientist and me, the game has a lot of meaning as we have read most of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series over the years. Game Fanatic knows the series only slightly from having been read one of the YA/children’s books many years ago but hasn’t read any further than that…after all, it wouldn’t do to listen to suggestions from the parents, would it? :D  Lego Lover has no interest in any of it and refuses point blank to even try playing the game. This was a disappointment but we had to carry on without him or never play at all. The game uses a deck of cards with various abilities/tasks on them and there are cards for many of the character from the series. Instead of a single goal for players, there are about five or six different goals over about eight cards. Three happen to have the same goal but are represented by different characters. Nobody knows what the goals of the other players are at the start so half the game play involves working out who has which goals and preventing competing players from winning…while also trying to win your own goal. It was mostly by chance but I won the first game we played and all three of us had a good time. It was far better than I expected it to be (being adapted from a series of books) so I imagine we will play that one often, particularly when Lego Lover isn’t interested in playing games.
Two other games arrived from here in Australia and we played these late last week. The first one is Ghost Stories, another cooperative game that goes really quickly. We found this one is far more complex in play than Castle Panic or Forbidden Island are  and were a bit tentative during our first game. I think we will play far better the next time since we have more of an idea of what we are doing now.
The second game is Cyclades, which has a Greek mythology theme which appealed to everyone. This game involved quite a bit more set up than the other recent acquisitions so we didn’t try it out until the weekend. It also requires a lot of space so we had to clear the kitchen table and use the extension to have sufficient room…even so it was a bit crowded on the sides where the boys were sitting. This game had elements of several others we’ve played recently so it was a matter of putting it all together and making heads or tails of it…We had a bit of trouble on our first play because it wasn’t clear how one was supposed to earn gold from early in the game and it seemed as though we were missing some elements of it. We played the game the best we could with the knowledge we had and the Scientist won that one. A bit of online research showed us where the missing information was…at the back of the manual. This wouldn’t be an issue normally except the manual has more than one language. When Game Lover was working it all out, he read to the end of the English language section…but there were diagrams at the back to show how the board was supposed to be set up at the start. There were also a couple smaller points that were clarified. We tried again on Sunday and it was so much better to play with some ability to win. This time, Lego Lover returned to his game goal that mostly involved making sure his father didn’t win…he was quite destructive in the game but he also nearly brought it to a halt. At the end, I wasn’t able to make any progress due to his strategy and decided to just play it through to the end. Despite his best efforts, the Scientist did win again by reaching a certain goal required…and so won it quite fairly the second time. It was a lot more fun and it looks like another winner of the recent games acquisitions…
The downside to all these good games is that we are sure to miss out playing other games because we like these so well. Â We have three others still on the way…well one is on the way and one is on backorder and another is due to be posted out from the UK very shortly.
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Another board games post
Last week, Game Fanatic’s board games all arrived on Monday and last night we finally finished trying all the new games out. I think all of us like all of the games in their own ways…Except that Lego Lover didn’t play one at all so it would be hard to know his opinion. Game Fanatic I played Summoner Wars, which is a two player card/board game. I was worried it would be too overwhelming but I found it was playable. Also, GF points out there is an iPad version so I could practice strategy there even though the free version only has one deck available. GF also realised he’d made a couple mistakes when explaining some of the rules. As it is, we’ve tried so many games this week I’ve just about forgotten that game now although I do remember that it was a lot easier to work out than Magic the Gathering was…(we spent a lot of money on MTG a couple years ago but haven’t played in over a year or more and none of us recall how to play…as we’ve invested so much money I’d like to get back to that and learn it properly again. ) GF also played the Scientist on Wednesday when I was out. He won both matches with ease, of course. :)
The second game was Kings of Tokyo and that was quite a lot of fun for all of us. The game was easy to learn and relatively quick to play. Well, it would be quick to play but Lego Lover takes a long time with most of his turns for some reason…even when he does understand what’s going on. Sometimes Lego Lover also plays rather recklessly and ends up losing when he might have won by playing more practically. Actually his recklessness is usually related to his desire to make sure his dad is hampered at every step of the way. I think that’s often more important to him than winning.
Last night we played Evo, which was created by the same guy who designed Smallworld. This was by far the most involved set up of the three games with GF referring frequently to the manual to figure out how many of each item was needed based on number of players. The actual game play wasn’t too hard but it does involve quite a bit of strategy. I randomly ended up being the first player at the start of the game which would usually be an advantage in most rounds. Later on I fell far behind and never managed to recover. It might be a bit better now I understand the basic play a bit more but I think getting behind like that pretty much locks one out of opportunities to recovery. I did get a card rather late in the game that would have helped a lot more but it was rendered fairly useless by the time I got and used it. All that said, if a player were more aggressive and willing to battle, I think it’s possible to do better than I did. Funnily, Lego Lover was determined to win a battle with me and had about five opportunities to get a dice roll in his favor and failed…He was less concerned about winning than beating me in that instance…And of course he was quite busy trying to prevent the Scientist from getting anywhere and wasted quite a lot of opportunity and points…otherwise I think he possibly could have won the game.
We still have more games to come but they probably won’t arrive for a while as they are mostly on backorder from an Australian company on the east coast.
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Games and more games
On the weekend we had a play with both Dominion and Castle Panic. The first was quite enjoyable and we can see lots of room for more interesting play as we try different decks and get used to playing a deck building game. The game is only supposed to take about thirty minutes but with us playing the first time plus the slowness with which Lego Lover took his turns, it was more like an hour and a half. Fortunately we started fairly early and had time for a game of Castle Panic afterwards. This was the big winner of the night…at least that seemed to be the consensus of the family. Game Fanatic and Lego Lover overwhelmingly preferred this to Dominion (even though they liked Dominion). The nice things about the game are short set up times and the fact the game goes really quickly. We came nowhere close to winning the game we played but we did have a lot of fun playing it.
Just after that, we watched the Tabletop show for Pandemic which is available on You Tube and looked to be really fun too. I have heard this one is another popular co-op game which is similar to Forbidden Island but a bit more complex. Game Fanatic and I had an appointment in Perth so we went into the city proper to Tactics, a board game and hobby shop that carries a wide selection. On the day it was particularly muggy and this place is downstairs from a shopping arcade…it was miserably hot with no air moving in any direction. But there was a copy of Pandemic there and it wasn’t quite as overpriced as most of the other games there. I didn’t buy it, knowing it was likely to be cheaper elsewhere but it was tempting. One day that will surely be added to our family collection.
This morning the postal van delivered more packages for Game Fanatic. This included the games Evo, Summoner Wars and King of Tokyo. I don’t know much about any of the games except they all can be played with just two players. Game Fanatic had hoped to play one this evening but we had a video to watch and we also got pizza from the shop for dinner…in addition to going to the gym today, there just wasn’t time to play.
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New games
I received my two new board games in the mail this morning. Apparently the post van person just knocked on the door and left them on the doorstep. Game Fanatic was on top of them as soon as I opened them and has a bit of an idea of how they work already. I suspect at least one might get a bit of a play tomorrow once we are settled at home for the evening.
Meanwhile, Game Fanatic has ordered four more games from a company here in Australia, one for each member of the family. I think these were all games unavailable at Ozgameshop (or cheaper in Australia). The shipping for all of them only comes out to $7.50, which is pretty cheap for four board games. He gave me a choice of three co-op games that he thought might interest me and I chose Ghost Stories. I don’t recall the other ones but they all seem to be quite different. All are on backorder so it’s hard to tell when they will get sent out.
A few years ago I bought a copy of the Lord of the Rings board game from 2001 from a secondhand shop for about $3. When I checked the pieces, I thought the ring was missing but Game Fanatic pulled it out on Sunday and discovered no pieces were missing. I’m not sure why I didn’t see the ring before as it’s quite visible. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t ever play the game but we did play it Sunday evening, without participation from Lego Lover who refused to play. But we did have a bit of a mishap before we got around to playing the game. Game Fanatic had set out all the pieces on our coffee table during the afternoon and left it there until we played. Our little girl dog, Fluttershy, got hold of a couple of the character pieces and had a bit of a chew on them. One probably can be glued back together but the other appears to have a piece totally missing. We can still glue some of it back, I guess, but GF is really upset about it. This is a game that was in excellent condition when we got it. She also chewed on a couple of wooden place markers but other than the teeth marks they are fine. The game itself went quite well though. It’s another co-op game and requires the use of two two-sided boards, covering four locations. It’s one of those games which really required us to play before we worked out the proper rules so we had some mistakes along the way. Still, we nearly won the game, getting beaten at the very end. It requires a fair bit of sacrifice by players which I think will be interesting as we play it in the future.
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Only taken a couple years…
After playing Ticket to Ride on my birthday, Game Fanatic suddenly got back into playing board games after backing away from them for the most part. He pulled out Alhambra, a game we had yet to try, and worked out the rules. His first observation was that it wasn’t terribly complex. He also pointed out that it has a slightly Carcasonne-ish element to it although it’s considerably different. We tried out the game tonight and it all went well…except that Lego Lover was very slow to take his turns and it took a lot longer than we expected. It was a lot of fun and easy to set up so I suspect this will be something we play more often than the more complex games we own. I recently noticed there are expansions for this game so we might invest in some of those at some point.
We often purchase video games from Ozgameshop, a UK retailer that sells at a much lower price and offers free shipping. More recently they added toys and board games to the items they sell and the prices are again much lower than any local retailers. They sent me a birthday email with a $10 discount on my next purchase so I used it this week to buy a couple more board games and hope to get those in the next couple of weeks. I’m finally getting a copy of Dominion, which I’ve heard good reviews about from a variety of sources. The other games is Castle Panic, which I saw on the web video show, Tabletop (hosted by Wil Wheaton). Game Lover and I watched and liked what we saw. It’s a co-op game. in a similar vein to Forbidden Island, which our whole family enjoys playing. And because he’s in one of those moods, Game Fanatic has bought three more games for himself this weekend….
Tomorrow is supposed to be International Tabletop Day and our family is going to have our own game-playing party. We plan to play Alhambra again and will likely play at least one other game. We will have to fit that in between egg decorating and other weekend activities. I also got an email from a local friend inviting us to play board games on Sunday. It only came tonight so not sure if we will go or not… it’s a good chance for social outings for Game Fanatic so perhaps we can work something out.
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Back into photos
Last year was a pretty poor one with regard to photography. My main goal has been to reflect experiences and places and hopefully keep improving my photography. I realised last month I’d only uploaded a handful of photos to Flickr, then looked at my photos and realised there really aren’t all that many available to upload anyway. I did finally upload more photos but the pickings were slim. Many were just repeats of the same thing and many just weren’t very good.
I hope this year will be more fruitful. I have a new camera that I’m still getting to know plus my older, sort of fancy but not too fancy DSLR…Not to mention my iPhone camera for more casual photos. I started tonight to work on recent photos in preparation for uploads and have added at least a dozen new photos. These are all still from 2012 but maybe I will soon be working on lots of new ones for 2013.
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Photo fail
I seem to have lost the momentum I had from the beginning of the month. The camera hasn’t been put away but I’ve managed to miss a few days and I’m well behind getting samples posted for those that I have. So this month has not been a success but I’m not abandoning the cause. My challenge to the self was to get the camera out each day and photograph something and I did pretty well at that. It wasn’t to have photos to post for each day but I seem to have mentally added that requirement into the mix. Anyway, I have been trying to get through photos and will post more soon. I find the processing takes more time than it should because I fix many of them up, often with minor adjustments, only to then delete many of them. Obviously it would be more time-efficient to weed first…
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May Photo Challenge – May 11
I was feeling much better about my efforts today than I did yesterday.
We planted this, our first hibiscus plant, a year ago this month. It wasn’t much more than a stick with a few leaves when we put it into the ground. But it was flowering even back then. There have been plenty of flower buds over the past year but not too many of them have reached full flower, falling off before they properly opened. I’m hoping this one will hang in there and show it’s fully beauty before dropping off.Â
This is the same flower, just a different angle.
Another one of the many buds starting up on this bush. I might keep an eye on this one’s progress as it develops into a proper flower. Hopefully will won’t fall off too soon.
Our hakea laurina tree is absolutely covered with these seed pods. Most of them are looking old and grey but this lot of more brownish ones must be a bit more recent. I took more photos of the same pin-cushion flowers from a couple days ago but it’s quite difficult to get the focus right on them and they had to be binned.
Every autumn/winter, we have a couple of these plants pop up in our front yard. It eventually comes out with one or two pink flowers. I spotted this while revisiting our front yard gazanias and thought it might be interesting to track the progress of its growth. Hopefully the plant will be a bit more visible the next time. -
May Photo Challenge – May 10
My challenge for the month has been to get the camera out and take at least five photos every day and I’ve managed to get something out of it to post each day, even if it’s not always the most satisfactory effort. I’d say only a handful are ones that I thought were any good at all.
Today, I was in the position of having taken a couple dozen photos and having nothing that I really wanted to keep. But I did keep these two, just as evidence of my effort. Part of me felt like it was an exercise in futility. The more rational side says that it is still valuable experience.
This is just one corner of our clothes hoist, with a couple socks that have missed out on being collected. These appeared in several photos but I found it looked better to keep them mostly in shadow.
Of the various angles I tried, this was the one I found most interesting. This is kind of okay but not quite what I was looking to capture. Others would have been much better but a slight breeze kept moving it around, making for too many blurry photos. Obviously the low light and the movement are not a great mix when you aren’t prepared for it.
