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Just like that…
it suddenly turned into autumn here, bordering on a bit of early winter. Most of the month we’ve had warm temperatures and have had to run the air conditioner most days. I think Perth set a few records on high temps for April earlier on…last week it was still warm and we were still needing turn on the a/c by midday. Then a couple of days ago, it got cool…so cool that I found myself searching for my bed socks to keep my feet warm at night. There has been none of the gradual shift in seasons this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if we skip right on to winter weather in a couple weeks…although I hope it doesn’t happen like that.
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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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Change of plan
I arrived for my blood donation this afternoon and filled out the paperwork required. When I turned it in, the reception person asked if I’d be interested in doing a plasma donation instead. I guess the local supplies are quite low at the moment. For some reason she didn’t have any information about my having donated plasma before. It didn’t require too much change of plan aside from the fact it took a lot longer than a simple blood draw requires. The first two times they only took something like 700 ml of plasma but this time it was increased to something like 825. The previous times, there were three sessions of the blood being drawn and separated but this time it became four. And the last session’s draw was quite short but it seemed to take much longer than the other ones. The place was fairly busy when I arrived but I was the only one there when I finished. I guess it was a slow afternoon. I won’t give a full blood donation until July but did book in to do plasma in another month.
I still haven’t been able to re-enrol for my tai chi class online because the class I want is still showing as sold out. It seems unlikely this is really the case so I contacted the owner again tonight for the second time to clarify that there is still space in the class. I find it hard to imagine otherwise but there could be people joining with discount vouchers, I suppose. I have suggested to her that I book in with a different class instead and sort out the day later on.
We didn’t end up trying the new board games this evening after all. By the time all the coming and going was over and food was eaten, it was getting late. Looks like it may have to wait for the weekend as I will be out tomorrow and we have some dvds to watch from a video service we are trialling (for the second time now!). Â As we weren’t going to play games, I decided to retry the iPad version of Caylus and see if I could get an understanding of the game play. I got through two games and finally feel I have some idea of what I am doing. I still need to work out some of the finer points but at least I feel I am in the game now. :) Â I have a few other games on the iPad that I am trying to learn too, along with others that are the same as games we already play (Carcassone, Settlers of Cataan, Ticket to Ride, etc).
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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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Afternoon in Freo
Lego Lover had a dentist appointment this afternoon after which we drove down to Fremantle to see the Queen Mary 2. The ship’s docking was delayed by several hours today due to poor weather conditions. We had quite a bit of rain last night and I think there must have been some storms. The QM2 was built to handle difficult seas so it’s pretty surprising they had such difficulty moving into the harbor and docking. Apparently the winds were a big problem so I can only assume that was where the difficulty was. I think the ship was due in at 6:30am and didn’t finish docking until 2:15pm which was just after the time we arrived in the city. Even though we’ve seen the ship several times before, I still find it an amazing spectacle and it really is a beautiful ship. We had a nice view of the ship from where we parked on the hill so I took a photo of it early on.
Our next priority was lunch since Lego Lover missed breakfast, then had to wait half an hour after his dentist visit. He held up pretty well, considering his hunger at this point. We ate at Kailis Brothers Seafood cafe in the Boat Harbour. Lego Lover always gets the chicken strips with chips when we go there since he won’t eat fish any more. There are heaps of choices of food there but he won’t eat any most of them…except Subway…and that wasn’t what I considered a great option…although surely better than certain other fast food outlets. The cafe was fairly crowded considering it was mid-afternoon by this point. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait too terribly long and soon he was feeling much better…as was I. :)
Lego Lover wanted to go to Target to check out their Transformer toys so we walked back across town to see what they had. He was reasonably happy with what he saw there and then we moved along to the Maritime Museum. We were only there just under a month ago but we still like visiting just about any time we are in town. It was nice and quiet there this afternoon so we didn’t feel very rushed even though there was only an hour left until closing. Since we have an annual pass, I don’t feel the need to spend too long there. We’d have liked to see the Shipwreck galleries again but there just wasn’t time today. After leaving, we walked around the building to the viewing deck of the harbour opening and were blasted by very strong winds as we went just beyond the main building. I’d been walking around without my jacket all day but this was enough for me to pull it out and wear it. We didn’t stay there too long because it was incredibly difficult to do anything in that wind. We moved up the quay towards the ship and sat down on a bench nearby. Lego Lover commented it was our most comfortable seat for any of our viewings of the ships at this point and I agreed. We both took some photos and then I checked on Facebook to see if there was a change of departure time for the ship. We have a local weather group called Perth Weather Live that has become quite popular for weather updates. The guy who runs it also seems to post updates on other events like the concerts we attended over a week ago. Today the updates were on the ship. Who knew this group could be so helpful in daily life? And not just for the weather either. This is when I found out the ship won’t depart until morning. The post showed 8am but it looks like it’s really 7am. Doesn’t matter since there’s no chance of any of us making it back in the morning. Even if we were up, the fight in early morning traffic will be tremendous.
We decided there was nothing else to do but go home and started the long walk back to the car. Lego Lover was really disappointed and had become a bit cranky now. I was trying to take a few more photos but he just wanted to get back to the car. His track pants weren’t doing a great job of keeping his legs warm. He had no issues with his jacket (actually the liner) which is one he’s worn for a few years now and was one that Game Fanatic wore in Canada over ten years ago. It’s held up pretty well all this time. I imagine Lego Lover will keep wearing it until he outgrows it…which I assume will eventually happen.
The ride home was a long one and the adventure out seemed terribly incomplete. We can take comfort in the knowledge the ship will be back next year for two visits again.
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Tonight the Scientist and I went to our tai chi class as is usual on a Monday night. This is week eight of ten for this term and I finished learning all the moves for level five. The next two weeks will just be spent revising and “perfecting” the moves. I have one more level to complete before I’ve learned the entire long form of tai chi. It’s amazing to realise I now know almost all the moves that seemed so overwhelming back at the beginning. After I finish level six next term, both the Scientist and I will switch to the advanced class.
It’s another rainy night here in Perth. That makes two in one month! Apparently the temperature will be quite cool tomorrow and the recommendation is to dress just a bit more warmly than usual for this time of year. Lego Lover has a dentist appointment in early afternoon in Perth, then we will head down to Fremantle to see the Queen Mary 2 ship while it’s in town. He wants to travel by bus and train but it depends on conditions and on whether he wakes up early enough in the morning. Â I’m hoping the rain eases a bit by the time we get there but the latest forecast showed rain continuing well into the day. Whatever the conditions, I’m sure we will adapt. :)
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Fitness update
The gym continues to be a regular part of daily life. I missed a day a couple weeks ago when we went to Fremantle and walked everywhere but otherwise I’m there six days a week still. The Scientist has now lost about 23 kgs overall so only has a few more kilos to go before he reaches his goal. I’ve told him he needs to find some better fitting clothes as the ones he’s wearing tend to look way too baggy. My weight has gone down a little bit and it seems maybe this might become a sort of regular thing although it’s mostly tiny amounts. Overall I’m down about 6.5 kgs so I’m getting there slowly.
It’s now been eleven months since my knee surgery and my knee still isn’t at the best level I’d expect it to be as yet. I will say that the knee isn’t giving way as regularly as it once did but it often feels like it might at any time. This surely is an improvement and it gives me hope that there will be a time when it doesn’t do this any more. Meanwhile my right knee is showing more obvious issues with the continued exercise and it seems possible I will need to have it fixed at some point in the future. I hope to avoid that for at least a year or two as I’d like to be totally recovered with my left knee and also be at my ideal weight before going through this again.
I believe some of the recent improvement must be due to changes in my exercise routines. I try to change things around a lot so I don’t get into too much of a rut. Sometimes the changes are kind of forced because my shoulder/knees/back will start hurting and so I avoid exercise that aggravates that and try something different. A few weeks ago I started doing a muscle conditioning routine called Kinetics on the Fitness on Request program. The first class was 35 minutes long and included heaps of lunges and squats, exercises that I really hate and find painful. After the first class I was terribly sore for a couple of days but I did go back and tried again. I’ve since tried all the available classes, including a 50 minute class and I can sort of do most of the routine now although I still find some of the exercises quite hard to do. What I realised just this afternoon was that all those squats and lunges must be paying off because I can do a lot more without as much pain as when I started. This shift seems to have just occurred because I’ve been struggling away with them every time and wondering whether it was going to be worth all the effort…It felt like a big accomplishment. The classes also include quite a lot of abdominal work and I’ve found those muscles are a lot stronger already. My tummy doesn’t pooch out quite as much as it used to. I remember after Game Fanatic was born the midwife told me I need to tighten my abdominal muscles to get rid of the post-pregnancy pooch. I guess I had to wait until he was all grown up to get onto that issue. :D
I’ve also been doing a lot of the spin bike classes and my stamina and endurance are getting a lot better. I recently tried doing a class that includes a time trial of twenty minutes which is quite tough as it involves four periods of five minutes riding in the same position with a few seconds of break meant to allow time to check heart rate in between sessions. I’ve also noticed my legs are getting a lot stronger and I suspect if I were to get my bike serviced I might find I am considerably improved in my cycling than I was a couple of years ago. (Bike is not being used since I fell off it two or three years ago. Not afraid to ride but it didn’t feel like it was riding properly and I keep procrastinating about getting it fixed.)
I also tried out a new bike today which is an Upright Expresso bike. It looks like this and allows you to compete online and record your results with an Expresso account. I tried it out today and it was a lot of fun but hard work. Unfortunately it’s not currently connected to the internet so I wasn’t able to use the online features.
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Already two months gone
The year is moving along at a cracking pace. Seems like just a few days ago it was the new year and now the first two months are already done. Life has been busier than usual the past few weeks with lots more appointments happening and some more to come. I still need to make a couple other appointments but I keep using that procrastination gene about doing that.
The latest excitement in our house is the new mattress that was delivered for our bed yesterday afternoon. Years ago we bought one of those pillow top mattresses and paid a tidy sum at the time. Within a few months we realised how much we disliked the mattress but it was too late by then. The support was lacking almost from the start and we vowed not to buy another pillow top mattress again. Besides, it’s quite difficult to find sheets to fit the mattress and the ones we have used have all gotten stretched out of shape. I bought two new sets of sheets from Target today while they are on sale but was unable to find a mattress protector that was suitable. Seems all the queen sizes in the type I wanted were unavailable even though there is a sale that only started today. I will try another Target store tomorrow and try a couple of other shops in hopes of something that works for us.
A couple weekends ago we went to Fremantle for the first time in a year or so. I think the last time I was there with Lego Lover to see the Queen Mary 2 in late February but the Scientist hadn’t been since November 2011 when we went on a whale watching cruise. Our plan for the day was to eat at our favorite eatery then visit the Shipwreck Gallery which has some interesting exhibits about the many shipwrecks that have occurred off the Western Australian coast over the years. Lego Lover really enjoyed this visit and I’m sure we’ll be back some time soon. He got a souvenir coin from the museum which is a part of a series of coins from tourist places all over the state. After we finished there, Lego Lover wanted to go see the Maritime Museum again so we traipsed over there and renewed our membership that lapsed a year ago. Normally I don’t notice many changes between visits but this time there were quite a few new exhibits and others had been altered in some ways. It made it a rather new experience compared to some of our last visits. We also happened to get there on the last weekend of a special exhibit about Antarctica which we quite liked. It had one display which was essentially a rather large touch screen computer where you could find out more about some of the topics included. What was really neat was the way you could bring up a photo and then make it bigger or smaller and even move it all around the screen. Our visits were all near the fishing boat harbor and the quay but we had parked a few blocks away to get free parking. With my relatively new cross trainers, I managed quite well for most of the day and then really suffered on the way back to the car. I was worn out enough that I skipped going to the gym that evening because there was no way I’d have managed any exercise.
March started with some cooler weather after what has been a record of summer heat here. Apparently it was a record across Australia as a whole and not just for Western Australia. To me it didn’t seem to be a particularly hot summer. On at least one level  there’s a record based on the number of days where the temperature rose above 37 C. I’m not quite sure that’s a good reflection of the overall picture since it doesn’t reflect the temperatures over the course of the day. February was particularly dry and I don’t think we had any rain through the month despite a tropical cyclone hitting the coast up north. I assume it moved in the wrong direction to bring us any precipitation.