Whitish Christmas

It's not Christmas yet, but if the weather keeps on like this, Christmas might well be white when it gets here. That will be a novelty for us. We're already enjoying the novelty of having a little bit of snow, right in our very own yard. It's not much, just a dusting; but it comes with several days (and counting) of day-long freezing temperatures. We are used to San Jose, where we counted ourselves lucky if it even bothered to rain in the winter. (There was one really cold winter during my 30ish years there, where icy winds drove snow from higher airs down to the ground in our yard; but even then, none of it stuck.)

The view from our deck.

We've just returned from the grocery store: a shopping trip at 25°F. Helen figured we should stock up the larder in advance of the snow forecast for tomorrow. While we don't expect the snow to be deep, we do live halfway up a small mountain; there's no route to our home that doesn't involve some really steep climbs. If those roads ice up, we may have to cocoon for a bit.

A neighbor's fountain, after several days' freeze.

Most of the rest of the country is having a terrible winter, according to the TV news. We're having a "just right" winter: enough cold and snow to be interesting, not enough to cause trouble. So all the rest of you, stay warm and stay safe, and don't worry about us. We're having a good time!

Humbug

So instead of working all day on Solitaire Till Dawn, today I took some time in the afternoon and played a game with the family.

I know. I'm sorry. I should have been working. It's just that I'm getting really tired of those same three ghosts showing up, every Christmas Eve, year after year, and yelling at me about the whole work ethic thing.

It's not just that they're strident. ("Listen unto me! Comest thou with me! Lookest thou over there!" Hoo, boy.) But in recent years they've been getting more than a little bit whiney, if you want the truth. Not to mention the increasingly obvious air of desperation.

So this year I thought I'd throw them a bone, see if maybe they'll cut me some slack. It would be nice to get some sleep on Christmas Eve, for once.

You might want to do likewise: go play something that's for more than one player. Some day those guys are just going to flat give up on me as a bad job, and then they might be after you next. I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, I've gotta get back to work now. Happy holidays to you and yours!

New Games

Some of these were Christmas presents; several we purchased to console ourselves for being unable to visit (and game with) our relatives in Oregon while they were snowed in.

The Princes of Machu Picchu — Mac Gerdts's latest, and we are very taken with it. Strongly recommended!

Ice Flow — An interesting semi-abstract with nice bits. Might be a bit dry.

Set — A light, quick filler. Helen has wanted this for a long time.

EuroRails — We're fans of the crayon rail series, and already have Empire Builder and Iron Dragon.

Le Havre — Only played this once so far; we're looking forward to more plays. Lots of unique cards to become familiar with.

Stone Age — A straight-forward worker-placement game that's proved to be a lot of fun. Recommended as a mid-weight Euro.

TransAmerica — We liked TransEuropa when Helen's Mom brought it, so we got this for ourselves. Includes the "Vexation" expansion.

Galaxy Trucker — Looking forward to trying this, but having a little trouble with components.

Dominion — Everybody raves about this; I hope it lives up to the hype. (Do we really need 500 card sleeves for this game!?)*

Fresh Fish — A strange and interesting game about managing negative space.

Silverton — A heavy-duty, long-running rail game suitable for one (!) to six players. I'm eager to try this one.

* Postscript: It's now 11:30 pm. Yes, we did need 500 sleeves. I have just finished sleeving them all. I also spent a couple of hours this afternoon putting 200+ stickers onto little plastic poker chips for Silverton. Not as bad as the ~700 stickers for Commands and Colors: Ancients, but bad enough. Never let it be said that I won't suffer for my hobbies.

Black Christmas

We had a pretty good Christmas (in spite of the title of this post) but it was not without its surprises and setbacks.

We had intended to travel to Oregon to spend the holiday with Helen's relatives, and to celebrate our nephew's fourth birthday. But our hosts, her parents, got snowed in. On the evening of the 22nd, we had to call off our anxious weather-watching and admit that nobody was going to gather in Oregon that week. (It is now Saturday after Christmas, and they're still trapped! They're safe, but likely won't get out until Monday or so.)

So we had two days to suddenly gear up for Christmas at home. A tiny turkey (store was sold out of the larger ones), mashed potatoes and gravy pre-made from Whole Foods (very good, too), salad fixings, Pillsbury crescent rolls (and cinnamon buns for breakfast), bottle of wine, and a mince pie made a very nice, small-scale feast. Helen had already spent a couple of days baking cookies: she has a half-dozen recipes that are all incredibly good, and she makes plenty every year.

We meant for dinner to be ready at 6, and we have no idea why that tiny turkey took so long to roast. It was 10pm before we sat down to eat! But it was very good (even without allowing for hunger as a sauce), and there was enough for everybody plus a little left over for a couple of sandwiches the next day.

The weather was odd. Periods of bright, calm sunshine alternated with the most amazing squalls, one of which took down a power line across the street. We weren't affected, but half of our neighbors had no power from about 9am Christmas morning until maybe 6pm the following evening. (They are the ones who had the "black Christmas"!)

We spent much of Christmas Day playing games (we had a lot of time while waiting for that turkey). We played Pandemic, Stone Age, and Ice Flow: all fairly new games for us. It was the first time in quite a while that the four of us had all played a game together, the kids now being grown enough to have their own social lives. It was a good day.

We have a number of new games in the house: unable to go to Oregon, we spent some of the traveling money on games to console ourselves. Le Havre and Siena we had already recently bought as Christmas presents for ourselves. We then went out and got Stone Age, Ice Flow, and Princes of Machu Pichu. And then Christmas is also Helen's birthday: I got her a copy of Galaxy Trucker, but it turned out her mother had gotten her that also! So we took the one I bought back to the store and traded it for EuroRails, TransAmerica, and Set. And we know there are more games coming, as soon as the relatives dig themselves out and can reach a post office. I think it's time to get that "Owner of Too Many Games" microbadge over at BoardGameGeek.

Stone Age looks like a hit. Ice Flow is interesting, but may be a bit dry, or else just sensitive to the number of players. We've played Princes of Machu Picchu just once so far, two-player, but we liked it. It's by the designer of two of our other favorite games, Antike and Imperial, so we had high hopes and it looks like we won't be disappointed. I want to play it again, soon. (And I want to get Brass back on the table, too!)

Not much game design news from me, but I have had a couple of ideas for spicing up the rail-game-formerly-known-as-Rails-Across-America. I hope to work with it some today, and I'll let y'all know how it comes out.

I hope you've all had good holidays too, and we can all hope for a Happy New Year.