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In Which I Enjoy a Four-Day Holiday
Nov. 26th, 2017 08:03 pmThursday. Thanksgiving! Yay! Kimberly and I have a very tasty buffet at HS Lordship's in the Berkeley Marina. There's great Thanksgiving food, great seafood, and tasty deserts. My favorites for the day are mashed potatoes with gravy, crab salad, and chocolate chip cookies. I perhaps should have had more of the excellent ham, but I was absolutely stuffed by the end of our meal.
K. was able to enjoy the meal despite her broken foot. She scooted around with me for one tour of all the food, then I was able to bring her food and drinks the rest of the day.
Friday. Games day! Yay! Mike B. and the two Erics come over so that we could play Skull & Shackles, which we want to finish before I move to Hawaii, and which usually doesn't fit into our normal schedule. We play for about six hours, and run through four adventures(!). One of them is a very interesting boat race, which has really awkwardly written rules, but turns out to be a real innovation for the system. It's nice seeing that variability. We've now passed the halfway mark, with two years to go.
The only awkwardness for the day is Berkeley's stupid parking enforcement. The two Erics have to move their cars twice during the day. I used to hate that before Berkeley backed off its Saturday enforcement, because of how it impacted my roleplaying group. It's good to keep itinerant students from filling up all the street parking, but it always sucks when I can't have people at my house without awkward automobile juggling.
Saturday. Hiking day! Yay! I walk up to the steam trains and back. The weather is decently nice. I even got a lot of editing done and a tiny bit of writing for my next Designers & Dragons project.
Sunday. Rest day! Yay!
Media. For many a year now we've marathoned a TV show on Thanksgiving. Well, I'm not sure it's really a marathon anymore with these millennials and their binge watching. But we watch several episodes of something. We could have continued on with one of the shows we're watching, iZombie (season 2), Flash (season 4), or Daredevil (season 2), but we instead decide to start something totally fresh: American Crime (season 1). We watch the first four episodes on Thanksgiving, then finished up the 11-episode season over the rest of the holiday weekend.
It's a crime show, as you'd expect. It's about a murder. But it's really about the lives of the family of the victims and of the people accused of the crime. And, it's pretty great. The unusual focus offered a dramatically different (and interesting) view of crime, but I also loved the fact that it was so definitely American. A lot of the focus was on family, but there was also considerable attention to (sadly) modern American problems like drugs, foster care, sexual abuse, race relations, and poverty. And, nothing was black & white. It was an excellent 11 hours of TV. I'm happy there were two more seasons before the show was cancelled, and I hope to see the next during some other holiday.
As for other media? I finished up the Swamp Thing Bronze Age Omnibus that I started on Halloween, and was pleased to discovered it's something that's held up really well to time (except for the crappy issues late in the original run, but they were crappy 40 years ago too). I also got started on a big reread of Y: The Last Man that I've been wanting to do since I picked up the Deluxe volumes a couple of years ago. Happily, that's still great too. I'm a bit more than halfway through.
Writing. I've got way ahead on Mechanics & Meeples in recent weeks. Currently I'm taking notes for a how-the-industry-has-changed article that I plan for just after Christmas, and I've been working on my huge Catan gamopedia that I hope to publish at the end of January.
I feel like I've been slacking on the next Designers & Dragons books since I stopped having a daily grind for DTRPG, but I got good work on those this weekend too, editing four or five pieces that I've been working on and finishing up another one.
Good weekend overall. I feel refreshed. Hopefully I won't be beset by any major problems that erode that away for at least a few weeks.
And tomorrow the Christmas season begins! Hopefully some woodland animal Christmas ornaments will show up at the mailbox, and if so we'll put up our tree.
And on Tuesday or so, our newest bathroom repair season begins, as we need to pick out tiles for rebuilding the tub.
K. was able to enjoy the meal despite her broken foot. She scooted around with me for one tour of all the food, then I was able to bring her food and drinks the rest of the day.
Friday. Games day! Yay! Mike B. and the two Erics come over so that we could play Skull & Shackles, which we want to finish before I move to Hawaii, and which usually doesn't fit into our normal schedule. We play for about six hours, and run through four adventures(!). One of them is a very interesting boat race, which has really awkwardly written rules, but turns out to be a real innovation for the system. It's nice seeing that variability. We've now passed the halfway mark, with two years to go.
The only awkwardness for the day is Berkeley's stupid parking enforcement. The two Erics have to move their cars twice during the day. I used to hate that before Berkeley backed off its Saturday enforcement, because of how it impacted my roleplaying group. It's good to keep itinerant students from filling up all the street parking, but it always sucks when I can't have people at my house without awkward automobile juggling.
Saturday. Hiking day! Yay! I walk up to the steam trains and back. The weather is decently nice. I even got a lot of editing done and a tiny bit of writing for my next Designers & Dragons project.
Sunday. Rest day! Yay!
Media. For many a year now we've marathoned a TV show on Thanksgiving. Well, I'm not sure it's really a marathon anymore with these millennials and their binge watching. But we watch several episodes of something. We could have continued on with one of the shows we're watching, iZombie (season 2), Flash (season 4), or Daredevil (season 2), but we instead decide to start something totally fresh: American Crime (season 1). We watch the first four episodes on Thanksgiving, then finished up the 11-episode season over the rest of the holiday weekend.
It's a crime show, as you'd expect. It's about a murder. But it's really about the lives of the family of the victims and of the people accused of the crime. And, it's pretty great. The unusual focus offered a dramatically different (and interesting) view of crime, but I also loved the fact that it was so definitely American. A lot of the focus was on family, but there was also considerable attention to (sadly) modern American problems like drugs, foster care, sexual abuse, race relations, and poverty. And, nothing was black & white. It was an excellent 11 hours of TV. I'm happy there were two more seasons before the show was cancelled, and I hope to see the next during some other holiday.
As for other media? I finished up the Swamp Thing Bronze Age Omnibus that I started on Halloween, and was pleased to discovered it's something that's held up really well to time (except for the crappy issues late in the original run, but they were crappy 40 years ago too). I also got started on a big reread of Y: The Last Man that I've been wanting to do since I picked up the Deluxe volumes a couple of years ago. Happily, that's still great too. I'm a bit more than halfway through.
Writing. I've got way ahead on Mechanics & Meeples in recent weeks. Currently I'm taking notes for a how-the-industry-has-changed article that I plan for just after Christmas, and I've been working on my huge Catan gamopedia that I hope to publish at the end of January.
I feel like I've been slacking on the next Designers & Dragons books since I stopped having a daily grind for DTRPG, but I got good work on those this weekend too, editing four or five pieces that I've been working on and finishing up another one.
Good weekend overall. I feel refreshed. Hopefully I won't be beset by any major problems that erode that away for at least a few weeks.
And tomorrow the Christmas season begins! Hopefully some woodland animal Christmas ornaments will show up at the mailbox, and if so we'll put up our tree.
And on Tuesday or so, our newest bathroom repair season begins, as we need to pick out tiles for rebuilding the tub.