"You cannot square the circle"

I was tired this morning after class, and thought to myself "but I went to bed early last night"! Then, I realized that by that, I meant I had gone to bed at 1 AM, which is not really all that early in a general sense.

I had a party last weekend, and it was awesome! I got the usuals, as well as a few people I don't see often, and I even got four people from my seminar class to show up! A new fascination among the board gamers is Headbanz, which I picked up at the thrift store god knows how long ago. We played a little poker (got cleaned out by the guy we had taught the game to), and some Guitar Hero and Wii as well.

I think the highlight of the night for me was when I convinced everyone to play Werewolf! I had 10 (the perfect number, IMHO), and everyone had fun playing it! My new scoring system was not too complex nor too shallow. The first round was a bit of crapshoot, with not much discussion going on. Grant and Chanel moderated the second and third round so I could play. On the first day, I wound up putting a werewolf up for lynching, and people voted in my favour (I had accused them on little to no evidence, but it must have worked!). In all three rounds, the villagers won, but I think it was solely from lucky first votes. I can't wait to play again!

School is winding down, I guess. I've only got one assignment left this term, and then two exams. I've also chosen my project advisor, Wendy Huang. Her research is in the Open-Shop Machine Scheduling problem, specifically with dense schedules. Mouthful, huh? It should be interesting (or else I'm screwed). I hope to get lots of work done by the end of the summer, rather than putting it off.

I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but I got a new scholarship, worth a total of $9000 over two years. Right now, I've got about $7000 worth of scholarship cheques to deposit. I should be a professional student!

I've broken in four of my six new games. I played Pillars of the Earth with Adam and my mom, and they both enjoyed it (my mom's not so great with rules per se). I won, but it was a VERY close game between the three of us. I'm looking forward to playing again now that I know the flow of the game. I also played El Grande with five last week. I think people generally enjoyed it and would play again, but I don't think it really "wowed" anyone, including myself. Still, it's a nice game deep in both strategy and tactics, that plays well with five.

This previous Wednesday, I had only Grant and Chanel, so we tried out some 3 player games. We started with Ra, which was about as good as I'd expected, but in a different way. The game is all about timing, and there are lots of things to consider when deciding to force an auction or place a tile. The game was super-quick, even with a rules explanation. I also went to the liberty of printing off four player sheets from BGG, and getting them laminated at Staples. After one play, I'm glad I have them since they make scoring and tile sorting easier.

We also played two games of Pandemic (though the first didn't really count, since we missed one rule which makes the game way more difficult). The second game, with *most* of the correct rules (hey, it's hard to remember all the details!), we lost. The cards came out kinda crappy, and there were a lot of chain reaction outbreaks. Overall though, I really like that game! I actually played a solo game tonight (that's right, you can play solo), and I wound up winning. I'm pretty sure I didn't cheat, and I think I just happened to get a good string of cards. I don't know if I'll still like the game as much when I feel like I've "solved" it, but I'm really in love with it at the moment. Maybe I'll play one more solo game before bed...

Listening to... No Use For A Name - Couch Boy
Link of the moment... Creepiest and coolest video you'll see in a while