Did you think I was dead?

Hey, look at that. I *didn't* forget how to put up a post in my blog. It's been so long I figured I'd have lost the knowledge. I'm quite surprised myself that I would be on a 2 month hiatus from posting. I guess I don't really have much of an excuse, either, though most of my November was spent on schoolwork. Most of my December has been spent on sloth. Ever since I handed in my takehome exam for algebra, I've just been doing as little as possible.

Hm, now which events from the last two months should I discuss? I went on my trip to Waterloo a few weeks ago, and that was fun. I stayed with Andrew the first few days, and Hugh for the last leg of the trip. We had a four hour game of Cities and Knights of Catan that was rife with inaccurate rules since Andrew had never read the rules in any great detail.

I had that party that I mentioned in the last post, and it went off without a hitch. Lots of people showed up, everyone had a great time, and it didn't take much effort to clean up the next day. I'll be sure to do it again sometime next term.

Hey, here's some big news: I've started drinking! Not as a hobby, or anything, but I don't refuse to drink anymore. I realized a while ago that I didn't really have a good reason to *not* drink, but I felt like I needed an occasion to start. I didn't want my first drink to be anticlimactic. I decided that Phil being in town was a good enough reason to celebrate. Since then, though, I've decided I don't really like the taste of alcohol, and the last few times I've had drinks it's made me pretty queasy, so at least now I have an excuse if someone offers me a libation. Plus on top of that, I'm still a cheapskate, so I'm not willing to buy my own booze often. At the moment, Adam keeps making new and disgusting drinks with what I have sitting in my bar. The only thing that I've enjoyed so far is the Amaretto Sour.

Phil is back in town again (yes, he's visited *twice* since the last time I made a post), and he and Adam are more or less living out of my house. We've been playing lots of Power Grid and Nexus Ops, some Guitar Hero, and we started playing X-Men Legends (very fun multiplayer game). I've been staying up til 5 or 6 the last few nights; I haven't seen much sunlight lately. At least I'll be well seasoned for New Year's Eve.

I didn't get anything extremely noteworthy for Christmas besides a Bohnanza expansion (from Sheena and Dan), and Super Paper Mario and Metroid Prime 3 for Wii. I was sort of hoping to get Super Mario Galaxy, but it'll still be waiting for me once I play the two games I got.

I attended a games afternoon the other day at the game store with Doug, a guy I met via BGG. I invited all of my friends to come, but none came. I'm willing to bet that Sheena and Dan would have, if they were in town. Regardless, I had fun. We played Incan Gold, Citadels, Bang (twice), and Munchkin. I'm not really a huge fan of any of those games, but I wasn't about to bitch and whine about it since it wasn't really my event. I sent an email inviting all of them to come to my games nights. I'm anticipating a pretty nice turnout to my games nights, but of course I've said that in the past only to have the usual 5 or 6 show up. If all goes well, Doug and his friends will come, and up to 6 people from my classes will start coming out as well. Hopefully Dan's two brothers will start coming as well. If I could get enough for two tables on a regular basis, that would probably be ideal.

Well, that's as much as I'm willing to write about at the moment, so I'll end it around here. I make no promises about when another post will show up, but hopefully I can get back into the habit of making a public journal of events in my life that next to no one cares about.

Listening to... Foo Fighters - Come Back
Link of the moment... Please do yourself a favour and watch all of these game reviews. HILARIOUS!

OMG! Where are the RSVPs?

I thought that by now, my workload would have lightened up, but it really isn't. Due to my excess of presentations in the last few weeks, I had to put some stuff off, and now I have to spend all my time catching up. Plus, I'll have to work ahead this week so that I won't have any work when PHIL SHOWS UP!

Yeah that's right, Phil is hitting town from November 4-8, a Sunday through to Thursday. That's almost better for me than if he were here on the weekend, because I need the weekend to get any work done (I usually don't get my marking until Friday afternoons). Of course, I'll have some classes to deal with, but that's only a few hours out of each day. I really hope Adam's in town next week, otherwise he'll miss Phil and that would be a shame.

I don't know what I'll do when Phil is here, but whatever we wind up doing, it will be a blast. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of video games, something I'm looking forward to. I'll have to teach him the ropes in Guitar Hero and Smash Bros so that I have a sparring partner. Haha, I'll make him practice while I'm in classes so that he can kick my ass like he does in every game.

I sent out e-invites to my party on the 9th. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind for the last few days; I just can't wait! As a break from my own work, I whipped up song lists for all the guitar hero games and all the singstar games, so that people who are waiting for their turn can anticipate what song they're going to perform. Aren't I thoughtful?

I invited just about everyone I can think of that would be interested, including a few people I only barely know from one of my classes. In addition, I've told most of the people I invited to invite anyone that THEY think would want to come. I figure that way, even if half the people don't show up, I'll still have a big crowd.

I've been thinking that it would be nice to visit Waterloo this December when I have no work to do, and while most of my friends are still in the city. The catch is that I have nowhere to stay. I stayed with Andrew in the summer, but he's not so confident in his roommate this term and doesn't want to impose. I certainly couldn't stay with John, because he's staying with Julie and I doubt they could fit another freeloader! I suppose I might be able to stay with Hugh if I asked, but then I'd feel stranded way over in Kitchener, and at John's mercy when I want to go anywhere. I wonder if Hugh still reads my blog...

I guess I've lost touch with some other people too. I haven't talked to Katie in a while, nor Caroline, and I haven't heard hide nor hair from Nathalie in a dog's age (although I think the ball is currently in my court in terms of correspondence). I guess my opinion is always that my life is so uninteresting that if I were to call anyone, I'd have nothing of any real interest to say.

Let's see what I need to do tomorrow. I'm meeting my adviser at 10:30 for some help with my algebra assignment, and then I'm going to lock myself up in the library with the measure theory text until I finish the problem I'll be presenting on Tuesday. After that I guess I'll need to get some lunch. Then I'll probably have to work on my algebra assignments until Adam's colloquium at 4PM. Then I'll have to get some shopping done (I'm out of juice and I want to buy Guitar Hero 3 soon). Then Prison Break with Grant and Chanel around 7 or 8 until about 10. Hm, I'm cutting it pretty close with everything tomorrow, especially considering I'm having issues with my measure theory assignment. Well, I guess my algebra doesn't have to take priority, so at least I can put that off if need be.

Listening to... Iron Maiden - The Prophecy
Link of the moment... OH SNAP I'm going to pwn this song

Monopoly? More like monotony.

It's been a while! I'll break up my adventures into multiple posts. I'll start off jabbering about board games for a while, I think.

While I was in Waterloo, one stop I was intent on making was to J&J to pick up some board games (since I brought a Wii to Waterloo for Andrew, I had some space in my luggage I had to fill up). I bought Dodge City, an expansion for Bang, a two player abstract game called Hive, and a starter deck for the Harry Potter TCG.

Hive has turned out to be a pleasant little suprise. I've played it a few times and have managed to lose most of those games, but it's a really nice little game. It takes no setup time whatsoever, and can be taught in about three minutes. Once you've played for five minutes and "get" the game, you can throw some interesting strategy into it right away.

I haven't played a game of the Harry Potter TCG yet, but I'm already looking to acquire some more cards. I can get 24 or 36 booster packs (11 cards each) from ebay or other online sources, but the shipping to Canada costs more than the cards themselves. I don't really know what to do about that.

I've already got a nice little list of games on the proverbial chopping block (or shopping block if you will). I suppose I've gotten most of my geek talk out of my system. I'm looking at Alhambra (for a good light 3 player game), one of Shadows Over Camelot or Arkham Horror (for a pseudo-RPG co-op game; the latter has decidedly heavier gameply and takes longer but has a nice theme), and I've been interested in HeroScape for a while (but I feel like I already have so many 2 player games that never get played).

I got a lot of game time in while I was in Waterloo. I played three games of Catan (one with 3 players, one with 5, one with 6), two games of Bohnanza, a game of Monopoly, two games of Mario Party 8, lots of Smash Bros, some really good 4 player Wii tennis, a few games of Hive. That's quite a lot of gaming in one weekend. Even after all those games of Catan, I'm still ready for more! It gets a lot of table time on Tuesdays, so I'm sure I'll get into another game soon.

I'm not really sure how many games I'll have in my collection before I think that I have enough games. I have a ton of games that I rarely play (I don't want to introduce too many to my friends at once), but there is always a set of games that I want to purchase. I really hope that once the Game Shelf gets a website up, I can hook up with some more hardcore gamers. I might even be able to come across a few gamers in the math department at Lakehead. Until then, I'm going to have to try to mold my Tuesday night crowd into hardcore gamers.

Listening to... Opeth - Deliverance
Link of the moment... HeroScape even has a nice little community and is loaded with customized scenarios.