It’s been an insanely busy week - and I still haven’t had time to deal with my apparently broken air conditioner. Stopped off for dinner/beer/wi-fi before an evening of board games at the Stag’s Head.
They have the most awesomely amazing St. Arnold’s Imperial Stout aged in whiskey barrels on the cask pull. It’s an amazing beer, and being served at the perfect temperature. Austin Beer Boy should be salivating! I’ve only had this beer once before - at the 2007 St. Patrick’s Day Gonigel competition and party. Sean Lamb had brought a chocolate cake he made me eat with the beer, at the same time. It was amazing!
After laundry and chores and trying to fix an A/C on Monday (didn’t work), I had dinner and Power Grid at Sivco’s on Tuesday, edited a lengthy podcast last night with more laundry. Games tonight. Tomorrow is Ringwalds sans Jennifer plus derby in-service if I can make it. Saturday is crawfish boil (in the 281 - eep), and Sunday is roller derby with an after party at Onion Creek. I’ll be late to work on Monday for sure.
April 10th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
beer, friends, houston |
one comment
Well, I finally threw away this t-shirt that I’ve had for over twenty years. It was a gift from a girl friend. She made them and sold them on the Drag to pay for her college.
It’s a long sleeved shirt, so I’ve mostly used it as an undershirt during the past winters.
But too many holes mean it has to go. Such is life.
(I’m sure there are several people who will be happy to know that I’m purging one over-worn shirt, because you know I have dozens.)
March 30th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
friends, random |
one comment
A friend and financial analyst was over last night for some socializing. On his way out the door he quipped, “better trade in that car soon; $4 gasoline is a month away”.
My dislike of staring at tail lights has almost led me to study the bus schedule, this could be the last straw. 34 to the 65 (or the 2): bus routes.
And Ben Bernanke – new chairman of the Federal Reserve – said the Economy is worse than previously stated. Surprise, surprise. Perhaps he and the Bush administration have successfully extracted their long necks from the sand.
February 28th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
friends, government, inthenews |
one comment
I played Crokinole this weekend for the first time. I saw it up at BGG.Con in November, and saw some talk about it before that (someone made two custom boards for the convention), but didn’t get around to playing it. Greg has his hanging on his wall like the art piece it is, but we’d never played it.
Apparently there are some particular rules about sitting down (one cheek to the seat) and not moving your chair, so the setup at a barstool-height table without chairs was an “invalid” one at the convention, anyway.
It was lots of fun, and a little bit infectious, and made us play until 2:30am, by which time we were not playing too well.
Basic rules: 4-player, each player has 6 disks, rotate in order, team mates across from each other. You must contact an opposing piece, or all of your pieces that moved are removed from the board. Rings are successively worth 5, 10, 15, with the hole in the middle worth 20, and instantly scored. After all are shot, the team in the lead gets the point difference.
The new boards run in the $150-$700 range, but are super nice and basically family heirlooms (barring fire or Katrina event). Of unknown origin but dating back to 1876 at least and popular with Canadian Mennonites. Check out the 35 new models and 3,500 antique used boards.
February 17th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
friends, games, weekend |
no comments
Friends are good. Friends who mail you stuff are very good. Friends who mail you their art are excellent!
A week ago or so I received two artworks in the mail from two different friends.
Julie presents me with an Altoids tin with my likeness as a beer drinking skeleton on it.
Lisa sends me a sketch of porter and a working of a picture I took on my birthday weekend: Drinky Crow at the farm. Done on velum (I think), and I don’t know what media.
Friends from different times of my life, and across the country from each other, but timed within a few days.
Pretty nifty, and both absolutely brightened my days. Thanks, chicas bonitas.
January 24th, 2008
Posted by
bshirley |
friends, picture |
no comments
Thursday night I left work and went straight to the Sharpstown Mall - Houston’s Premier Urban Mall (mostly out of a need to avoid the Galleria - the other mall on the way home from work). I had quite fun with the cultural experience. Did a little shopping, and have been humored by the people who literally think i was in imminent danger by going there.
From there I went straight to Greg’s house for game night, where he Peter and I were the only attendees. (Paul showed up as I was leaving - and I think he and Greg continued gaming).
We played 4 games. Race for the Galaxy (2007) was ranked #31 on BGG! An interesting colonization themed card-based game. It takes most of your first play to get the mechanics down enough to pay attention to any strategy. I wasn’t wowwed, but would certainly play it a few more times to determine if I liked it or not.
If Wishes Were Fishes (2007) GBB Rank 988 - a very light fish market themed game. I liked it more than I thought I would. It would be easy to tech to kids, and has nice fun purple worms as part of the game.
Hansa (2004) BGG Rank 159 - TG recently acquired this at an Internet fire sale, but I hadn’t yet played it. So, Greg taught this one and it is a nice shorter length game but with some interesting mechanics providing for some definite strategies with a variety of levels of antagonism. I have sine played it with two-players (with TG) and with three again. I definitely like it. Minimal, but good.
Aqua Romana (2005) BGG Rank 638 - This was a nice closer to the evening. Not too long, interesting mechanics. Building aqueducts with tiles that are determined by men moving about the field of tiles. Definitely worth a place in the rotation.
I got home around midnight to find my DSL disconnected. The phone repair guy had come to fix the dead phone - which had fixed itself already - but he saw there were “wiring problems” from outside so the disconnected the “upstairs line” so the other phones would work. What he actually did was disconnect the DSL.
Many days talking to many idiots finally payed off and this morning a competent repair man replaced many parts of the 10 year old DSL wiring - and hopefully it will remove the static I’ve had on my phone for over a year.
I also get DHCP directly fed from AT&T/SBC. Apparently no one else in Houston is like that. I was one of the first ADSL customers to get hooked up (working software design out of my house - paid by the company) and they’ve maintained it for those who have stayed. I’m one of the last.
I remember when it used to feed an unlimited number of IP addresses (because they didn’t know what they were doing). That lasted a few years, but they finally figured it out and now will only feed one IP address per DSL connection.
December 24th, 2007
Posted by
bshirley |
friends, games, latenight, tech, web |
one comment
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