Guardian of the Non Sequitur

The El Orbits on a Monday Night

Between today and the last time I was at the Continental Club, with the El Orbits, and letters and numbers, it’s been a while.

I saw quite a few familiar faces last night, some whose names I know, and some I don’t. Virginia O, Pete G, Allen H, Thomas E, Bob S, Lance, Mark & Catherine, Jennifer N, Christopher, Adrian, Squid.

Nothing used to keep us from the Satellite Lounge and the El Orbits. Do you remember Ally McBeal? We skipped out on that skinny fad. Instead we had a Lonestar and/or a martini with our lounge music and new Houston friends. I met more than one friend that I still have to this day on a Monday night with the El Orbits!

Going out on a weeknight has been a bit unfamiliar of late. It used to be my standard operating procedure. Now, I like my sleep. I have a commute.

Others need to start coming out on Monday night again, enjoying the evening. You can leave by 10:30 or 11:00 and still get plenty of sleep for that tuesday morning meeting.

April 22nd, 2008 Posted by bshirley | friends, houston, latenight | 2 comments

Thursday Games

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

Party Videos

I’m just learning to use iMovie for the first time. Here’s a movie of the party setup. Arrival of the shot block at 2:30 to the official start time of the party at 8pm.

December 11th, 2007 Posted by bshirley | latenight, weekend | 2 comments

Two Weeks and Counting

Boy, I still have lots of work to do to get ready.

party.shirl.com
Sat Dec 8 2007

November 24th, 2007 Posted by bshirley | 725, 8 1/2, ephemera, friends, latenight, weekend | 3 comments

Groupo Fantasma, Light Rock Express, Trinity, Colosseum

Started a busy weekend with the usual Molly and the Ringwalds - running sound for them. Less than an hour before the show, Crease showed up with new monitors and a new rack-mounted effect. I plugged the new monitors in - all reports are they’re much clearer and a little louder. The effects i left in the box for him to fiddle with.

The rest of the night I hopped back and forth from watching Groupo Fantasma and the Light Rock Express. Maggart was out with his chica at Groupo. And I chatted for a while with Savage Rose at the Big Top. Of course I ran into dozens of other friends.

Saturday was a trip to Trinity and Allen Bartel’s new 13 acre homestead. He’s still working on it and isn’t fully moved in, but that didn’t keep a disheveled mix of bikers, educators, and random Houstonites from drinking most of a keg of Shiner Bock and lighting all kinds of things on fire (fireworks, bonfires, motorcycle tread). And listening to Sean Reefer. We camped there for the evening and headed back in the morning.

Sunday evening was topped with a first playing of James Civco’s Colosseum - and some grub and wine. Very cool game. And a good preview of the 4-day weekend I will have in the tween of DFW at BGG.Con.

Yesterday was Veterans Day; today random people (esp. government) get the day off. When will they finally move Veterans Day to coincide with election Tuesday?! (last week) What better celebration of veterans could we have than exercising our democratic freedoms?

November 12th, 2007 Posted by bshirley | friends, latenight, weekend | no comments

Crabbs Prairie, Texas

Bill, Pond, 40 - by Cotton Ginny

We had a great weekend at Crabbs Prairie thanks to the Earthman’s hospitality. Many friends transited through Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. We cooked, we drank, we played.

Virginia has some photos, and so do I.

And fyi, the convenient store is open there from 5am - 7pm, seven days a week.

My friends seem to know me. Amongst the gifts were good tequila, belgian beer, an Albert Einstein action figure, Jägermeister, Tito’s vodka, and a variety of minutia.

Jamming on guitars on the porch all night and drinking Lone Star was all that was desired of them, and I got that too.

And for everyone who couldn’t make it, we missed you.

August 14th, 2007 Posted by bshirley | friends, latenight, picture, weekend | one comment