Guardian of the Non Sequitur

Holidaze

I guess it’s a typical - gather with various family groups over several days, then suffer their ailments for various days - kinda December. I suffered some of the lingering cold symptoms while at a “board game invitational gathering. Three days of playing games with new people - quite fun. And I got to play the monolithic Die Macher with 5 people - a six hour marathon.

I haven’t achieved any of the chores I was hoping to perform over the holidays. The cold knocked me down to a low activity level. I think I’m going to go take another nap as it is. Blah. And tomorrow back to work.

I did fit in a flaming dropping mirror ball at midnight last night, and today will kick off the new year with a few games with friends in the afternoon.

January 1st, 2008 Posted by bshirley | family, games, weekend | no comments

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

BGG.Con 2007

I spent four days in Irving, Texas playing board games with people from all over the place. It was a fabulous good time. With a game library of over 1000 games, not including those brought by the attendees, there were orders of magnitude more options than time allowed.

My photos are on flickr, and are mostly of games.

My only regret is not playing a game of Dune, and out of print game. They had an unpunched version of it in the library. A $100-$200 value in the current market. The game is going to be re-released in a year or two but without the Dune theme.

The hottest game of the convention was Agricola, which isn’t even available yet. There was one English copy and a few German ones with the cards in sleeves and printed translations accompanying them.

There were raffle drawing giveaway items each day with fabulous lists of prizes. And every attendee received a free game of our choice (in the pile) in addition to the two small games in the swag bag. (more…)

November 19th, 2007 Posted by bshirley | games, travel, weekend | no 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

Weekend of Beer and Games

Here’s the lineup of beers for the coming fantabulous weekend in Wimberley to be spent playing games, sampling beers, cooking food, and perhaps walking down the road once or twice.

Click the image to get a closeup of St. Peter’s Cream Stout¹, St. Peter’s Old Style Porter¹, Unibroue 16¹, Malheur 10¹, Bayhawk California Pale Ale¹, Left Hand Brewing Company Imperial Stout¹, Shiner 98: Bavarian Amber, Samuel Adams Hallertau Imperial Pilsner, Bitburger Premium Pilsener, Brewery de Block Dendermond Tripel, Brewery de Block Special-Block 6, Brewery de Block Kastaar, Westmalle Dubbel¹, Westmalle Tripel¹, Mactarnahan Brewing Company Mac’s Ale.

I had the Sam Adam’s Imperial Pilsener, not fully chilled (as the fridge) but cool, and it was amazing!

The list of games is prob’ly longer than this.

¹ I have only one of each of these.

October 11th, 2007 Posted by bshirley | beer, weekend | 3 comments