a hurricane of yuck

On the agenda for the day: visit Aunt Terri and Uncle Bob, possibly visit Aunt Mary Lou and Uncle Tom, possibly visit with Aunt Alex and Uncle Vern when they come visit my parents (Uncle Vern is my Godfather), then off to spend the night visiting Candace and zeppelinmage and playing games! I'm also going to stop in at Payless today in hopes of finding some nice new shoes for work that have a fairly low heel and of course black so they'll go with most everything I have that I wear to work.

I was planning to attend church at the UU church in Nashua, the same church where quantumswordsmn and chenoachem brought me twice before and where I first started considering becoming a UU. Since we're visiting Candace and zeppelinmage tonight, and since they have a UU church down the street from them, I've decided that it might be nice to visit a UU church to which I've never been, and perhaps introduce friends to Unitarian Universalism. And it's a Welcoming Congregation and seemingly still has an active Welcoming Congregation Committee.

In case you didn't catch the reference (and because it's appropriate for the holiday), watch the video and listen to the song!

Yesterday was such an awesome New Years Eve. It was time well spent with friends not seen in a looooooooooooong time. Too long.

I had to work for a few hours yesterday but it passed quickly enough. aunrea, zeppelinmage and Liam met me at the library and, after wrapping up a couple of loose ends before leaving, we went to do a little grocery shopping and headed to our cabin in the woods. Meaning home. But I had to put that in there for ciliandis. ;)

We started the night with some pleasant conversation and snacks. Aunrea gave me a present from all three that she had made. I unwrapped it and found two beautifully hand-decorated journals. She was very humble about them but really they were quite lovely. She really has an amazing talent for scrapbooking and design.

They brought a few games with them and we had our collection handy, so we got right into playing the boardgames. Since neither of them had ever played Ticket To Ride, we played that first. We used the 1910 expansion cards because the bigger cards are just easier to manage. Meanwhile Liam was finding all sorts of interesting ways to amuse himself. He decided at one point to take turns sitting on everyone's lap and eventually found his way to mine. Oh. My. Stars. ADORABLE! He started grabbing my little train pieces from the game and handing them to me one by one. With each one I said "Thank you," which to him became the most humurous thing in the world at that point in time. He kept handing them and I kept saying thank you. His laugh grew more and more bubbly and infectious and absolutely heartwarming. It was such a joy to have Liam around. :) zeppelinmage managed to completely wipe the board with us all and the end score was probably the biggest spread I have ever seen, with the lowest score around 75 and the highest around 155.

After Ticket to Ride we played TransEuropa, which is a much simpler train game. I had played it once before a long while ago and liked it. It's pretty much the same game as TransAmerica only set in Europe. The game went very quick and zeppelinmage made a mad dash at the end to tie for last. Yikes! Before dinner they introduced us to the game Cranium, which was a fun party game. I can see how it would work better with more people, but even with four we had a lot of fun. I like it better than games like Trivia Pursuit because it's quicker and more interactive. There's a little trivia, a little charades, a little pictionary, a little name-that-tune, a little word play and a little toy factor, which makes for an all-around interesting game. Aunrea and zeppelinmage won what ended up a very close game.

We all sat down for some dinner, but Liam was far more interested in my guitars than eating. It was very cute. Earlier in the day he kept going up to the guitars and pressing the strings and occasionally strumming. He was absolutely enthralled and fascinated, which made me happy. He was very respectful of them and was very gentle while still exploring, so I was more than happy to let him have fun.

After dinner we played a game of Puerto Rico, which was nice since I almost never get a chance to play it table-top. I enjoy playing it on the computer but it's just not the same as playing with people. It took a little readjustment. For some reason it seemed a lot tighter resource-wise than the computer game, but I enjoyed it. It made it more of a real challenge! We thought originally that aunrea had won but painted_wolf forgot to count the victory points from her buildings. In the end she trounced us all by a huge margin.

Before our last game of the night I realized we had batteries for our one analog clock, so I replaced the battery and set it to the correct time. Aout halfway through Mamma Mia we did the ten-second countdown to midnight and rang in the new year with pretend pizzas. By the time we finished the game (which was again a close game and came down to who had the most ingredients in hand between aunrea and zeppelinmage) we were all exhausted and retired for the night.

I woke up early this morning to help our friends pack their car and see them off safely. I was sad to see them go since I really had a wonderful time visiting with them, but I am so grateful I had the opportunity to ring in the New Year with them. This has been a wonderful holiday weekend thus far! Today we are just spending a day at home and having a turkey dinner. Mind you there will be no bread stuffing this time. I forgot to buy the chicken broth. :P

It was an interesting weekend. Some ups and downs, but overall pretty good.

Yesterday I had to work, which was kind of crappy. I had to leave work early on Wednesday for the PVL party so I had to make up the hours. It was good, though, because I got a bunch of stuff done. After work I met painted_wolf, pyrbennu and lordpagus at lordpagus' place. We all went for dinner at Mandarin Taste and then went back to wath the last three episodes of Doctor Who season 3... except painted_wolf forgot to check that the DVD was in the jewel case, which it wasn't. We stuck around for a while and random wackiness, tormenting and other assorted odd behavior ensued.

Today was a much better day despite my waking up so early fom restlessness. painted_wolf and I first went down to visit ciliandis and watched the Aeon Flux movie (which was surprisingly decent even if a departure from the shorts and series), and then watched Army of Darkness. ciliandis also cooked us these awesome grilled cheese sandwiches with sharp cheddar and salsa con queso. Very yummy!

After visiting with ciliandis we made the mistake of taking Route 25 into Meredith. Oh the traffic! We were stuck in traffic for over half an hour just trying to get to the Et Cetera Shoppe. It was definitely worth it. We found two great games real cheap, plus a pair of nice binoculars and a very interesting Hong Kong movie.

We picked up Starfarers of Catan, which is a game I've wanted for quite some time, for $7. It was almost entirely unpuched (some bits wer bagged, but the cards were still sealed and the punchboards were unpunched). It also included the 5-6 player expansion. It looked as though everything was there and the game was in great shape. In fact, judging by the bags in the game, I'm almost willing to bet it may have been Ray's at one time. Ray, did you get rid of your Starfarers at Et Cetera?

We also picked up Adel Verpflichtet for $7 (also known as Hoity Toity). It's an old Avalon Hill game of bluffing and I've heard a lot of good things about it. I may have played it with Ray at one point in time, but I don't recall. I do believe Ray was one person who told me about it, but I also believe I've read a good deal about it on BGG. It had a decent rating on BGG. It won Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year) in 1990, and usually Spiel des Jahres winners don't dissapoint, so I'm pretty hopeful.

The Hong Kong movie was this interesting "horror" movie called Dating A Vampire. It was definitely worth the $7 we spent on it. It had some amusing moments and certainly many campy moments. This will be shared with friends. It's too silly not to share. Yay for cheesy B movies!

I think tonight will be an early-to-bed night. I'm very tired and have to get up early to submit my payroll and loan out some equipment.