S#72: Play Board Games

As a continued celebration of my five thousand writing hours, I gathered several friends to play “Up and Down the River”,

Take Two,

and the world’s best board game, Settlers of Catan.

You can actually see the cogs of my mind whirring in the above picture. Settlers takes up just enough of my mind to stop me thinking about other things, which is very very useful for people with anxiety or depression. If I don’t play it for a while, I get cravings. I will refuse to play most other board games (one side-effect of being born into a family who own literally hundreds of games). It’s not just me, either – Settlers has been voted the world’s best board game several times.

Incidentally, do you hate scrabble? I do. “Take Two” uses scrabble tiles plus any flat surface. Everyone takes seven pieces at random and builds their own crossword. Whoever uses up all their letters first calls out “Take Two” and everyone takes two more tiles. Then everyone frantically rearranges their crosswords until the cry of “take two” rings out again. You keep going until you run out of pieces, and if you care about such things you can add up your scores (letters that are used twice get counted twice). My family plays that you can use “q” with or without a “u”.

It was a fabulous afternoon/evening. Special thanks to Ben for bringing his thinkgeek remote control helicopter (although the word “control” isn’t entirely accurate). As its spinning blades of death attacked each of us in turn (generally beginning with whatever poor sod was holding the remote), I laughed so hard I cried.

Observe the expression of manly joy on CJ’s face:

Coming soon:

S#68: Silly Slippers

S#82: Old School (featuring a book called “The Gay Dolphin Adventure” – what could possibly go wrong?)

Three-Ingredient Thursday: Lunch.

Visit my godparents (yep, I have them)

Go to a wedding.

And a surprise or two.