TheBanyanTree: Indoor Picnic

[trebro at att.net]

I noticed that I haven't stopped by to say anything lately, so here I am breaking tradition while I stay up entirely too late because I stayed in bed entirely too long today--or, I suppose, what should be called yesterday.

Liz and I had our friends Rob and Judy over tonight, our first foursome get together in awhile. Sometimes, it's just so hard to sit down and actually find a time to do dinner with friends, that it was nice to do this between crazy holiday parties.

Since we were hosting, we made dinner, a combination of veggie and non-veggie burgers, along with fries, yummie spinach, vegan ravioli (which we dumped cheese on! hahahahahah!), and pot stickers. Nothing fancy, but it made for a really nice picnicy dinner.

Judy brought along a cranium card game, which basically played a littel bit like Uno, but for each color you had to do something different, like add numbers or build a puzzle. I won both games, getting very lucky with the cards I had. (Of course, going first helped (the rules give first to the person who has the next birthday. Thus, I will not play again until, oh, late December...) Then we broke open the copy of Carcassone that I got Liz and I as our Christmas game. One of the things I like best about the game is that it's really easy to teach to new people--Rob farmed his way to a strong second place and Judy was big on cities. I took the high road, as it were, but Liz beat us all by being cloistered about 3 or 4 times.

Last off was Corsairs, a game Rob and Judy both really like. Rob sailed away with the game, taking 8 ships and being the first person ever (that I've played with at least) to go past the end of the scoring track they provide. Judy, Liz, and I think it's because he reads too many nautical novels.

Definitely a lot of fun and a good warm-up for my birthday party coming up soon...

-Rob