Game Day!

I know I’ve mentioned it a couple times here over the last couple of years, including when it started, but I have a couple of friends (a former roommate and his wife) who host monthly game days. It’s always the second Saturday of the month. It starts at one and goes until people leave. It’s a come and go as you please, but I’m usually there for most of the entire thing. 

And it’s a blast. I wasn’t super familiar with many of the games when we started, but now I’m familiar with many of the favorite games. And we have hardly scratched the surface of their collection.

It’s rubbed off on me. I’ve started getting games from Kickstarter. Not that I’ve sat down and figured out how to play all of them. I’m at about half of the games I’ve gotten so far figured out. And they are fun if not favorites of the group. Still, they do seem to enjoy them when we play them. 

Anyway, this post was inspired by this month’s game day. It was a little low key compared to many of the game days. There are a lot of college students who attend, and they are done for the summer. We talked a bit more than usual, too, which was nice. I was able to introduce a game that seemed to go over well. The game was Horizons, which is a game I bought after playing it with my brother and his family in March. 

This is always a highlight of my month. I didn’t leave until about one in the morning this time, and the last couple of hours was just talking. And I’m already looking forward to next month.

A House Cooling Party

 Almost two weeks ago, I went to a house cooling party. 

A friend I grew up with in Santa Rosa now lives over in Alta Dena. While she didn’t lose her house in the fire, she came very close. And she had lots of smoke damage. So, for the last five month, she’s been working on getting everything replaced and redone that she needed taken care of. While working full time and keeping her daughter on track in school. Well, they were finally able to move back in, and they had a party to celebrate. It also happened to be her husband’s birthday. 

And yes, they called it a house cooling party since warming it up didn’t seem like something they’d want to celebrate. 

I knew a couple of the people who were there, and it was nice to catch up with them. And it was nice to chat the little bit I could with the hosts, although they were quite busy talking to lots of others, as you’d expect. It was a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon and early evening.

June 16th's Joke of the Week

A guy goes in for a job interview and the manager says, “We’re looking for someone who is responsible.”

“Well, I’m your man,” the guy replies.  “In my last job, whenever anything went wrong, they said I was responsible.”

June 9th's Joke of the Week

I have the world’s worst thesaurus.  Not only is it terrible, it’s terrible.

The Long One Day Road Trip

Now that I'm caught up, maybe I can keep updates regular.  That would be nice.

In an effort to do that, I'm going to talk about this last weekend.  I didn't have anything else planned, so I decided to take a road trip.

I'd realized that there is a mission in Oceanside not too far from a diner I always eat at when I'm in the area.  Since the Camp Pendleton Mud Run isn't opened to the public again this year (boo hoo!!!), I wasn't going to be going down there any time soon.  And, I'll admit, I had an audiobook calling my name.  So I decided to jump in my car and drive down to visit the mission.

First of all, I do have to mock myself for not really thinking about the Mission San Luis Rey being close to where I regularly go.  You see, the Pit Stop Diner, where I love to eat, is on Mission Ave.  Now, in my defense, there is a Mission Blvd. in the town where I grew up that isn't connected to any of the missions.  But when I realized that last year, I decided to go visit it sometime.  And over the last week and a half, the call got loud.

I actually got up and left early (which may account for the nap I took Sunday afternoon), and I beat most of the traffic Saturday morning.  I spent 45 minutes or so at the mission itself, then grab lunch.

We've been having some weird weather in So Cal.  It had been really hot at home Friday and Saturday, but being near the coast it was cooler there.  But, I could see some lightning and hear thunder, so I decided not to hit the beach.

Instead, on my way home, I stopped by Downtown Disney.  It's been a while since I did that to pin shop.  And I remembered why.  They now charge $10 to park, even with validation.  No free parking like we used to get.  Not that interested in paying to park.  But I decided to go ahead and do that since I really did want to look for some pins.  Between Disneyland's 70th anniversary and the 25th anniversary of Disney pins, I wanted to snag some.  Plus, it's been a while since I bought any at all.  They didn't have any of the limited edition pins I was interested in, but I still bought 9 or so pins.

By the time I did all of that, traffic had really kicked in, and it took forever to come home.  On the plus side, I made it all the way through my book.  Yes, I was listening a little faster than normal reading speed, but still, it was a lot of driving.  I was pretty tired when I pulled into the garage at the end of the day.

June 3rd's Joke of the Week

Replacing words with the names of musical instruments in a sentence often goes undetected, accordion to a recent survey.

May 2025 - Cursed Children

It May, I went to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

I went with a friend.  I'd read the play when they released the hardcover years ago, but I'd forgotten lots of it.  The one thing I really remembered was that I had to see it if I ever got the chance.  I had to know how they'd do the magic live on stage.

Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out how they did some of it.  But it was super impressive.  I bought everything I was seeing, and we have some real magic live on stage in front of us.

I have a feeling my reactions to the play in person are probably the same as when I read it.  There is one twist in particular that I wasn't that impressed with.  I'm sure they could have figured out some other way to get the plot going.  But I guess not.

Either way, it was nice seeing my friend and it was a nice night out.

I was shocked at home empty the balcony was, however.  But it worked well since it meant we could move away from the middle schoolers near us who didn't seem to get being a good audience member.  They could have been worse, but they could have been much better, too.

April 2025 - Malice Domestic Again

 I made it back to Malice Domestic again in April.  I figured out I hadn't been since 2017.  Quite a long stretch.  But the weekend they picked worked for me, so I was able to go.

For those who don't know, it's a convention for mystery authors and readers. It's held every spring just outside of Washington DC.  It focuses on the traditional and cozy mystery, which is what I typically read.

I had an extra motivation for going since their Malice Remembers author they were honoring was Dorothy Gilman.  She wrote the Mrs. Pollifax series which is where I stole Carstairs.  I co-lead a book discussion of the first book in that series, in fact.  It was such fun to reread it.  The event itself went well with plenty of people talking about our questions.  And, it truly made me happy that the room was about half and half people who had never read the series before but picked up the book for this event and people who were long time fans.  Always happy to find people enjoying the series.

The rest of the weekend was a blur.  I didn't feel like I had the time to really talk to half the people I wanted to talk to.  I did get to meet some of the authors I've started reading in the years since I was last there, which was a treat.  And I met a new author with a book coming out in September that I'm looking forward to reading.

Friday night, I got to have dinner with a couple of friends I've made in the Trixie Belden community.  One of them was at Malice Domestic since she's also an author, but the other lives in the area.  We'd hoped to meet up with more, but they were busy or sick.  

The only down side was that for the first time in over 20 years, I missed the LA Times Festival of Books, which was the same weekend.  

March 2025 - A Milestone Birthday and Some Family Time

In March, I hit one of those milestone birthdays.  You know, the ones that end with a 0.  Obviously, it didn't sneak up on me, but it's still taking some getting used to.

My birthdays often fall during month end close at work.  At my current job, it's quarter end close, so that's even busier.  But, my birthday was on a Saturday this year.  And it happened to be the Saturday that my friends still host their monthly game day.  Yes, they knew, and they made sure I was wished a happy birthday.  And they let me pick where we got dinner from (Chick-fil-a, for the record).  I even won some games that day.  One was a set up, but I don't think the rest were.

The following week, my brother and his family were in town for a day.  The original plan had been to go to Magic Mountain, which I have a pass to this year.  But it was cold and wet most of the week, and that day wasn't looking any better.  We decided to call it off, and then they wound up not opening at all that day anyway.  So they came over to my place and played some games.  It was a good day.

Then, the following week, we spent some time together in Palm Springs.  My parents and uncle and aunt were also there.  I wasn't expecting, but they had cake and ice cream for my birthday.  Yes, we played some games, but we also swam and played some pickleball.  The weather had really changed, and it was significantly warmer than it had been just a few days before.  Considering we were there to swim, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It was a good month.

May 26th's Joke of the Week

After wondering all night where the sun had gone, it finally dawned on me.