THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I haven’t heard anything yet about getting back to work, but that’s mostly because I haven’t called in to see how things are going. I’m thinking of doing that sometime next week if I don’t heard anything from them.

Meanwhile, I checked my e-mail and I received an invite to go to a preview party, at Universal Studios, for the new Simpsons Ride this Friday. At least we get a small reward for having killed ourselves working on that thing. Can’t wait. I’ll let you know what I think.

FAMILY

For Mother’s Day, my family got together for dinner at our house. We ordered Tai food and pretty much talked and laughed a lot. One of our conversations was about the Indiana Jones movies. We then started talking about how silly and ridiculous Temple of Doom was. I got up and put the movie on, since I own the DVD. By the time we were done with dinner, we were all sitting around the TV watching the movie, making fun of how lame it was, and just having a great time watching it. It was a good fun evening.

BOARD GAMES/VIDEO GAMES

So I decided to go on Board Game Geek to play a game of Tigris & Euphrates using their Play-by-web version of the game on the site. I was doing fairly well for about five turns and then I just got my butt kicked. I ended the game tide for third place out of four people which isn’t very good but I had a blast. In fact, I had such a good time that I immediately joined two more games after the the last one was over.

Tigris & Euphrates is a game designed by Reiner Knizia and it’s by far, one of the most counterintuitive games you’ll ever learn. It’s fun and very very cut throat but it’s difficult to explain and learn. I played it against a free computer program and learned to play it using that before I bought it. It took me three games before I understood what I was doing and then it took me two more before I could even begin to figure out what strategies to use to even have a chance at winning. The first time I played it live, I discovered how crazy cut throat the game really was. The last time I played it was with my brother, his wife Deborah, and my wife Alesha. Alesha got mad at me during that game because I made a move that really messed her up big time. I haven’t played the game with her since. I didn’t really know she’d react that way. Now I’m playing that game online with complete strangers and were really beating each other up in the game and we’re fine with it. Go figure.

CATHOLICISM/BOARD GAMES

So I was reading up on some board game news at the Board game news website and I read a really interesting article about a new board game coming out, from Ragnar Brothers, called Monastery. It’s a 2-4 player game and it lasts 90 minutes. According to the article players:

…experience two days of monastic life. Within each day are three rounds of tile placement and scoring (divided between study and toil), three service rounds (Matins, Sext and Vespers), and a night round.

Wow, how cool is that? To win the game:

…players must collect the letters of the abbey’s motto ‘Libera Nos Quaesumus Ab Omnibus Malis Amen’. The letters become progressively more expensive and players must decide whether to buy letters or recruit extra monks.

As far as I can tell, with my ridiculously bad understanding of Latin, the motto means something like, ‘Liberate us so we could be completely free from evil, amen.’ (if I got this wrong, please feel free to correct me). Wow, religious Latin in my board game.

From the articles I’ve read so far on this game (one on Board game news and the other on BGG), it sounds really pretty darn cool. It looks like there is a lot to it and the theme of being a monk is remarkably well represented in the game:

You start the game with one monk in the Abbey, and monks move about to construct tiles, study, toil, use icons (in the advanced game), or pray. The plastic monk figures are designed to tip forward in prayer, which scores you the value of the tile and takes the monk out of service until it returns to the Abbey. Most of these activities score points for a player, and those points can retrieve letters or additional monks from the “letter grid.”

What other game can you think of where praying is a positive, point giving benefit? I hope it comes out in the U.S., I’d love to buy myself a copy.

MY WEEK

I’ve been fighting with the Munchkin all week, to get her to eat. I sit her down and feed her but she refuses to chew and swallow her food. She just packs the food in her cheeks like a hamster. I’ve tried tricking her by offering her yogurt or even a snow cone while she has food in her mouth, so she could swallow it, but she’s found a way to swallow the yogurt and ice without swallowing the actual food. It’s real frustrating. She only wants snacks treats and milk but not real food. It’s such a pain.

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