The Mad Schemes of Dr. Tectonic

Monday evening, the three of us went down to Karen & Thomas's (through a pouring rainstorm) to play Talisman with Thomas. My first character got royally hosed on the very first turn, so I managed to get him killed off in fairly short order and started over with a new character. It was pretty clear that I wasn't going to win the game, but I managed to make up some new plans and goals for myself, and had a good time wandering around the board trying to accomplish them, so I regard that as a victory.

Talisman is kind of weird that way, because it doesn't have very deep strategy -- most of the time, the only decision to make is "left or right". But it's still fun, and I think it's because you spend a lot of time encountering novel, colorful obstacles and getting involved in the game's narrative. So the entertainment is mostly about flavor and identification, which means it's not very far from tabletop RPGs where making up your goal is par for the course.

Yesterday I worked a good chunk of the day from home (too much to do this week, ack) until heading over to the Floyds' for our now traditional barbecue and sauntering over to the high-school football field to watch fireworks. Jerry was super-tired, not having gotten much downtime this weekend, so he stayed home and slept, but Bryree came along with us. It rained again, and we nearly missed the fireworks (they were delayed by an hour), but one of the nice things about being an adult is that you know that there will be a 4th of July next year, too, so it's not a big deal.

My step-sister and her family are moving to England, so last night we got together for a farewell dinner. We went (on my brother-in-law's moving-expenses per diem for the new job, huzzah) to Yak & Yeti, an Indian restaurant that I have to remember is pretty close by, because they have a nice buffet.

It seems I'm an expert on ethnic cuisine relative to the rest of my family. I got to give my little brother advice on taking math classes for college credit next year. (Calc 3 is neat, take linear algebra instead of diff-eq because it's a gajillion times more interesting and useful.) I remembered not to eat the gulab jamun (the donut-holes in syrup) for dessert, because it's so sweet that I always regret it, but I enjoyed the mango custard.

Tonight, the boys drove up to Boulder and we had dinner with Chuck/Jessica and her colleague Victor, who are in town installing mobile phone technology -- or would be, if they weren't instead sitting around waiting because the local company they're doing it for doesn't have its act together. Plus, more snafus mean that they're commuting every morning from Greeley down to south Denver. Oy!

We had tasty Chinese at Golden Lotus; the green beans were especially good, and they brought us complimentary green tea ice cream.

Tomorrow will be all about frantically trying to get my poster updated so I can get it printed before I got to Galveston, which is complicated by the fact that I'm going to Boston in a week and only going to be back for a day between trips, ack.