We just got home from the final stage of the traditional New Years' party at the Nookery -- I spent most of the time playing games (a couple iterations of Settlers of Catan, Thurn and Taxis, and a couple of unfamiliar ones called Oasis and Wild Life).

I hope you all have a Happy New Year.

starmalachite and I spent Friday evening at a Jonathan Coulton concert opened by Paul & Storm. The opener had some good numbers (I recall a "Schoolhouse Rock" style counting-to-ten number, but they lost me with a funny-for-one-minute but lasted-for-many-minutes "If James Taylor Were on Fire (&c)" number. The main act was great, as Jonathan Coulton always is.

We got to the con and played a few games of Ingenious before I crashed out for the night. Saturday, I had time to settle in to the con and play a few games, among which I was introduced to Winds of Plunder. As always, the crowd was small but friendly.

Sunday night, a group of us including angel_vixen and blackpaladin played a truly accursed game of Shadows Over Camelot, that ended with seven black swords and only one white one. (Even if you don't know the game, you've probably guessed that that's bad. It is.) About the only redeeming feature is that there was, in fact, a traitor subtly working against the rest of the group -- if we'd done that badly against the pure mechanics of the game, even I would have had to suggest some silly gamer-superstition ritual to break the curse.

Monday, the con ended, entirely too soon as usual. We played half a game of Cities and Knights before moving out of the function space, and then half a game of Alhambra: The Dice Game in the lobby before adjourning for the dead dog dinner. We checked out a few Labor Day sales, without much luck at finding anything useful; at that point, starmalachite and I concluded that I was fading a bit too much to hang around for the Three Left Feet meeting and headed home.

starmalachite and I are going to a Jonathan Coulton and Paul & Storm concert at the Birchmere. After that, we'll be spending most of the weekend at the local gaming relaxacon, TCEP 14 -- Gamers of the Carribbean. The hotel apparently has free wireless, so I may be online occasionally, but less often than usual.

After running a batch of errands (checking in with the hotel to make sure of some details for Conterpoint and our wedding, starmalachite's fabric shopping), we got to our usual Friday night gaming session.  That went pretty well, except that after the surplus of soda supplies last week, nobody brought any this week and we almost ran out.

The Maryland Faerie Fest yesterday had much better weather than the forecasts had been calling for, except for a few brief bursts of rain toward the end. The main highlights I caught were the Clam Chowder and Emerald Rose concerts and the Three Left Feet dance demo/teaching session. One amusing moment during the Emerald Rose concert is that one of them pointed out the "Plan 9 From Outer Space" T-shirt I was wearing when the between-songs chatter turned to the subject for some reason.

The Friday night gaming session went particularly well; I handily won games of Puerto Rico (for the first time -- much as I like it, I never seemed to get the hang of its strategy, but this time everything just seemed to click into place) and the new "Power and Glory" version of Thurn and Taxis. (The name struck me as a bit odd; "Power and Glory" seems like it ought to be the name of an old-fashioned combat wargame instead of a classic resource-management German boardgame. It may have something to do with the historical background of the game(s).) That degree of success surprised me a bit; my brain had been dragging a bit all week for some reason.

We finished the evening with the Alhambra dice game; I didn't do as well in that but I think I've got a feel for the strategy for next time.

I also hit upon a graphics-tweaking trick for the Erfworld cartoon image I most often use as a userpic to make the "kritch skritch" sound effect come out clearly at userpic size.

(As credited in my userpic notes, Erfworld is copyright 2006 by Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi. I adapted and used the art under the Creative Commons License (attribution, noncommercial, share-alike, as indicated by the icons to the lower left of the giant Elvises creating the world) and the specific policy statement re this image.)

Now, I need to go mow the lawn. I've been looking for a lawn service (my Puritan streak was trumped by the fact that I come out ahead both financially and aggrivationally by spending the same hours putting in overtime at the office), but most of them seem to be oriented toward people who want a parade-ground perfect lawn rather than people who are satisfied if the neighbors don't show up with pitchforks and torches. (The most lawn-obsessed person I've ever met was the same one with the most pronounced "get a life" attitude toward fandom. Go figure.)