All Kinds of People

Yesterday afternoon I drove up to Subrata's to play a new game he bought called Tigris and Euphrates. It turns out to be quite a good game: Each player is trying to gain victory points by expanding the sphere of influence of various nations in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley. Only one player can control a sphere of influence (politics, religion, farming, or trading) in a given nation at once, so combat of a sort can occur. The trick is that your overall score is the lowest number of victory points you have in any category. So you need to build in a balanced manner, gaining victory points of all kinds.

I arrived in the middle of one game, and then I played in the next two games, finishing second each time. It turns out that there are many interesting strategies to be taken in the game, both offensive and otherwise. I had a lot of fun instigating combat between two nations in which I wasn't invested. Unfortunately in both cases I had a weakness which caused me to lose by a single victory point. Oh, well! Pretty good for my first time out. (Though no one else had played this game before last Wednesday.)

Afterwards we went out to Armadillo Willy's barbecue for dinner. Yum! I discovered the "replacing one or two side dishes with additional corn muffins" option, which is pretty tasty. (I love corn muffins!)

In the evening, Lucy and I went to Eleanor's "birthday and farewell" party at a microbrewery in San Francisco. I drove up to Lucy and John's house, which is nice, although in keeping with the Bay Area it is on the small side, and she and I carpooled from there.

The party was basically a couple of tables in this pretty large brew-pub. Jen Wade and Michael Walsh were both there, but otherwise everyone were friends of Eleanor's whom I didn't know (and in fact the two "groups" mostly stayed separate during the evening). It was a good, laid-back time, though. Eleanor wandered between the groups to talk to everyone as the hostess. She's moving to Noo Yawk later this year to pursue her (stage) acting career. Best of luck to her!

We journallers did gossip a bit about the journalling "community", and Jen tried to convince us to go to JournalCon in October. Since I have a vanishingly small interest in the "community", I'm unlikely to go. (Individual journallers, I like; but I get no sense of community from the experience, and in particular I don't read many of the really massively popular journals, iconoclast that I am.)

So, I had a good time. Though I have not been to a bar since Jen Wade's birthday party (my all-time most popular journal entry, incidentally) and the bar scene is not generally for me. (Give me coffee shops any day!)

Today I met up with CJ and we went to see the Giants play the Braves. The Giants had won the first two games of the series, with Livan Hernandez' 2-0 shutout on Friday, and the drubbing of Andy Ashby yesterday, led by Ellis Burks' two home runs. Today was Kirk Reuter vs. Tom Glavine. We had awesome seats, first row on the third base side, right next to where the Giants pitchers warm up. Photos on this page are of starter Kirk Reuter warming up, and of catcher Doug Mirabelli catching his warm-ups, while Marvin Benard stands in to give him a target to pitch to.

Reuter stumbled out of the gate, and did not make it out of the fifth inning. Glavine was far from great, giving up four runs in seven innings, but he left with a 7-4 lead. Although Burks hit two more home runs today, it just wasn't enough (the Braves' Chipper Jones also hit two), and the Giants lost, 8-5. It was a pleasant, sunny day, though, and we both got some reading done on the train, as well as the usual baseball talk. We'd hoped for more from Reuter, but oh well. I did learn that the sno-cones at Pacific Bell Park are perhaps the worst such that I've ever had (not enough sugar or flavor!), but otherwise it was a typical day at the park. Fun!

CJ, David and I went out for dinner afterwards, plus I got to hold CJ's cat Tab Hunter several times. I think he's starting to warm up to me.

Finally, after a weekend of not-quite-enough sleep, and lots of social activity, I am completely pooped. Time for bed!