Today was Tartan production. I was supposed to do layout for sports. What this meant, in practice, was staring at the intranet and its distinct lack of sports articles that were ready for layout. I did manage to get the first broadsheet page to copy though, but that’s because it was a page 3/4 full of ads, so I just filled the remaining 1/4 with a sports commentary and submitted it. Instead, I did some copy and some photography and did some early layout for the special section. Because, oh yeah, the TOC is this week. (I’m not going, thankfully… but this means that some awesome people are back in town and hopefully I will get to see some of them again.)

Afterward, Keith, Dan, Marina, and Owen came over and we played games.

I won the game of Ingenious against Owen in a tiebreaker… up until my last play, we were completely tied (lowest color at 9, next at 11, next at 12, next at 14, and two maxed out). I ended the game with a play that increased my third-lowest color by one and won the game. It was amusing.

Won the (very short) game of CMU Chrononauts when other people patched the timeline to my character’s desired state. It lasted less than four times around.

Lost the game of 6 nimmt to Dan by one point (16 to 17, with Greg in third place at 34).

Then I won the game of Bohnanza by tiebreaker (cards in hand). Dan, Marina, and I all had 14 gold and Owen had 13 gold.

So it was a night with many (very) close games, which was a lot of fun. Friends are awesome, and games are awesome, and I’m glad that games with friends are becoming a regular part of my life.
(There was also an awesome gaming marathon with people last weekend.)

There was interesting funness Friday night when there was a party celebrating Patrick’s successful thesis defense. There will likely never be photos posted from that, because yeah. It’s amusing to me how much grad students can act like undergrads when it comes to alcohol and partying. But there were board games at that too, so I have played lots and lots of board games this month (plus the usual Thursday board games at Yubin’s), and it’s not even 1/3 of the way through the month.

I’ve been working more on People Wars’ new expansion set: Exchanges. The theme of the set is effects that hurt you but grant some larger benefit (like reducing your hand size to 1 but letting you play more items each turn, or reducing work on tasks by 1 but not working when exhausted and letting other players use the character to play cards). I’ve been really happy with how People Wars is coming along… as a game, it feels more mature than its previous variants (PPA TCG, Student Wars), and I also feel like each expansion set has a distinct theme and feel.

In any case, it occurs to me that I never bothered posting the first photo I took of Owen, Charles, Mark, or Justin even though I added them to photo stats, so I should remedy this.

First photo of Owen:

November 2, 2007 in Scotland Yard (with Sully, Sam, and Josh)

First photo of Charles and Mark:

April 27, 2006 at the SCS BBQ (this was before I knew them; can you find them both?)
My first photos of them after actually meeting them were in San Francisco on July 12, 2009 and August 4, 2009, respectively.

First photo of Justin

August 31, 2008 in front of my apartment building (when he was coming over for games)