Mmm...gaming
I spent yesterday in San Diego. ryannmarin's husband was hosting some boardgaming while she was up here at a crafting convention. He's on Facebook but not here (and she seems to have abandoned LJ as well). But as with all trips to San Diego, it started with buying my car back from my favorite Honda dealership down there.
I've heard horrible things about OC Honda dealerships and I trek back to San Diego often enough that it's still worthwhile to take my car to the same place it's gone since I bought it. They do a great job and now they have a program which is very convenient to me: 10% discount and a free rental car for some amount of money per year. It's already more than paid for itself. I chatted with the service advisor for a while about his Del Sol. He mentioned that he sold it at 300k miles a while ago and the friend of his who bought it is still driving it at 500k miles. That sounds good to me. :-) It was expensive, as usual, but I'm always glad when they find stuff while it costs hundreds instead of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, they didn't have the parts for one thing so I'll have to return next weekend.
My other usual errand is stopping by to thank my property management company. My mom buys bottles of wine from the Fresno State store and we take them down for them. They've done a wonderful job watching over my townhouse and I want to keep it at the front of their mind. :-) I had called the two owners right after breakfast (mmm...Honey's; my other SD errand) and they called back just as I had gotten on the freeway to head up for gaming. They were just heading downtown so it was quite convenient to meet up at their office. We met, I gave them wine, filled out some form to keep the state from stealing more of my money and we were done. The timing was just perfect.
Gaming was great. I remembered one of M's friends but hadn't met the other three. They are a nice bunch, though. I was the first to arrive so M and I played Balloon Cup while we waited. He also introduced me to Start Player as an interesting way to choose who the first player of a game is when the rules don't have a specific method. The rest of the group showed up while we were playing so they picked up something quick and eventually we all finished nearly together. We started with Korsar which was tricky but pretty fun. Then we moved on to Shadow Hunters which was awesome. We played that a couple of times and I quite enjoyed it, even if I was pretty terrible. We lost a player to another party and switched to a couple of reaction-time games that I'd rather not repeat. I ended up breaking one woman's nail although I think she felt worse about stabbing me in the hand. We lost another player while I went to go pickup my car. But that meant we had exactly the right number of people to finally play Pandemic for which I'd been waiting all night. It was great and MUCH faster than I had expected. I look forward to playing it with thealien and crew. We love good cooperative games. We ended the night with Ghost Stories, another good cooperative game. I wasn't as excited about it, but I like cooperative games and while it was a little complicated it was pretty fun. It starts out deceptively easy but there's a turning point at which you quickly become overwhelmed and success seems completely out of reach.
After gaming I cruised by wedschilde's and sanguinepen's to drop off a mug I'd been holding for wedschilde since last summer and chat. It was great to hang out. I haven't seen them since Comic-Con and I miss them (and the rest of my SD crew). I think I overstayed my welcome, though, since both sanguinepen and I were yawning before I left. But it was a nice way to end the evening. And the weather cooperated by not raining the entire time I was out in it.
I've heard horrible things about OC Honda dealerships and I trek back to San Diego often enough that it's still worthwhile to take my car to the same place it's gone since I bought it. They do a great job and now they have a program which is very convenient to me: 10% discount and a free rental car for some amount of money per year. It's already more than paid for itself. I chatted with the service advisor for a while about his Del Sol. He mentioned that he sold it at 300k miles a while ago and the friend of his who bought it is still driving it at 500k miles. That sounds good to me. :-) It was expensive, as usual, but I'm always glad when they find stuff while it costs hundreds instead of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, they didn't have the parts for one thing so I'll have to return next weekend.
My other usual errand is stopping by to thank my property management company. My mom buys bottles of wine from the Fresno State store and we take them down for them. They've done a wonderful job watching over my townhouse and I want to keep it at the front of their mind. :-) I had called the two owners right after breakfast (mmm...Honey's; my other SD errand) and they called back just as I had gotten on the freeway to head up for gaming. They were just heading downtown so it was quite convenient to meet up at their office. We met, I gave them wine, filled out some form to keep the state from stealing more of my money and we were done. The timing was just perfect.
Gaming was great. I remembered one of M's friends but hadn't met the other three. They are a nice bunch, though. I was the first to arrive so M and I played Balloon Cup while we waited. He also introduced me to Start Player as an interesting way to choose who the first player of a game is when the rules don't have a specific method. The rest of the group showed up while we were playing so they picked up something quick and eventually we all finished nearly together. We started with Korsar which was tricky but pretty fun. Then we moved on to Shadow Hunters which was awesome. We played that a couple of times and I quite enjoyed it, even if I was pretty terrible. We lost a player to another party and switched to a couple of reaction-time games that I'd rather not repeat. I ended up breaking one woman's nail although I think she felt worse about stabbing me in the hand. We lost another player while I went to go pickup my car. But that meant we had exactly the right number of people to finally play Pandemic for which I'd been waiting all night. It was great and MUCH faster than I had expected. I look forward to playing it with thealien and crew. We love good cooperative games. We ended the night with Ghost Stories, another good cooperative game. I wasn't as excited about it, but I like cooperative games and while it was a little complicated it was pretty fun. It starts out deceptively easy but there's a turning point at which you quickly become overwhelmed and success seems completely out of reach.
After gaming I cruised by wedschilde's and sanguinepen's to drop off a mug I'd been holding for wedschilde since last summer and chat. It was great to hang out. I haven't seen them since Comic-Con and I miss them (and the rest of my SD crew). I think I overstayed my welcome, though, since both sanguinepen and I were yawning before I left. But it was a nice way to end the evening. And the weather cooperated by not raining the entire time I was out in it.