Spycow

I’ve come across a severe love of corned beef as of late. I’m not sure why (aside from the fact that it’s just friggin’ awesome), especially considering how much I’ve avoided it prior. I mean, I’ve had the corned beef hash at the Gold Star Diner and it was ok (better than the canned crap), but it didn’t really fill me with joy.

Then Karen and I made corned beef ourselves, and oh God was it good. Since then I’ve been ordering it at the Boytnon nearly constantly and we’ve cooked it ourselves a few times. The important thing to note here is that as a result of making our own, we’ve always had leftovers. And, of course, that means making corned beef hash. Apparently I’m quite good at making it, according to Karen. That just makes me want to make it more.

On a separate note, March is coming up. Karen’s going to be out of the country for a large portion of that (and I will be, as well, but for a small portion, as I will be joining her in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for a few days). She gets to go to Scotland over Easter during her business trip to Cambridge, which is friggin cool. I wish I could go with her, but I’m glad she’ll get to go even if I’m not there.

On another separate note, we’ve booked the photographer for the wedding. Her samples were really really nice, so we’re optimistic about it turning out well. I’m getting excited about this already.

Ahhhh… second day back at work after a nice long vacation. Feels good.

With the newly rented Grand Prix, Karen and I set out on a whirlwind tour of the northeast, from MA to CT to NJ, back to MA, and up to NY before finally finishing back home. We visited my family in Dudley, Karen’s family in CT, my brother’s family in NJ, Karen’s family in NJ, the cat back in MA, then Karen’s college friends in NY.

We each got and gave a bunch of great gifts, and what’s awesome is that my parents gave us a dishwasher! I finally got to meet the entirety of Karen’s family, which was also awesome and a little intimidating as there were 20ish of us all staying in the same house.

There was a ridiculous amount of snow falling on the 30th in Albany, but luckily it was light and fluffy so the car swept off easily enough. New Year’s Eve was fun. We got dressed up and drank champagne and played Rock Band, whose guitar broke after 4 days of ownership by Bill. He was not pleased. But it was fun anyway.

All told, things are looking up for this year. :)

Karen and I hit up DC last week. It was pretty darned cool. I’d say something about it being weird to see all that history in one place, but I live in Boston, so… I will say it was a lot different to how it gets treated ‘round these parts. The National Mall in particular. A (relatively) vast expanse of “nothing” in the middle of a city, simply for the exposition of monuments. Karen has a bunch of the pictures from walking around the Mall on her facebook account. I found it a little touching that we’d care enough to honor our founding fathers so much to clear out a whole crapload of space just to show it. I also found it very dismal that not a quarter mile away were the people primarily responsible for removing the freedoms that those Founding Fathers fought so hard to secure, but what do I know? I occasionally write a self-centered blog post, so therefore I’m importants!

That aside, the city itself was quite nice. I could see myself living there, although I may be skewed on the weather aspect considering it snowed while we were there. I have a feeling that doesn’t happen often. Meh, liked it just the same. We met up with Deb who moved down there a few months ago, which was cool. The food was really good, but a touch expensive. Though I’m not convinced that that wasn’t because we were just touristing… or maybe because we ate at the same 4 places all week. Hey, they were really freaking good, shut up. Greek/Lebanese tapas, Mexican tapas (we ate grasshoppers!), a steakhouse (with an extensive whiskey menu), and a “Grille” near the White House. It may have been repetitive, but it was good, damnit.

Karen went for a conference, so I worked on the days she did, and the other days we explored. I had a lot of fun, and considering that we didn’t see all of the Smithsonian museums, we’ll have to go back. Well, that, and we didn’t get into the Capitol or the Washington Monument either, but, you know, details.

Thanksgiving is a lovely time for relaxing and spending time with family. In this case, my future in-laws. Karen and I took our freshly rented car (more later) and went to CT and spent Thursday and Friday with her family. It was nice. Karen made two kinds of stuffing which were both awesome. We had all the normal fixin’s on the sizeable turkey. Quite a nice dinner, and we played some board games afterwards and have a nice relaxing evening.

Today we headed back and stopped at my parents’ place. By this time, though, Karen was feeling a bit under the weather so we sat around and chatted. This was also quite nice. I like spending time with our families. Now we’re sitting at home on the couch chillin’ with the kitty, who missed us greatly.

So, about the rental. Coming home from Worcester the previous Wednesday, we hit a deer on 495. Thankfully, Karen was alert enough to see it and warn me so I could slow down and not hit it at highway speeds. It’s getting appraised on Tuesday, so we’ll find out if we need to get another car or not.

In slightly related news, my brother got a Mini. I mention this because I was totally going to get a Mini for my next car and he completely stole my idea. Ah well.

... to get married in. And I say this because Karen and I have decided upon a time and place (which, really wasn’t all that hard a search. The first place we looked at was stunning). Set your calendars (and for the more forgetful among us, your watches) for October 4, 2008, probably nearing dusk. It’s going to be a friggin’ blast.

We’ve already secured the presence of a few people for the wedding party, and the rest will be coming into place shortly. What’s funny is that two of the people we picked have just recently started dating, which is odd in a wonderful kind of way. Well, not really odd since both Karen and I saw it coming a mile off. :)

We have to send out “Save the Date” cards now, since apparently invitations don’t get sent out nearly as far in advance as I thought. I could have sworn they get sent out like 6 months prior, but I’d never heard of “Save the Date” cards either until recently, so I guess that’s just something different they did when I was a kid? Maybe? And we need to get on to making the favors. The current idea is to etch video game characters and stuff onto wine glasses or champagne flutes. We spent a whole night at the Boynton a while back coming up with ideas. One my mother came up with is, instead of the glasses, we give bottles of real maple syrup in various grades. They both look good (according to Mom) and they’ll taste good (though I don’t care much for the “Real” stuff—I know, I know…).

God I’m excited about this now. :)

This coming month (October, that is), a lot of people are incrementing their age, myself included. Also included are Karen and about 500 people she knows. I’ll be turning 27, she’ll be turning 30. The problem is that when you write it out, it makes us sound like we’re on Old’s doorstep, but I know I certainly don’t feel old, and Karen doesn’t feel like she’s old either. So what’s the number? It’s crap, that’s what it is.

Plus, karaoke and Chinese food on Saturday. What better way to watch the number tick over (well, sorta… her party’s a few days before the birthday, but that’s just nitpicking)?

I had my teeth cleaned today. This, in itself is not interesting, but the conversation I had with the hygienist gave me a chance to reflect on what I have in my life, since I tend to only talk to my hygienist every 6 months or so. I’ve gotten engaged, my business is up to 11 people and doing well, my fiancee is working at a great company and just got a promotion. AND I have no cavities at all (though I have a chip on a molar they want to fix), which is apparently impressive for a 27 year old.

Life is good.

I spent most of the weekend shuffling between four activities: Playing Metroid, playing Super Mario 64, coding, and cuddling with Karen. Every one was spectacular, of course. I’ve gotten to (but not beaten) Mother Brain already. I have 31 stars. I have the recode of Squirrel based on the code I wrote for the book¹ basically finished (but not tested, so… you now, it’s not really done). And cuddling is, of course, awesome as always. Futurama DVDs were on in the background most of the weekend. All in all, not bad.

¹ Oh yeah… the book. It’s totally done and on Amazon, even!

Yeah, I know it’s Friday, but I’m talking about last weekend anyway. Karen found out her uncle died on Friday, and then that her dad had a heart attack on Saturday. While we unfortunately couldn’t go to Florida for her uncle’s funeral, we could go to Connecticut to the hospital to visit her dad. I’d never actually seen someone directly after they had a heart attack. He looked tired, very tired, and kept dozing off. I was actually kind of surprised as to just how weak a heart attack makes you. Karen’s dad doesn’t really seem to be an inactive type of guy, but he really couldn’t do very much when we saw him the first time. Fortunately, when we went back the next day and he was out of the ICU, he looked about 10 times better. I’m glad I was there, though, Karen was really scared about the whole thing and I was able to get her to be a little calmer.

I actually felt pretty calm the whole time, but I think a week of watching her be all stressed out finally got to me yesterday. Or maybe it was the really crappy dream I had. Probably both. Today’s been better though.

On a more practical note, the we went down Sunday and came back Monday. This meant I had to do all my normal meetings remotely, which was interesting. A conference call with one client, then the weekly meeting with the guys (which, unfortunately, we couldn’t swing the video conference for), then another with just Matt and Chad about business-y stuff. It’s good to know that I can up move around and still be able to do what I need to for work.

Ahh… what a way to spend an afternoon. Relaxing on the couch, eating grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, waiting for the cheesecake to bake. Life is good. :)

We picked up Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s for the PS2 and the HP:OotP for the Wii yesterday. GH is about as awesome as you’d expect. The Harry Potter game is, visually, amazing. The controls are… spotty, but not overly horrible. What gets me is the plot, and I mean this in two ways: First, it glances over large bits of it… you go from saving Dudley in the beginning straight to Grimmauld Place. Then you’re there for 2 minutes and off to Hogwarts. Second, there isn’t any. Karen played for hours yesterday just trying to get all the students to get to the DA meeting… each one had some minigame or task you needed to accomplish, which is fine, but there were 28 students! There was no sense of urgency or danger like in a normal game. It seemed as though it were a ridiculously long tutorial level, really. I wonder how the rest of the game will be.

Last night, we finished reading Deathly Hallows at about 2am. Everyone who said they couldn’t stop reading after a particular point were exactly right… it’s quite the page turner after that. I won’t give anything away in case someone, like us, has been delayed in finishing, but suffice to say that it was an excellent story.

That’s all for now, though, because we’ve got to get baking cookies for a cookout we’re going to today.

As you may or may not know, Saturday was the release of the 7th and final Harry Potter book. As such, it was cause for a little celebration, which Harvard Square was keen to provide. They changed the name, for the night, to Hogwarts’ Square and had a bunch of HP-themed stuff. Tealuxe had butterbeer (which, oddly, but not surprisingly, was made with tea). One other store had “wizard cakes” (rice cakes, but unfortunately they said “contains some wheat”). There were Nantucket Nectars stands strewn about manned by guys in wizard hats. Milling about was your usual assortment of Gryffindors, a handful of Slytherin, some Death Eaters… and, of course, no one from either other House. All in all, though, it was kinda lame walking around, so Karen and I went to the Border for dinner and then headed to Harvard Yard, which proved to be much cooler.

At the time, the set from Harry and the Potters, who were headlining the evening, was about half-ish over. We still got to hear some great songs, though. And there was a great ending to the evening, when the singer shouted “Now let’s go kill Voldemort by reading!!!”.

The next day, we got our preordered copy delivered to us and Karen had to physically restrain herself from sitting and reading it straight through right then. But bigger plans were afoot! Our destination was Bill and Laura’s for Laura’s birthday party. ... ... ... and Karen read the first 2 chapters out loud in the car on the way. But really, though, it was a good party, and fun was had by all. We played Carcassonne and Scotland Yard, followed by some of the TMNT arcade games on MAME. We started a game of Munchkin but never finished. Everyone else was annoyed at the fact that I had a crapload of stuff.

So the next morning we all awoke and had copious amounts of bacon and some pancakes. Karen made a coffee cake, which was quite nice. Then we headed to Amber’s for the disaster movie party in which Evolution, The Day After Tomorrow, Twister, and Mitchell were watched. Well, most people left after Twister, so we popped in Mitchell. That made us leave around midnight, though, which is bad as Amber’s house is in the middle of nowhere, so it took us a while to get home.

A good weekend, though. And tonight, Karen and I will be reading HP to each other until we’re done. :)

It felt like Monday all day. I guess that’s what I get for taking the real Monday off.

On a more important note, Karen and I hit up PF Chang’s again. We both had the General Tso’s Chang’s Spicy Chicken and the waiter smiled and said “You know you can get something different and share, right?”

Then we saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It was quite good. A lot better than most of the reviews I saw were saying. They kept in all the important parts and left out all the extraneous ones—plus Harry wasn’t all whiny in this like he is in the book. The fight at the end isn’t as cool as the one in the book, but it was still quite impressive nonetheless. We’re probably going to go see the IMAX 3D version sometime soon, which will be awesome.

Now all we have to do is see Transformers. ;)

Friday

Karen and I hitched up the trailer (packed everything into the car) for 4 day and 3 nights of glorious forest living (in a state park). We trekked across the harsh terrain (lush forests) of the west (-ern MA), then turned north into the frozen tundra (it was chilly at night) of the North (southern VT). We staked our claim (pitched the tent (hehe)) and the land poured forth its glorious bounty (we got our food out of the cooler and made dinner). Warmth was an issue, being in the cold North (it was nippy, and we couldn’t get a fire started easily), but we found that our shelter was acceptable against Nature’s torment (it was fairly warm in the tent, so’s ok). However, in that cold embrace, we could see the startling beauty of the heavens as the light of creation shined down upon us.

Saturday

The sun beat down on us when we woke, making our breakfast arduous (I was totally sweating the whole time I cooked the bacon and eggs on the campstove). We decided to occupy our time elsewhere lest the sun defeat us prematurely (we took to the car’s ACed interior and went for a drive) by scaling an unforgiving mountain (the 3300+ ft Mt. Equinox—in the car). The ascent tortured our pack animals (the thermostat went above halfway for a little bit), and when we reached the summit we were greeted by the most spectacular views (this part is true). We hiked (“beginner’s trail”) to Lookout Point, where we could see the far-off (3 miles) town of Manchester. Having found our peace gazing at the majesty of Nature (and taking some photos), we started the arduous descent (seriously, we saw a car whose brakes were smoking on the way down). Thanks to skillful driving (and handy tips from the brochure we got at the bottom), we all got out no worse for the wear. Exhaused, we rested upon return to the campsite (we took a nap) and cooked ourselves some grub (over the campstove again, because the fire kept burning our kebab sticks) before turning in for the night.

Sunday

Rain. We were set again the fury of Nature once again (at least the tent was waterproof), as the skies belted us with inch upon inch (about 1/4” total) of water. In the brief moments in between, Karen and I tried to amuse ourselves (we brought board games), and all but once we were unable to continue. Nature has a sense of humor, and it likes to rain upon board games. So, for most of the day, we slept, fearful of the storm that threatened to rip our very shelter from the ground (we napped, and the rain made a very relaxing sound on the rainfly). Not all was well, however, and we needed to contact others, so we had to embark during the storm to find help (we were bored of sleeping and took a walk), so we put on our protective gear (ponchos) and headed out. We found the site we sought (the playground) and comforted ourselves in its pleasures for a bit (we swang on the swings). Our troubles were not over though, as the rain made firebuilding impossible (we cooked dinner on the campstove… again). Having finished our victuals, we took shelter from the onslaught of wildlife (we stopped playing games because there were too many moths attacking us) and set to sleep.

Monday

The night was rough. Waking at every odd noise and finding it hard to return to sleep (because we were overrested from sleeping the previous day), we woke groggily, thinking it was later than it was (it was 8, I thought it was 9), we started cleaning our campsite. Some of our gear was unsalvageable from the storm (we threw out the tablecloth), and the rest was in need of repair (drying). But we packed up the goods and left our little bit of Nature as good as it was when we arrived (we had to tie the garbage to the roof, because there was no room in the car). On our way back, we made sure we took note of the little pleasures the road afforded us (we drove over a covered bridge), and still gazed in wonder at the scenes we saw (VT is really nice). We arrived home and unpacked our things (threw them into the dining room) and sat and reflected on our journey.

We got out of work a little early yesterday because we were going to meet my parents on a semi-impromptu visit. Turns out they didn’t make it, so Karen and I figured we’d go to dinner anyway. I suggested the Border, because that way she could relax in Tealuxe until I got there. That did not happen. What’s good is that instead of Tealuxe, we headed over to Games People Play (a nice game shop near Harvard Square) and picked up Power Grid, Robo Rally, and the Big Box of Carcassonne. We’d played Robo Rally and the normal Carcassonne last weekend in Albany, but we hadn’t played Power Grid before. Here’s the impressions of each:

Power Grid

The game itself is simple enough. You buy power plants, hook them up to cities to build your grid, and buy resources to fuel them. It’s a bit more complicated when you add the pricing rules, the auction process, the power plant market deprecation rules, and the Steps. That’s what got me the most. Typically a game will have a concept of Early, Middle, and Late games for tactics, but none have made it so explicit as Power Grid. There’s even a card to tell you when the Late Game (called Step 3) begins. the Middle (Step 2) begins when you’ve built so many cities (depending on how many people are playing).

I do like the idea of strategically browning out a city because you don’t want to pay market prices for the fuel. You’d get raked over the coals in the real world, but it’s pure capitalism in the game.

Overall it’s fun, though. I can see playing that a few times at our parties.

Robo Rally

We didn’t get around to playing this yesterday, but we played a bunch over the weekend. Two to eight robots running around a factory trying to touch all the flags, shooting each other, pushing each other into pits. Great fun. The rules for this one are easy. The hard part is making sure everything gets done the right way. You “program” your robot with 5 moves at the beginning of each round, then you go around figuring out who pushed who pointing where shooting what conveyoring whatever. It’s a lot of fun, but because the programming cards you get are random (and limited once you start taking damage), you can easily be frustrated by your inability to get anywhere, and it takes a fair bit of the strategy out of it. A lot lighter than our normal fare, which makes to really good for a change of pace.

Big Box of Carcassonne

Holy CRAP that’s a lot of tiles. There are so many expansions, they have to give you a big cardboard tower to hold them all while you’re playing so you don’t spread them all over the table. There’s Carcassonne (with “The River”, which is a small 12 card expansion that doesn’t really add rules, but does add a lot of building spots), Inns and Cathedrals (which adds some new scoring rules and a Big Meeple for each player), Builders and Traders (which gives you builders for faster play, pigs for more points, and trade goods for justification for closing someone else’s city), The Princess and the Dragon (which is getting ridiculous), and The Tower (where you can steal other players’ followers).

It was late, so we said screw it and played regular + The River. It’s a very fun game, and goes pretty fast. I imagine the Inns and Cathedrals and Builders and Traders would be fun, but the other two sound… weird.

Also, scoring farms is complicated and annoying. That said, I really like this game.