Home again

My weekend in Florida dind't seem real to me until I was on the plane there, and now it feels almost like a dream. Gone already?

I had a wonderful time. koogrr picked me up from the airport late Friday night. ♥ We lazed around on Saturday morning, then went to jordangreywolf's game on Saturday afternoon. The game was, if anything, even better than the last two times I was there. Due to a combination of lucky rolls, timing, and incidental character background, my character turned out to be very effective in the combat portions of the game. The non-combat parts of the game were very cool, too. The party was faced with several different problems, and wedid a good job of priortizing them and delegating the less pressing ones to NPCs, then set out to try tackling the most prevalent one. Lots of fun, and I think the characters are doing well overall.

Sunday John and I did more lazing around, then went to a gaming store to play Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights at around 12:30. Only Chris (does Chris have an LJ?) had showed up so far, but John and I had brought some Brawl decks, so we played several rounds of that while we waited. moonwolf turned up a little later, and we snagged Sam, one of the store employees, to give us a fifth. Chris gave us all the crash course on the "Cities and Knights" expansion set, which I'd played once but didn't remember well, and which Moonwolf and John hadn't played before.

Basic Settlers of Catan is usually a pretty quick game, taking an hour or two to complete, but the C&K expansion slows it down by adding complexity and giving players more chances to build. (And of course, it takes longer when only two of five players are familiar with all the rules). We weren't quite able to finish the game before John and I had to leave to make our dinner reservations, though we came close -- John was within two points of victory at one point. We declared Sam the winner as he was in the lead when we had to go, and had been for most of the game.

John treated me to a delicious dinner at the Melting Pot. :9 I'd suggested that we might get together with Chris and Moonwolf again after dinner for more gaming, but by the time we got home it was afer eight, and we were both rather sluggish from eating way too much good food. So we called Chris to let him know we wouldn't be by, then spent the next couple of hours reading. John finished the three volumes of Phil & Kaja Foglioa's "Girl Genius" I'd brought with me, and I finished To Say Nothing of the Dog. Yes, I decided to read it after all; it picked up after a bit and I quite enjoyed it. John and I spent an inordinate amount of time giggling over jokes about the bishop's bird stump.

We also learned to play a new game John had gotten: "SPANC: Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirl". After a few games, we decided we liked it, although we were already seriously considering making some house rules. And checking the webpage for errata.

The next day, Moonwolf and ladyperegrine came over for lunch at 12:30. While John cleared off the table, I showed them SPANC, and they required no additional coaxing before they agreed to play a game. We played one game and then left to get lunch at Panera. We called jordangreywolf and gwendelkitty to see if they wanted to come, and they met us there.

The sign at Panera said they were closing at 4PM due to the holiday, which didn't phase me until John said it was after 3PM already. "What? How did it get that late?"

Still, we had a good time. Peregrine looked through Moonwolf's art, and Moonwolf showed us her tattoo. When I lamaented, at one point, the lack of visual references for men dressed in Victorian-esque clothing, Gwendel promised to send me some pictures she had from her collection of Japanese band art. And Greywolf had burned three CDs full of "Emma", a period anime set in the Victorian era, for me. Yay! Greywolf had redone the character sheets to reflect some changes from the last adventure, so we got to see those. Jing Li can overawe people now! Whee! And Greywolf had time to draw a picture of Kathmandu's new look.

At last, Panera shooed us out. I had another hour or so to hang out with John before it was time to go.

And the whole weekend seems to have gone by just that fast.

Hopefully, I'll get to go back again soon. :)