andycrews

SQUEEEEEEE!

Blog

Andy has his own pokestop!

I am never leaving his house.

Old La Honda Trail

Blog

So, Andy said, "Let's go hiking!" this morning. I answered something like, "Hhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnn...." Tilly was a bit more persuasive, though.

An adventure!

Crawling the Space

Blog

Andy asked me today, "Would you like to help me install the insulation today?" He had been putting up insulation in the floorboard joists in the crawl space and I had offered a few days ago to help. I responded, "I have exactly zero desire at this moment to install insulation, which is why I will say, 'Yes.'"

As to why I said yes, having no desire, is the story for another day. Today's story is about the insulation. In particular, the 27 pieces sitting in the guest room.

Having recently been under the other house, I knew there would be a lot of dust and a lot of dirt, so I changed into my work clothes and shoes, and asked Andy for safety equipment: glasses, face mask, gloves. He handed me the head light, too.

BBB

Blog

That would be "Blue Ball Balancing."

Millions of peaches

Blog

Andy and Nicole came over tonight. The peach trees in the back yard (yeah, there happens to be a peach tree in the front yard) produced a lot tiny peaches, which have been dropping for a couple weeks now. It's the first year in about 4 years that the peach leaf curl didn't completely overwhelm the tree such that it didn't produce any fruit, as in previous years. I suspect both a milder summer and better watering helped the peach trees trive.

Yeah, so, millions of peaches, peaches for free. Most of them lying on the ground. Andy discovered this last week at the Chicken Social, and took five gallons of tiny peaches home. He cut them all up, mashed them, added honey and I think apple juice for liquid and told me how delicious the resulting drink was. A bit of yeast later, and the peaches are ready for some peach-based mead drink production.

Tonight, Andy came over for another batch of peaches. When he arrived, I dropped what I was doing, and went outside to help him with picking peaches from the tree and picking up the peaches from the ground.

As I was picking them up, I was both happy and sad. Happy to be hanging out with a friend, working on the yard (in some capacity), gathering materials to make something, and sad that Kris never really wanted to do any of this, that I wasn't really able to convince him to do little yard projects around the house, to enjoy the yard and what it can produce.

Rather doesn't matter much at this point, but it still makes me a bit sad.

Poopin'

Blog

Okay, so, there's this twitter meme where if someone steps away and leaves his phone available, the people around him find his twitter client and tweet "Poopin." It's quite common actually:

I was actually confused about it when I noticed the fifth or sixth "Poopin'" post, and asked Jonathan about it. He explained it to me, and I just had to laugh. A lot.

Now, I'm not allowed to touch the computer at Andy's. Having tweeted from his account about just how spectacular I am (okay, not really, but I did tweet a lot over a short period of time, not realizing they all went to Andy's Facebook account, causing Andy's Facebook friends to comment, "whoa whoa whoa slow down with the updates there, buddy."), I'm not allowed to even unlock Andy's screen saver any more. Not that we don't all know the password to it - we do. We're just not allowed to type it in if we aren't telling the truth (and well, I'd be lying if I typed in his password).

So, no access to his computer.

However, after Saturday's honey harvest, his ipad was accessible.

And sitting RIGHT. NEXT. TO. ME.

Right.

poopin_andy.png

Andy was not pleased.

First email this morning:

you are so banned from ever touching any of my electronics again

Immediately followed by:

Andy Crews is The PUNISHER

I guess I won't be playing with Andy's ipad any time soon.

Off to change the password on my ipad...

Chickens!

Daily Photo

Andy brought his chickens over last fall for some grub feasting.

Compare and contrast

Blog

Let's compare and contrast, shall we? In particular, the results of the the beers around the world celebration of the New Year.

Kris, asleep until 4pm.

Kris asleep

Andy, awake and productive at 8am.

IMG_5720.JPG

Given a choice, I'll vote for Andy's liver.

Celebrating the New Year Around the World

Blog

Kris and Andy decided some time in the last few weeks that the best way to celebrate the changing of the new year and new decade (yeah, yeah, don't tell me 2010 isn't the new decade because there was no year 0 - there was no year 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or a whole bunch of other years, either. 2001 represents the END of the FIRST year, so yeah, there was a year zero and 2010 is the END of the first 10 years and January 1st 2010 is, therefore, the start of the new decade) is to celebrate the new year in each timezone as the day progresses. And what better way to celebrate each of these new years than by toasting, and drinking, a beer made in each of those time zones.

Powergrid

Blog

IMG_4776.JPG

After meeting up with Kris' cousin Tim, Kris, Bob, Lil and I went over to Andy's for some games. Andy had not only rearranged his living room / dining room area, but he had also bought a few new games for the evening. Tonights game was Powergrid.

The goal of the game is to build and power 17 power stations. Each player starts with two power stations, and builds more each round. For each city that is powered at the end of the round, a player receives funds. Powering requires purchasing resources to run the power stations: oil, coal, garbage or barrels of fissionable material for the nuclear plant. Of course, if you had managed to purchase the a wind, turbine, solar or fusion plant, no additional resources are needed to generate electricity from the plant.

Kris needed to work some, and I wanted to work some during the evening, so I managed to finagle us on the same team. For the record, this was the most entertaining way I could possibly think to play this game. Not because we were both half distracted, but because I've always played board/table games against Kris, not with Kris (ultimate doesn't count here, people), and hoo boy, was it fun to work with him in this game. He suggested moves I would never have thought of (bold! daring! exciting! stupid!), and I suggested strategies he'd never try (horde! conserve! expand! explode!). Together, we captured the Eastern Seaboard:

IMG_4779.JPG

Part of the game that changes each step of the game (because, really, the way "step" and "phase" are translated during the game is completely backwards: step should be phase and phase should be step, and knowing this, I'm using the terms the way they SHOULD be used, not the way the documentation suggests) is the order of play: the team that is currently losing gets to go first in one part of the round, but the leading team goes first in a different part of the round. I had suggested a couple times that we deliberately not expand during a round in order to drop into last place so that we would first in the resource buying and power station building steps.

Not building not only dropped us back a power station, it also enabled us to horde our money for a round so that we could break free of the station block that Andy, Andy and Bob had successfully put against us. We were able to build on the transmission lines across country and build in Billings, then Seattle and Portland. A good part of this was based on the green energy power stations we had acquired early in the game. Since the transmission lines were so expensive on the West Coast, no one really built too far west, and we ended up being the East Coast / West Coast king pins:

IMG_4784.JPG

And, in doing so, opened up the whole board again for everyone to play. Once one player (the player known as KrisKitt, in this case) powers seven cities, each city can have two players building power stations in them. Andy and Andy quickly shared the Eastern Seaboard with us, but, by that point, we has solidified our resources.

IMG_4792.JPG

Kris and I built six cities in the last round to win at 12:45 in the morning, way too late for most of the McQueens to be thinking coherently. Our resource hording allowed us to build a power plant that powered all of them (green energy be damned! Though I really did want the clean fusion power plant, sigh...), and we won, with a city to spare.

IMG_4789.JPG

It was a fun game. I'd play it again. If Andy suggests Diplomacy, I'll diplomatically suggest we power up.

Pages