andycrews

Chickens!

Daily Photo Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 01:00 on 5 January 2010

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

Read more about Chickens!

Compare and contrast

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 14:45 on 1 January 2010

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.

Celebrating the New Year Around the World

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 12:45 on 1 January 2010

Powergrid

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 01:09 on 15 November 2009

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:

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:

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.

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.

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

Mmmmmm... delicious

Blog Posted by kitt at 23:12 on 7 September 2009

Not five minutes after we left the field yesterday, my phone rang as Chookie was driving the three of us back home. I answered, and Fatty Fat Andy (Fisher, a necessary distinction in this story) asked if I could pick him up from the airport, his roommate having just bailed on picking him up in four hours or so. Kris and I had plans with Skinny Andy (Crews, see? you needed the distinction), but figured I could sneak away as needed after dinner to pick him up.

A nice advantage to living 15 minutes door to door to the airport: picking people up from it is No Big Deal.

A couple hours later, when Kris and I arrived at Skinny Andy's house, I commented to Skinny Boy that I would need to dash away around 8 to pick up Fatty, I hoped that would be okay. Skinny Boy agreed it would be fine, and hey, if we go to the Cheesecake Factory (my current favorite dessert restaurant, trumping Cold Stone Creamery as of late), we could be even closer to the airport.

So, after dinner, the three of us, along with Blue and Shadow, piled into Andy's car and off we went to the Factory. After arriving, and realizing there were no bar seats available, we decided to order to-go, including a fourth slice for Fatty Fat. We looked at all our 1500 calorie choices, and found this one:

Yes, people, you see that correctly. Low Carb Cheesecake.

The three of us looked at that cheesecake, burst out laughing, and immediately agreed that Fatty Fat would receive the Low Carb Cheesecake Made With Splenda. After all, who else would be a better candidate for such a tasty bite?

I went to the counter, and ordered a slice of the French Silk Chocolate cheesecake, a slice of the Vanilla Bean cheesecake, a slice of the Key Lime cheesecake, and a slice of the Low Carb Cheesecake Made With Splenda.

The guy on the other side of the counter paused at the last slice, looked up at me and stated, "You don't want that."

Startled, I could only respond wittily with "I don't?"

Quite the comeback, eh?

"No, you don't want that."

"Why not?"

"Low Carb? Cheesecake? They don't go together. You don't want that."

Skinny Boy piped up next to me, "But it's for a prank."

"A cruel one at that. You don't want the Low Carb," the guy behind the counter insisted.

Okay, okay, I relented, and ordered a slice of the White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cheesecaske, my favorite after Pumpkin cheesecake.

As we were standing there waiting for our order, Kris piped up, "So, man, how far did you get with the Low Carb?" asking the guy who took our order.

He turned to us. "I haven't. I've never tried it."

"WHAT?!" Good lord, man, you haven't tried it but you won't let us order it? Dammit, man, "I'd like to order a slice."

He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders, and rang one up for me.

The three of us waited for our order of five cheesecake slices, then wandered to the car to be greeted by two happy, cramped dogs, and managed to distribute our slices before Fatty Fat called, he had just landed, and would be walking to the pickup spot shortly. Off we went to pick him up.

After a round about the airport and a valiant attempt not to be shooed away from the curb while waiting for Fatty Fat, we found him. He piled into the car, and off we went back to Skinny Boy's house. Kris handed Fatty Fat his cheesecake, and we all waited with bated breath.

Two bites later, "MMMMMMMmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMmmmmmmMmm! Thanks guys! It's DEE-LISH-US!"

Unable to contain ourselves, the three of us burst into laughter.

Oh, sure, we eventually gave him the tasty raspberry slice, and, sure, we told him about what we had done.

And, maybe, just maybe, the second slice tasted better than the first.

But only in comparison.

Diplomacy

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 02:34 on 4 July 2009

Andy and Andy came over tonight. We talked about playing Settlers, but Skinny Andy wanted to play Diplomacy. S.Andy played Diplomacy a lot when he was in high school ("A LOT!"), and wanted to see how it played now that he was older. The game has a maximum of seven players, and is like Risk in that you conquer Europe during some giant "world" war, but is different than Risk in that you can make deals with other players, removing some of the luck of the dice from the game.

Diplomacy is played with a map of Europe, with each player controlling one or more countries, and little tiles representing armies and navies. At the beginning of each round, each player decides what a piece is going to do: stay put and defend the space it's on, move into a new space and attack any other piece that may be already occupying the space, or help another piece move to a new space which is what the navy pieces can do. In deciding these moves or non-moves, players can talk to each other. Before the discussion part of the round ends, each player writes down what he's going to do for that round, which is revealed nominally all at once to everyone.

Since I wanted chocolate souffle, I was unfortunately in the kitchen during the boys' reading of the rules. Given there are a large number of nuances in the game (one of the worst being, if you wrote it down, you can't change it), and I was absent for most of their revelations, I ended up breaking an unknown rule every round. I have to say for that reason alone, my frustration grew and grew and grew with the game (hey, you can't do that, now you're penalized; you can't do that either, go back; you can't do that either, you lose another piece; you can't do that, take it back).

We started out all of us just sitting there, trying to figure out what to do with our pieces. By the third round, we were talking a short bit, but none of us were really managing to do much with our countries and pieces. Well, except for Skinny Andy. He knew what he was doing, and was doing it well.

By the fourth round, we figured out that we could pass notes back and forth between each other. Suddenly, negotiation and, well, diplomacy were possible.

I have to say, that certain aspects of the game were entertaining. Fat Andy complaining about how everyone was attacking him, while he was leading the charge on attacking one of my two countries, was funny. That I came around from his back flanks to out manuveur him was equally funny. Skinny Andy I think would have crushed us, given enough time. Kris was, I think, overwhelmed to the point of being nearly ineffective, often forgetting to write down steps that he had agreed to during our diplomatic conversations.

We played for a couple hours, then decided to be done. I ended up both completely devastated, with Germany having only one piece, and victorious, with Turkey having the most number of pieces, the broadest number of spaces occupied, and, arguably, the best position for future conquest.

Given how much Skinny Andy loved the game as a kid, I'm willing to play again. I can't say without that motivation that I'd be willing.