2003.07.21
Addictive little enticement to wrist-based RPI, it's your job to Defend Your Castle...mostly by flinging the little stick figure attackers away, but later you can buy a temple to convert them to your faith, and then later train them to become archers and wizards and other defenders of the castle walls... (supposedly the game pretty much plays itself once you have enough of those guys.)
Lunchtime Ramble
It occurred to me that I haven't been rambling much lately, just keeping up the steady barrage of links and quotes with the odd political sniping. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I know some people read this page and it's their central way of knowing what's going on with my life, but on the other hand excessively journal-y pages can get pretty dull. On the third hand, some of my favorite pages are just kind of rambles, with relatively few links. If you have an opinion one way or the other, let me know in today's comments section.
So Brooke and Mo threw a big dual birthday party. It was, by our modest standards, wildly successful. Biggest turn out we've had, almost 30 people in all. Cohosting parties is great, especially when your friends had fun friends. (And we recently cohosted with John, and met lots of fun people, many who were also at Saturday's shindig.)
Brooke's friends got her a general lawn games set, the highlight being a badminton net that came with two terrifically awful plastic rackets. Those were supplemented by two good rackets, and when more than 4 people wanted to play, further supplemented by Brooke's shoe (startlingly well wielded by Ryan), the cardboard box the set came in, and a frisbee.
The focus of the party in the evening was the Karaoke machine we rented. We're looking to get one for ourselves, it will pay for itself in a party or two. Mo's looking to get this massive collection of songs, like 1275 in all. Even "Mysterious Ways" by U2 and the odd Weird Al song. (Signs of a brutally geeky childhood.)
Having a decent hosting house ("phat party pad") is a wonderful luxury. Admittedly our lawn is a bit tight for badminton, (it would be more room but much less fun to head to the playground across the way, since amusing the spectators is a big part of the entertainment value.)
I have mixed feelings about the "no video game" rule Brooke and Mo decided on for their cobirthday. Their complaint, and there is something to it, is that parties with videogames often degrade into videogame parties...especially with the living room's big honkin' tv centrally placed. But games can be a lot of fun. This party started at 6, and went on 'til 1 or 2. Maybe we can make up some rules, preparty gaming from like 2 to 6, and then any further videogames have to be in a gaming ghetto in my study, to encourage more blatantly social and inclusive forms interaction. (Though many games are often good spectator sports.)
I did something to a calf muscle, don't know if it was while dancing or what, but it's been sore ever since. Almost enough to make me limp a bit.