The first of July is a Statutory Holiday here in Canada, and this year it fell on a Thursday. The University was nice enough to just give all of their employees Friday off as well, and Amanda also took Monday off, giving us a FIVE-DAY Long Weekend. The last week of June has been brutally hot and it carried right on into the weekend, smashing records for high temperatures. So we were glad of the basement Game Room to escape into to play some games throughout the weekend.
Not only is it oppresively hot, the city is STILL doing work on our street, finally getting around to repacing the water main. In teh meantime, we're still getting water pumped into our house through an above ground BLACK PVC pipe, which, in this sun and heat, means that by mid morning, the water coming out of the cold tap is just as warn as the water coming out of the Hot tap (by mid afternoon, the "cold" tap water is HOTTER than the "hot")! Fun times...
Thursday, 1 July 2021
Today's high was 35°C.
I went out for a bit of a ride in the morning, heading Southeast of town into a 40Km/h wind, which, despite it being 30+°C out there the wind made it tolerable.
to round out the ride to 40Km, I did an extra little loop up to the University Bridge and saw there was a rather large Cancel Canada Day rally down at the Vimy Memorial
After the discovery of thousands of children buried in unmarked, undocumented mass graves at Indian Residential Schools in the last few weeks, not a lot of people were feeling all that excited about celebrating Canada Day. There was a pretty good turn out, despite the oppressive heat!
A good chunk of the afternoon was spent watching the final season of Glee while I did a bit of prepping and painting miniatures.
In the evening our friends Brent and Barb came by to play Wingspan. It's been a LONG time since we've seen either. I think Brent came by in August last year to play a game while restrictions had been temporarily lifted before the "Second Wave" hit. It's been over a year since we've seen Barb.
It was Barbs first time playing Wingspan, so we tried out the Swift Start cards and instructions. It's a set of specific cards to start with, with a larger card with specific instructions on them on what to do for your first three turns of the first round. They were okay... I could see how they might be handy to show people how to play if they'd never played and weren't super familiar with... y'know.. games...? We all took an instruction sheet and the cards, but by the second or third turn Brent and I were already thinking, this is NOT how I'd go about this (give the goals drawn or cards we'd picked up or the bonus cards we had.... but we all played along.
At the end of the first game I had a pretty full board and lots going on. I scored 96 points, which won me the game! (Barb came in second!)
We played a second game with the Oceana Expansion, which Brent had not played before. Super fun. I almost filled my board. Had I ONE MORE ACTION, I totally would have filled the board (because I had a bird that could have been played that had an End Game Action that would have allowed me to play another - they weren't terribly high point cards - I didn't think it would have won me the game or anything - I just thought it would have been fun to FILL THE BOARD!). As it turned out I scored EXACTLY 96 again!? But this time, that was only good enough for THIRD place!?
Had I been able to do things a little more efficiently and get that one last bird out during the game, it actually WOULD have made a big enough difference, as I think I would have had 4-6 more points, and Brent won with 100 (the highest score I think we've seen so far!) and Amanda was in second with 98!
Friday, 2 July 2021
Today's High was 40°C.
In the morning I went out for a ride on the tandem with Amanda and we picked up some groceries on our ride.
Afterwards I headed downtown again with Keira to pick up books from the library. We saw the big group of not-so-goslings-anymore swimming out on the river.
The afternoon consisted of more Glee - finishing off the series - and a bit more painting... and a LOT of sweating!?
To escape the head, Amanda and I hid in the basement for the evening and played a rather long game of Terraforming Mars! In two player games I feel like we usually play about 13-14 turns - might occasionally blast through in 12, might have played 15 before - but this one took 16 turns!?
Mars was looking VERY green by the end of it though, and heavily populated. WE literally FILLED every space that COULD Be filled with stuff! (I was yellow, Amanda Black)
This was the first time I've ever play Robinson Industries - and I've yet to see a game where they haven't won (so, yeah, I actually beat Amanda at Terraforming Mars again!)
This was definitely my highest scoring game EV-AR - with 164 points!!! Amanda also beat her previous high score with 146! I got insanely lucky with my initial draw which gave me the Research Outpost which reduced the cost to play EVERY card through the entire game - I also had a bunch or plant and microbe cards that either gave me plant production or was one of those "place a cube on this card everytime X happens..." so I was gaining points every turn from many of them. The space force had 15 cubes on it - gaining me 1 point per cube! that was HUGE for ONE CARD!!
Saturday, 3 July 2021
In the morning I headed out to my FLGS - Dragon's Den Games - to pick up the new edition of Age of Sigmar! The Narrative Play - Paths to Glory campaign system looks pretty fun.
I spent the afternoon reading roles and trying to figure out said campaign system and how many forces I could put together for the campaign system. I have enough miniatures to do at least six... but all require a lot more painting.
In the evening, Amanda and I played Century Golem Edition: Endless World. This was only the second time we got around to playing it since I got it for Amanda for her birthday in April. I ended the game - taking my eighth card first, despite having eight point cards to Amanda's six, I was only three points ahead of her for point cards (33-30!). I had one point more than her for bonus cards, and she had one more spare gem... so it ended 53-50.
Afterwards we finished up Handmaid's Tales Season Three.
Sunday, 4 July 2021
Out for another morning ride to finish off my 200Km for the week.
I saw cows. Which shouldn't be a thing of note, living in Saskatchewan, other than just recently I'd noticed I used to see a lot more cows out on my rides in previous years and hadn't seen any so far this year! I was wondering if there just wasn't money in it and people had stopped raising them around here.
In the afternoon, Amanda and I played a few games, starting with 7 Wonders Duel.
I usually don't do so well at this game, but I was ON FIRE (not literally) and totally rocked this game. I nearly won with a science victory, but in the end won with 72 points (to Amanda's 51!?). I guess she's out of practice...?
Afterwards we played Castles of Burgundy and, again, I won... mostly because I got VERY lucky and filled out that HUGE buildings section that netted 36 points! I ended the game with 188 and Amanda had 164. She was probably feeling like she'd worn the wrong shirt by the end of the game.
Monday, 5 July 2021
In the morning Amanda and i went for a ride.
We took the tandem and rode up and down the Meewasin Vally Trail.
On the other side of the river near the university we spotted a few hawks. The first one we spotted was soaring not very high overhead on an updraft by the river bank.
The next one we saw was standing by a juvenile Richardson Ground Squirrel it had attacked and injured, presumably for breakfast...
It flew off as we drew near.
So, of course we played Wingspan later in the afternoon...
And that was our extended long weekend! All in all, it was pretty fun!
How was everyone else's weekend?
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