Prelude to nothing

Vacation looms. This is good. I am in need of some down time. Alas we shall have to wait for another month before Dad can make it out and we really goof off. I expect this time will consist of some grilling, some ice cream and some games. And lots and lots of nothing. Except maybe sleep. Sleep sounds good.

Killer Elite was an interesting little action movie. Apparently it was based on a true story. It certainly ended ridiculously enough to be true.

I am sort of addicted to Ninjatown: Trees of Doom. It's just a non stop climbing game, but it's strangely compelling. And Motoheroz or however they spell that is worse. It's a Trials-like racing game on the iPad. You're trying to get the best time on a short race course that involves lots of jumps and hills and so on. You control the angle of the vehicle as well as its speed. It plugs right into the OCD center of my brain. Must get perfect run and beat stupid computer ghost car...

I introduced McK to Settlers of Catan last weekend. We didn't make it through a whole game. Mostly because lovely wife was about to throttle me. I had managed to cut one of her cities off onto one little corner of the board. It produced ore pretty reliably but we were racing for the 2:1 ore trading spot. If I'd managed to snag that spot she'd have been pretty dead in the water. McK wasn't too much better off. Ok , so we really stopped because it was late and McK needed to go to bed, but I like the other reason better.

Psst, the third Hex Hall book is out. It's pretty good so far. Although I have issues with the love triangle.

In which I discuss word games, books and a stunning loss

And another week goes by. Hard to believe October is about to call it quits. Lovely wife had a grand birthday. (And apparently we sat just across from Dale Murphy at dinner.) She got a Professor Layton game to help keep those wits sharp and Bananagrams to scratch the word game itch. It's basically competitive crossword puzzle building. You draw a set number of tiles and then at the same time turn yours over and start to build your own crossword. As you run out of tiles you yell "split" and everyone draws one more and on it goes until there are fewer tiles than players and then the first one out of tiles wins. You can dump a tile at the cost of drawing three more, which is occasionally helpful as it gives you more to work with. It's fun. If you like word games it's certainly worth picking up. I like it better than Scrabble as you can work at your own pace and compete that way. McK enjoys playing it as well.

I don't believe any more movies have been watched although we're about to watch The Wrong Guy, so more on that later. I did tape The Dunwich Horror on Syfy last weekend, so Lovecraft goodness coming up as well.

I finished reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I really enjoyed it. The pitch is Harry Potter/Chronicles of Narnia for grownups and it mostly delivers. There are a few (not so) subtle nods to those series throughout the book, but mostly it tells its own tale of what it would be like if magic was real. And real people used it. So while it's not a completely depressed Harry Potter, it's close. I think the best description I read was how the main characters were able to consistently snatch failure from the jaws of success. That really does sum it up well. It's a pretty fascinating story though. Great style and fun to read.

And now I'm on to the new Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett and Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (steampunk zombie novel). They are both quite good so far.

Lovely wife and I got stomped on at Settlers of Catan last night by the letter 'r'. It was a pretty disgraceful loss on our part. Although he really did have much better options than either of us. I was arguably close in points, but getting those last couple would have been a real struggle. That's a pretty decent game as well if you've not tried it. (And it sounds like the new Dominion supplement is trés cool.)