Monthly Archives: November 2015

Not to be confused with the music festival, Sasquatch Boardgame Festival happens yearly in the fall around the end of October or beginning of November in Bellevue, WA. I’d been invited a couple times in the past few years but hadn’t made it. This year I finally decided to make it work.

It’s a five day festival running from Wednesday through Sunday where people get together to play games. One fun aspect is that they bring new games from the big German game festival that happens in the fall. Most have not been released in the US yet, so it’s fun to get to preview. One of the local game shops also brings some back to sell, so there is the opportunity to buy the ones you like. I ended up picking up two: Royal Goods and Undersea Adventure.

Royal Goods is a card game in which you are trying to build the best set of production facilities to make goods like coal, flour, fabric, clothes, glass, etc. You earn money throughout by producing goods and selling them, then building new buildings to make new goods. Everything is represented by cards, so goods get stacked as facedown cards and traded into the discard pile as money. It’s very fun and fairly quick once people know how to play. The first game was a little tough because I was tired, but after I got the hang of it it was really fun.

Undersea adventure is a game where you are trying to collect the most treasure from the bottom of the ocean before oxygen runs out. The treasure is represented by small tiles set in a path and you roll a die to see how far you move down. The die has the numbers 1-3 on it, but you jump over other divers so you can move up to five spaces. The thing is, each treasure you pick up slows you down on the return trip by one space. So there is the potential you could move zero spaces on a turn. The treasure also speeds up how fast the oxygen runs out, which each player causing a loss of one per treasure tile. It’s another quick game that is a lot of fun to play.

The other game I played that I really liked was called Chronicler, a quick to play civilization building game. It was pretty lightweight and quick as well, though I felt two games was probably enough so I didn’t buy it as well. It is, however, on my maybe soon list.

I had a great time and last week I went ahead and registered for next year. I’m already looking forward to it!

I’ve been suffering from back problems for at least five years now. The first time it went out I was bending down to grab my belt and I felt stabbing pain. Since then it’s given me problems once or twice a year, usually in fall or winter.

Two Sundays ago it decided to go out again. This time I didn’t do anything to precipitate it. I woke up in a bit of pain and by mid-morning I could barely walk. The pain brought me to my knees several times throughout the day. What a way to start off the week! I couldn’t pick up R, I could barely walk the fifteen feet to the bathroom, and I definitely couldn’t do the stairs.

I had been out at a boardgame festival during the day that day, and thankfully was still able to enjoy that as most of it was sitting down. Getting home was quite painful, as was hobbling down to the basement so I had my video games to play while waiting for Lurline to come home. The downside to that was that then I was stuck in the basement for the next two days.

Luckily we have a lot of great friends in town and an amazing babysitter. Lurline did take two days off work, but then we had help the rest of the week. Our babysitter was even so kind as to wheel me around the zoo in a wheelchair while wearing R. That was a great outing on Friday after being stuck in the house all week long!

By Saturday I was able to walk pretty readily and managed to watch R for a couple hours while Lurline went and did yoga. She was really thankful for that after an understandably stressful week. She did, however, take R for the rest of the day. Sunday I was able to get out of the house for some games at my cousin’s house and to watch the Sounders play in the playoffs. (That was a disappointing end to the season!)

I’m now able to lift R and take care of her solo for at least part of the day. I had help Monday and yesterday for half the day, but went totally solo on Tuesday. I did fine, but I was in pain by the end of the day. Today our babysitter is coming during the middle of the day so I can do acupuncture and some much needed physical therapy. My doctor is prescribing something that should help minimize the pain and she ordered an MRI for me, which happens at the end of next week. It would be nice to have some answers about the pain, especially if it rules out serious problems with my back. I’d like it if physical therapy is all I need. Thankfully I saw two doctors about it and both said it was highly unlikely I’d need surgery.

So, it’s been a rough 12 days but we made it through and I’m on the mend. Here’s hoping it keeps getting better and I’ll be back to normal by Thanksgiving.