Sunday Study at Adventures Underground

We finally had a board game night!

After eating out at a chinese restaurant in town, Nutsinee, Darkhan, Hang and I played 3 games of Boomtown on Saturday night. The game plays very well, once we had the mechanics down. I can see us playing it again and again. Darkhan won one game, Nutsinee won one game, and Hang won a game. Muggins here did not. Sadly, Evan was out of town and couldn’t join us, but we will play again soon.

Then on Sunday, after skyping Joe for the whole morning, and watching Jessie Jones, I joined Nutsinee once more. Whilst Darkhan and Hang had gone to the LIGO site, Nutsinee and I had agreed to study/work in town, at Adventures Underground. She picked me up, and we went over to the Caterpillar Cafe. It’s a cafe, coffee house, tea shop, record shop, local artist trinket buying place, which backs onto, and allows free access into, Adventures Underground. Let me show you.

Walking in, and up to the counter, Nutsinee is greeted by a “Hi” and a warm smile. Alex, the barrista today, was chatting to a friend, Hayley, I think. Nutsinee asked about Alex’ dress. “Oh, I’m bi-gendered”. It seems that I might have found the hub of the LGBT crowd! And what a surprise, it’s at a comic book store. Anyway, Alex and Hayley and Nutsinee and I are all introduced, and we chat for, maybe 20 minutes. I felt like I really got on with them. It was nice.

Anyway, coffee, table, work work work. Today, I had to make a tonne of plots and post onto the alog – advanced LIGO online logbook. So I did.

After a few hours, I went back to the counter and asked about teas. The earth shook, loud screams came billowing out from the speakers, the lights flickerred, and a ceiling panel fell. (Of course it didn’t happen like that, but Alex and Hayley were VERY excited indeed). They both bounced around the corner to the selection of teas – there are some interesting ones there, like a peach Oolong, a very strong strawberry, but I opted for vanilla. It was nice. big, a little too strong, and very hot, but nice.

Soon, though, it was 6pm, and time to eat. Around the corner along the strip mall, there are a plethora of eateries, and we ended up at the Family Garden – an Asian restaurant around the corner. The food was nice, but the portions were massive, so Nutsinee and I both took a polystyrene box home – well, back to the coffee shop.

Back at work, I finished my plots, wrote my log and was done within an hour. Now, I know that there’s always more to be done, but for a Sunday, I was done. So I decided to go and look around Adventures’.

I had an agenda. I made a bee-line for the desk, and asked “Do you have mouseguard? Second edition just came out.” Spoilers: They had it.  I would really like to try to run a game while I’m here. I discussed it with Nutsinee that day, and later with Evan, Darkhan and Hang. Looks like we’re on! I didn’t buy the rule book, or the boxed set (including character sheets, dice, extra rules in addition to the rule book.) ut it’s on my list.

I think I must have been in there for an hour, eyeing up board games, graphic novels, manga, figurines. The book section even extends beyond the nerdy, into sociology, health, crafts and religion. Their boardgame collection is extensive. They even take and sell second hand books – if they’re in good nick. In the end, Nutsinee joined me in browsing, and I ended up buying a Crochet Star Wars set, complete with all the yarn.

That was my weekend!

As a sidenote, I have accidentally mapped my keyboard so that shift + b opens firefox. I tried undoing it, but it hasn’t worked. 😦