Britt's Blog

This is a video from last year, but it gives you a sense of scale of the Board Room (which was downstairs in one of the Exhibit Hall this year (boo). Sorry the quality is so poor, but it does lend an appropriate sasquatch-film atmosphere to the three frames in which I walk past in my yeti hat at the 1-minute mark.

This year, Team Ithaca representation was weak, but we had a lot of fun with Dan, Amy and Zach.

New games played:

• Galaxy’s Edge Previously unknown to me, yet not a new game. We kinda liked it. The military control resolution is kind of brain-hurty and neat.
• Darjeeling Tea! Yay!
• Pack & Stack An all-too-eerily-accurate simulation of moving, including not being able to get the right truck from U-Haul.
• Steam Excellent new track-building, goods-delivering game.
• San Juan All the best elements of Race for the Galaxy and Puerto Rico, in one convenient package.
• Le Havre OMG too effing long.
• Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War Prestige can bite me.
• Nautilus Neat underwater exploration game with a a pretty board. Unfortunately, it just barely surpassed the fiddly-bits limit.

We never did quite manage to get into a game of Martian Rails. It was not available at Origins 2009, and we’ve been trying (in a half-hearted way) to get a copy for a while, though I’m deeply disappointed by the fact that the cities are drawn from fiction, unlike Lunar Rails, which awesomely uses actual lunar geography.

Acquired:

• Darjeeling, Assyria, Street Illegal and Dragon Parade (You get two randomly selected free games you get when you first visit the Board Room with your ribbon. This is the first time we got bumpkis in the Board Room raffle, which was a disappointment. :( However, Rio Grande Games provided free lunch and dinner for the Board Room, which was pretty extravagantly generous of them! Thanks, Rio Grande!).
• Powergrid China and Korea boards, RftG:BoW (at the Rio Grande Booth)
• Steam, Fredericus and Oriente (at the Mayfair Booth, the last two at deep discount)
• Suitors.

(Can’t wait for this week’s boardgame night: Origins Swag Edition!)

On the not-spending-all-my-time-inside front, I did manage to go running three times along the Scioto and Olentangy Greenways that follow the rivers through downtown Columbus. (Yay for Google maps, without which I would never have known that they exist.) The Olentangy Trail was especially nice.

• Watching Star Trek: TOS: I believe the young persons would call this “kicking it old school.” Surprisingly good stuff, interspersed with nigh-unbearable cheesiness. I gotta say though, young William Shatner? Yeah, I’d hit that. Although I don’t think I’m soft-focus-y enough for him.
• Peer reviewing a paper and revising a paper for publication: not especially diverting, but, *sigh*, it makes the Science go.
• Watching Witchblade: Absolutely an overlooked gem of the edgy-comic-to-TV-series genre. None of the characters are cut and dried. Kenneth Irons is a billionaire mastermind is locked in an ambivalent dance with the Witchblade’s bearer, Sara Pezzini—will he steal the Witchblade from her, or nurture her and her connection with the Witchblade, or is he just biding time until she continues her bloodline, hoping that the next generation will be more pliable? His über-creeptastic henchman, Ian Nottingham, is torn between his fanatical loyalty to Irons and his puppy-dog special-forces stalker crush on Sara. Some of the camera work and FX are a bit corny, but the story somehow bears up under that. I was even willing to ride out the whole thoroughly embarrassing interlude wherein Sara falls in love with an Irish bard/rockstar named Conchobar. Yes, it’s just as lame as it sounds. Yet it barely dilutes the concentrated awesome that is the First Season. (The second season? We will not speak of this. *Jedi handwave* There is no second season.)
• Shoveling the driveway: The joys of home ownership.
• Playing Agricola: The tagline, The 17^th Century: Not an easy time for farming. is not promising. Neither are the intimidating number of cards, animeeples, veggiemeeples, assorted-colored discs, and other fiddly bits. However, the game is clearly not #1 on Board Game Geek for nothing. J and I are still somewhat at the “thrashing around randomly” stage of strategic development, and we have no clear idea why we or lose, but we hope someday to get a clue.
• Earning my Junior Weathercaster’s Badge: Yeah, didn’t make it to La Crosse for Christmas Eve. :( We’re hoping to be able to make it to family celebrations later this week. Did you know that the Wisconsin DOT has a nifty map of road conditions for interstates? ‘Cause they do.
• Making Christmas cookies: I’m currently chillin’ dough for Chocolate Crinkle Cookies and Ginger Poppy Seed Cookies, and I’ve made a large number of Chocolate Gingerbread Bars, which are awesome. Nothing like harnessing one’s neglected inner homemaker to decompress after the semester.
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We’re back from a little weekend trip. I visited my mom and my nephews (my sister and her husband were out of town) and went for a lecture/cruise that was part of Winona University’s University on the River. My mom loves these cruises and was kind enough to invite me along for a couple this year.

It was a beautiful day for a trip on the river. We went out in a very nice excursion boat, and cruised north, locking through Lock & Dam 5. The lecture was provided by Rusty Cunningham, publisher (!) of the LaCrosse Tribune and the Winona Daily News. He spoke on many newsworthy controversies in the history of the upper Mississippi. We saw a bald eagle’s nest on one of the islands, and, using Mom’s camera, I snapped a nice picture of an immature eagle roosting near the nest.

I find it soooo relaxing to get out on the water. I swear, the second I set foot on a boat, I feel the tension melt away.

I’m looking forward to another University on the River cruise with Mom in August. I might have possibly volunteered to do a stargazing cruise for next year. :)

Games Played:
Great Wall of China
10 Days in Asia
10 Days in Europe
Apples to Apples
Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride: The Card Game
Thurn and Taxis
Power Grid
Hanging Gardens
Carcassonne: The City
Lascaux
Yspahan
Rock!

Booty:
10 Days in Asia
Gavitt’s Stock Exchange
Rock!
Rat Hot
Halli Galli: Christmas Edition
Gone Fishing
Crocodile Pool Party
Mission: Red Planet
Times Square
Power Grid: Italy/France Expansion
Lascaux

Insanely Good Ice Cream Eaten:
Dark Cocoa Gelato
Queen City Cayenne
Lime Cardamom
Mango Lassi
Riesling Pear Sorbet
Cherry Lambic Sorbet
Sugar Daddy’s Brownie Cream Cheese

Memorable Catchphrases:
“Play the player, not the game.”
“Cameeples!!!”

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It’s science!

I spent the weekend traveling, and it struck me that, after many years of adding rules to my personal packing-and-deployment system, my trips go pretty smoothly. Much of what follows is probably just common sense, but you can judge for yourself. I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy these tips to get you through security and on to your final destination.

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Hey, look! Cornell astronomers! Fancy finding them them in Washington, D.C.!

Or, rather, from a Holiday Inn not far from the American Center for Physics.

I’m attending a workshop for new faculty in physics and astronomy. So far we’ve had a workshop on grant writing, sure to pay off down the line with beaucoup tax dollars for yours truly to squander on taking more pictures of Saturn, and a very thought-provoking discussion on diversity in physics, why it sucks not to have it, why physics sucks particularly hard at it, and some ideas about what we ought to do to get more of it.

I didn’t go to bed early last night as planned because my students emailed to complain that I hadn’t posted some material on the website like I promised, so I had to do that, then I woke up even earlier than I had to to catch the bus to O’Hare ’cause I’m always nervous before a trip, and I’ve been going full steam ever since then—bus ride to ORD, flight to DC, a trip on the Metro, a 10 minute walk to the ACP from the Metro stop, workshops and discussions, and now I’m going to go out and get “coffee” (probably herbal tea for me!) with Tim, a fellow Cornell astro grad alum who lives down here now.

I keep getting these weird calls to my cell phone from numbers that aren’t actually phone numbers, like “1-01-1000″ and “2364″ and nobody’s there when I answer. I’ve also been having strange auditory hallucinations of my cell ring whenever there’s any background noise, like Muzak or white noise—I had to turn off the fan in my room because I kept hearing it ring over and over, kind of like an ear worm except I was actually hearing it and it was driving me a little nuts.

Anyway, the magical formula of caffeine + sugar = energy has kept me going, and I grabbed a 20-minute power nap, and the ringing-phone hallucination has stopped, so I’m good to go. :)