Stella Daily (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} stellavision) wrote,@ 2008-03-03 14:14:00 |
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ACPT: Saturday evening
After puzzle 6 was over, I decided to go to the gym to pound out some miles on the treadmill. I only got 2 in -- the treadmills were not very good, and my Achilles tendons were screaming in protest. I should've braved the wind and run on the Promenade instead.
testitest showed up when I was done. I knew the evening entertainment was supposed to start at 8, so I knew we were risking being quite late for it, but I decided the awesomeness that is Franny's made that a risk worth taking. Oh man, it was even better than I remembered. Grilled octopus with minced onions, olive oil, and white beans? Fabulous. Spaghetti with Meyer lemon sauce? Even more fabulous. And Dave's pizza with clams, chilies, and parsley was almost enough to make me weep with joy. Not to mention the ever-fabulous panna cotta, this time served with saba (a grape must reduction; I just need Franny's to make this dessert famous so I can use SABA as a fill word). Well worth missing half of Wordploy (apologies to Ed Stein).
The "1 vs. 700" game, in which past ACPT champs squared off against the mob, was pretty awesome. (Thanks to Chainsaw and G Natural for putting it together.) We were a pretty smart mob, butrpipuzzleguy came awfully close to knocking us all out. He ended up getting beaten by ONE mob member (mobster?).
After the official activities were over,testitest and I joined a game of Luck of the Draw, organized by squonk_npl. A few people looked at the name of the game and refused to play on the grounds of lack of drawing skills, but Squonk assured us that drawing ability is, at times, an impairment in the game. I'd agree with that! See, you pick a subject off the card and everyone draws it...but then the criteria by which the drawing should be judged are not revealed until after the fact. So you might finish your masterpiece, only to find that the judging criterion is "Proof that a picture is not worth 1000 words." (This was an actual category in one of our games.) It was a blast! My drawing ability (which is nowhere near toonhead_npl's, but still decent enough to hold my own in most Pictionary games, was indeed a detriment in the first game we played. The second time around, I got luckier, since "Art school teacher's pet" was one of the categories. So was "happiest," and I had fortuitously chosen that round to add a tiny Dalmatian to my drawing (the subject was "fire truck"). Of course, NPL members making up the majority of the players, plenty of hysterically punny pieces of art were generated. Now I want that game for myself!
I know I'm lame for not staying up super late like everybody else, but despite my consciously trying to be more Zen about the competitive aspect this year...I AM still hypercompetitive, and I still wasn't going to allow lack of sleep to slow me down. So I wasn't there when people started getting kicked out of the hotel common areas (for "safety reasons"? Boooo!)
Sunday's recap to come!
After puzzle 6 was over, I decided to go to the gym to pound out some miles on the treadmill. I only got 2 in -- the treadmills were not very good, and my Achilles tendons were screaming in protest. I should've braved the wind and run on the Promenade instead.
testitest showed up when I was done. I knew the evening entertainment was supposed to start at 8, so I knew we were risking being quite late for it, but I decided the awesomeness that is Franny's made that a risk worth taking. Oh man, it was even better than I remembered. Grilled octopus with minced onions, olive oil, and white beans? Fabulous. Spaghetti with Meyer lemon sauce? Even more fabulous. And Dave's pizza with clams, chilies, and parsley was almost enough to make me weep with joy. Not to mention the ever-fabulous panna cotta, this time served with saba (a grape must reduction; I just need Franny's to make this dessert famous so I can use SABA as a fill word). Well worth missing half of Wordploy (apologies to Ed Stein).The "1 vs. 700" game, in which past ACPT champs squared off against the mob, was pretty awesome. (Thanks to Chainsaw and G Natural for putting it together.) We were a pretty smart mob, but
rpipuzzleguy came awfully close to knocking us all out. He ended up getting beaten by ONE mob member (mobster?).After the official activities were over,
testitest and I joined a game of Luck of the Draw, organized by squonk_npl. A few people looked at the name of the game and refused to play on the grounds of lack of drawing skills, but Squonk assured us that drawing ability is, at times, an impairment in the game. I'd agree with that! See, you pick a subject off the card and everyone draws it...but then the criteria by which the drawing should be judged are not revealed until after the fact. So you might finish your masterpiece, only to find that the judging criterion is "Proof that a picture is not worth 1000 words." (This was an actual category in one of our games.) It was a blast! My drawing ability (which is nowhere near toonhead_npl's, but still decent enough to hold my own in most Pictionary games, was indeed a detriment in the first game we played. The second time around, I got luckier, since "Art school teacher's pet" was one of the categories. So was "happiest," and I had fortuitously chosen that round to add a tiny Dalmatian to my drawing (the subject was "fire truck"). Of course, NPL members making up the majority of the players, plenty of hysterically punny pieces of art were generated. Now I want that game for myself!I know I'm lame for not staying up super late like everybody else, but despite my consciously trying to be more Zen about the competitive aspect this year...I AM still hypercompetitive, and I still wasn't going to allow lack of sleep to slow me down. So I wasn't there when people started getting kicked out of the hotel common areas (for "safety reasons"? Boooo!)
Sunday's recap to come!
