Happy holidays

[altariel]

An extremely nice Christmas and New Year.



Despite the onset of a cold on Christmas Eve, I had a very pleasant and restful Christmas with Mr A. We ate steadily from fairly early on in the day, and wound up watching Christmas Night With the Stars in a completely uncynical fashion, thus providing more evidence for my theory that the postmodern era died when Christopher Lee had the light-sabre fight with Yoda.

The inhabitants of Isle of Wight proved curiously unwilling to sell us food, with takeaway curry proving almost impossible to find, when we arrived very late and hungry after a three hour stay on the M25. The information services on our mobile phones told us that there were 17 curry houses within 15 miles of our seaside cottage - unfortunately, 15 of these were the other side of the Solent.

After this minor hiccup, the rest of the holiday was very relaxing: eating, drinking, reading, sleeping, playing LotR boardgames. LotR Risk is brilliant and loads better than the original - I think I must care more about owning bits of Rhovanion than bits of Eurasia. Also the Eagle figures look better than the cannons.

Walking along the beach near the house proved only for the brave-hearted. I ended up ankle-deep in clay; my friends ended up knee-deep. We fled the quicksand terrors of Brighstone beach for the more civilized sands of Ventnor on New Year's Day. The weather was warm enough there that I was without gloves and scarf. A mild attack of vertigo walking along to the Needles stopped me from going to high up the headland - I do hate it when the sky and land resolve themselves into 2D planes of colour.

We got back on Friday and I faced an inbox heaving with over 500 messages. Friends over for the weekend. I have been pretty efficient this week, nailing various bits of work and making good headway with this month's more pressing projects. Let's hope this burst of energy keeps up a while yet.

Comments

[altariel.livejournal.com]

They've built in a time-limitation mechanism: at the end of each person's move you move a little counter representing the Fellowship further down the board. Once this counter gets to the end of the map, the game ends. This final move for the Fellowship depends on rolling a four or higher, all of which adds up to some fairly frantic alliances and panicky attacks as you think (but aren't sure) whether or not the game is about to end.

Still, I reckon each game lasted somewhere between 2 1/2 to 3 hours, although I was playing with some fairly competitive people (me not least!).

If you don't already have a home planned for that second box, I'll happily make you an offer for it. We were playing with a friend's, and haven't been able to find it for love or money since Xmas.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

three hours. hmm. may put it off until the weekend then.

I'm afraid H already passed on the second box to someone else, sorry.

I'll keep an eye out for Lord of the Rings Monopoly.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Or play it over a couple of nights.

We got the LotR Monopoly from Ian (G.) but haven't had a chance to play it yet. I'm pleased that's it's possible to fortify Bag End, however.

The Trivial Pursuit is good too, and there are extra rules whereby you become the Ringbearer on answering a cheese question, and get chased around the board by a Ringwraith. Livens Triv up.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

All the games sound like a lot of fun! I'm glad you had some time over the holidays to relax and play them.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

The benefits of being offline - suddenly I had all this time on my hands!