Wii

There will be a post about the awesome Thanksgiving dinner we had later, but we just got back from Will's house where we were playing with his new Wii!!!! It was so cool! We boxed, golfed, tennised, and bowled! I can't wait to try it again. You have to try it.

I had not heard anything about it really before last week. It's a new Nintendo game console (?) and you hold this remote in your hand and move your body like you would. You bowl with the controller in your hand and it records your movements. So if you flick your wrist, it will curve the bal appropriately. Will is really good at it, but he's had more practice than any of us.

I can't wait to try it again!!

Clean sheets rock!

Side note: Since I started playing Guitar Hero, everything that's cool "rocks"!

I love climbing into a bed with clean sheets. I love the way they smell and feel. I washed my sheets last night and had a great night of sleep even though I didn't go to sleep until past 1 AM.

So, in anticipation of Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for having clean sheets on my bed right now! I can't wait to climb into bed!

Pampered Chef Order?

Anyone interested in ordering something from Pampered Chef? My rep is running a 15% discount for this weekend only, so if you want/need anything, let me know ASAP!!

The website is http://www.pamperedchef.com/

The products I would highly recommend are the vegetable peeler, kitchen timer, Twixit combo kit, scrapers (there are four sizes), and any of the stoneware.

My boss has insisted I order him a couple more of the vegetable peelers. His wife ordered one a year or so ago and he said that whenever he helps her in the kitchen, she always uses that one and gives him the crappy one. So he wants one for himself and an extra one for back-up! I am doing the same thing. An extra one is always good to have on hand. Especially when you're working on a big meal, like let's say... Thanksgiving?

Rock, Paper, Scissors Showdown

When I saw L's post about Hollywood Team Trivia, I thought it sounded fun! Plus, I'm always up for anything that has a gambling angle to it! The winning team was going to take home half of the door. Considering it was $9 per person to get in, half the door could be a sizeable amount depending on how many people showed up.

So, L assembled a team that consisted of L, Erin, Ron, Dr.P and myself and we headed on down to Safari Sam's. I let them all know in advance that I probably would be absolutely useless considering that I don't really know all that much trivia, especially not Hollywood trivia.

The quiz was split into three rounds, 20 questions each. Erin knew probably half the answers all by herself, while Dr.P, L and Ron answered some questions too. I think I knew only a couple questions that no one else really knew. So at least I was useful!

They gathered all our sheets and then tallied up the scores. They then announced a tie of 37 right out of 60 questions between our team (Power to the Meeple) and another team. So we did a 5 question tie breaker. Result? We both answered two questions correctly.

So they asked for a representative from each team to come up and challenge the bar owner to some thumb wrestling. Why not each other? I don't know. All I know is that I suck at thumb wrestling, but my team had faith and sent me up anyway. My heart was pounding when I got up on stage. I went first and I lost. The bar owner's hands were bigger and stronger than mine. Then the other guy thumb wrestled the bar owner and he lost too.

So it went to the classic Rock, Paper, Scissors tie-breaker. Winner was the first to win 2 out of 3. Once I heard that, I was feeling pretty confident I could take the guy. I consider myself fairly good at RPS. We decided on the 1-2-3-show method and went to work. See the throw-by-throw details below!

Me:Him
1: P=P
2: S>P
3: R=R
4: P=P
5: S>P

With that, I won!!! The grand prize was.... $103.50. So we each got $20 and they graciously donated the remaining $3.50 to the Thanksgiving fund. So, I may be only able to answer a couple questions, but I kick ass at Rock, Paper, Scissors!!!

Cranberry Side Dishes

I have two cranberry dishes that I make every year for Thanksgiving. The thing I love about both of these recipes is that they can be made a day or two in advance, so I usually make them Tuesday or Wednesday night so they're ready to go on Thanksgiving. I found both of these recipes in a Martha Stewart Living magazine (the one with the chocolate turkey on the cover I believe).

I usually make Martha's Cranberry Orange Sauce which is basically just taking 3 cups of fresh cranberries (12 oz.) and cooking them in a pan with 1 cup of sugar over medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves and the cranberries begin to pop (about 7 minutes). Then add 1 cup of water and simmer until slightly thickened (about 4 minutes). Remove from heat and stir in whole segments of 2 satsuma mandarin oranges. Let it cool!

The other one is a recipe for Cranberry Orange Relish. I modified it to my tastes and ever since the first year I made it, it has become a staple at my Thanksgiving table. When I saw it, the first ingredient that really piqued my interest was the jalopeno! I love spicy food and I don't think I had ever eaten a real cranberry, so I just decided to go for it.

Here's the original recipe and I just put all the stuff I omit at the bottom of the ingredients list and marked them as (omit).

Cranberry Orange Relish

Cranberry Orange Relish

Makes 2 cups
This is an easy addition to the Thanksgiving menu since it doesn't require any cooking.

2 cups fresh or defrosted frozen cranberries
1/4 cup diced red onion
1 large jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 blood oranges or navel oranges, peeled, sectioned, and cut into 1/4-inch pieces, juices reserved
2 teaspoons fresh grated ginger (omit)
1/2 cup sugar
2 stalks celery, peeled to remove strings, cut in 1/4-inch dice
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped (omit)
1/4 cup pecans, toasted, broken in pieces (omit)

1. Place cranberries in food processor, and pulse to chop coarsely, about five pulses. Transfer to a medium bowl.

2. Add onion, jalapeño, lime juice, orange sections and juice, ginger, sugar, and celery; mix gently. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days. Just before serving, add mint and pecans, and toss to combine.

Here's a picture of the ingredients before mixing it up:

Cranberry Orange Relish - "Before" picture

Guitar Hero Weekend

It has been a Guitar Hero FEST this weekend! First, GH2 at a birthday party on Friday night til, um, (3:30 AM), did I just write that? :-) Then same thing pretty much on Saturday night (but til 4 AM). Yes, I have a problem. But the good news is I'm getting better at playing! I pretty much have just graduated to doing the songs on hard because medium just isn't a challenge anymore.

Recovering from BGG.con

I am STILL recovering from BGG.con. It might actually help if I got to bed sometime before midnight any night this week. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to get up at 6 AM for work! Yuck!! I am DEFINITELY sleeping in tomorrow.

Tomorrow I was going to game, but I think that will have to just wait til Sunday. I need to do all my planning and shopping for Thanksgiving. It looks like the guest count is going to be either 13 or 14 people (not including myself). I ordered a 25 lb. free range turkey from Full of Life and I'm really looking forward to cooking. I also need to clean up my apartment tomorrow and wash the tablecloths. Fun! :-)

On Sunday, I'm doing a team trivia contest. The winning team gets half of the admission money. It's $9 per person to enter, but I have no idea how many people usually show up.

As usual, a busy weekend!

Moving

Moving sucks. That's all there is to it! I helped my friend Erin move a couple carloads of stuff and I'm beat!! Time to go to bed!

GenCon

There's a con in L.A. this weekend. I'm not planning on attending, but I was tempted by the fact that they are having a Guitar Hero 2 tournament as well as Karaoke Revolution!! Two of my favorite PS2 games!!

BGG.CON 2006 Recap

Well, I'm back from the BoardGameGeek convention. The #1 thing to say about it is that it was a blast!!! I slept a total of 12 hours from Thursday morning until I boarded the plane Sunday evening around 6 PM.

I won't list all the games I played because frankly, most anyone reading this just wouldn't care. And all my geeky friends know where to find the list of games I played, so, there.

Here's what I do know: I will be signing up to attend next year's con as soon as it's available. It was fabulous. I really liked the hotel room, but frankly, I might be tempted to cram a bunch of people in a room because all I did was sleep and shower in there. I spent zero time in my room. Maybe I will change my mind by next year, we'll see!

Highlights included:

Puzzle hunt: OMG, my friend Dave did a puzzle hunt for the con and it was fabulous!! I can't say much about it since he may run it again in SoCal, but it was REALLY fun. A lot of people complained it was too long and I could see that, but I didn't feel that way. We were probably around 3rd place or so on this one. We were SO close to finishing!! This was won by team Desert Meeple.

Frozen custard: We went out for dinner on Friday night after the puzzle hunt and then had some frozen custard. It was delish. I'm ready to have some more!

Game show: We participated in a Family Feud style game show (our team name was Meeple are Meeple) and we sat across the row from a team of two gamers from the SCB group (a fellow SoCal Group - their team name was Die, Fuggers!). We were talking shit to them all throughout the game, especially when we were in first place at the end of the second round. Unfortunately, they made a strong comeback in the third round and ended up coming in second place by only ONE point!!! It was so close. Those damn Desert Meeples won this too! And the sad thing is that we were beat by team Mangina (Derk, Ron, Jon and someone else I think) who consumed TWO bottles of wine during the show. Ugh!!! :-P

Final Score

Playing Werewolf: I had only played WW once at my apt. I played one game on Saturday night which turned into two games to three and next thing we knew it was around 8 AM on Sunday. So, Aaron says, "Well, there's no point in going to bed now, right?" He was absolutely right, consider the con ended at 3 PM, so I just said, "All right! Who's hungry?" We all piled into my rented SUV (thank goodness for that car!) and we headed out to Cafe Brazil for breakfast.

While we were there, Aaron offered $20 to anyone who would drink some of the pretty spicy hot sauce on the table. He had one taker who drank more than the required amount and paid for it for the rest of the morning. He did, however, get his $20!

Oh, and a quick side note, Greg had a WW playlist on his iPod for us to listen to while it was nighttime during the game. It was pretty cool.

Being mooned after a game of Time's Up: Yes, I saw Derk's ass on Friday night. 'Nuff said.