My Holiday Review

I believe it was the summer of '89 when I swore off of 4th of July celebrations. In looking for covert places to light up a joint Winky, Kevin and I got my Chevy pickup stuck not once but twice within a 10 hr period. Both times required us to labor through knee-high clay muddy messiness to call for help and an eventual wench to get the truck unstuck.

My subsequent 4ths have been low fan fair events: grill some meat, drink a beer or glass of wine and perhaps watch some fireworks, weather permitting.

This year PolyCon 26 was scheduled for the weekend of the 4th. It sounded like a good idea-- stay indoors with a bunch of geeky, like-minded individuals playing board games. Last year despite my skepticism I had a lovely time. Unfortunately that wasn't the case this year. Jenni, Micah and I pulled up a little before 1 only to see everyone standing outside and a firetruck at the main hotel entrance. When they finally gave us the all clear, we picked up our badges and hit "The Pit" quickly. After a couple of hands of Guillotine to warm up, we played a game of Ticket to Ride (fun but not all that strategic; by some stroke of luck I had the Pacific side of the board all to myself while Jenni, Micah, our new friends Matt and Glen fought over the East coast). It was an ok game but not something I'd buy.

Next up was Tikal which I'd always been curious about. It was interesting and had potential but the out-of-the-box version would not be big enough to maintain my family's interest long term. I think we could "smith-ify" it for a more enjoyable experience but I'm not sure it would compete with our version of Settlers or Collosseum. After a brief bio break and a quick round of Rock Band, we were introduced to Gloria Mundi by one of our gaming friends from last year. This game was painfully complicated and seemed to set you up for failure from the start. Micah's strategy of never offering to the Golgath didn't help our gameplay progress much. By midway through I had a throbbing headache and was thinking the torture of Monopoly might be better than Gloria. Somehow we made it to the end, I can't even recall who won.

My siblings and I decided to break for dinner at this point as it was after 8pm. When we walked into Tahoe Joes the desk hostess eyed my badge and said something to the seating hostess regarding us "being one of those kinds, warn the server". The inference was that previous PolyConners had dined and ditched, something I've never done in my life. Unfortunately this prejudgement translated to very crappy service. I was not pleased but Micah was outright pissed. His burger was cold and disgusting, probably should have been sent back to be honest and the whole meal he had approximately 6oz of tea. The idiot waiter never got him refilled and they were not busy. Usually I tip 20-25%. Not in this instance.

So back to PolyCon... We then tried Pirates Cove (another Days of Wonder game, in the past I've had good experiences with their games). It was ok, perhaps overly simplistic but enjoyable. Unfortunately the guy who was playing with us was lacking in the personal hygiene department. I didn't want to touch the dice after he had. But perhaps I've become a bit OCD regarding germs.

We left late Friday night. Micah and I both had misgivings about returning Saturday morning. It hadn't been that fun and our favorite gamer from Ventura, Curtis hadn't seemed to make the trip. But we'd paid for the whole weekend so bright and early we went back to SLO. After drumming up some players we had an enjoyable, albeit twice as long as it should have been, game of Colloseum. The married couple who joined us (Michael and Rene) were really cool. But by 1, having just made it through 1 game, Micah and I were done. We packed it up, went home and played Nascar '09, Rock Band (with 2 guitars now, I'm not stuck on vocals anymore!), and the latest Kill All Humans with the Big Boy Bob.

I went home late Saturday night, slept in Sunday morning. When I finally ventured outside to go get some breakfast/lunch I discovered my Blazer had been broken into. It freaked me out, the violation of it. They had trashed the inside-- dumping all my maintenance paperwork from the glovebox onto the seats and using the visor mirror for something... illicit. It didn't look like they had taken anything though. My Madonna CD sat on the backseat, the flat of Diet Snapple sat in the back undisturbed. Later I found out that I wasn't alone-- 40-some odd cars were targetted, all within about a 4 block radius of me. People reported missing cell phones, digital cameras, iPods, laptops, etc. I don't keep anything like that in my car. The idiots decided to steal one of the cars eventually, ended up involved in multiple hit and runs and finally wrecked it into a tree where the cops caught up with them and all of their stolen booty. The driver was a drunk 17 year old, his accomplice in possession of all the loot a mere 16. Now they're facing a laundry list of charges, 2 of which are felonies. Sad, really. But damnit it serves them right.

So next year... I'll go back to my grilling a slab of meat plan. Despite it all, I had a fantastic July 3rd so I kept that with me all weekend and even midst the throbbing headache of crappy gameplay, for no apparent reason a very big smile would light up my face.