A bear wandered into the open garage while I was outside working on some wiring on the front porch. I would not have known he was there except that a woman stopped her car in front of the house a minute or so later to take pictures.
He found a little paper bag of trash that I was collecting while I was working – it had a food wrapper in it along with some wiring scrap. I had to shoo him off twice before he finally gave up and left for good.
Steve, Anne, Jennifer, Geof, Nacho, Adriana and Luno joined us in costume for a bit of gaming on Halloween, culminating in another twisted game of deception of Blood on the Clocktower moderated by Luno. I was fingered immediately as the demon after the first night by my first victim, Nacho, and hardly had a chance to try to talk my way out of being revealed and executed by the slayer (Anne) – but by pure luck I was saved by my minion, the poisoner (Jennifer), who just happened to choose Anne to poison the previous night. Anne’s slay ability thus failed, helping me appear innocent. For the rest of the game Jennifer and I managed to avoid detection, just barely, and ultimately win the game for evil. Darlene is still upset. 😋
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We replaced the old ice melt / heat trace cable on the back of the house this week – and extended it out over the three story drop:
Darlene’s family (Alice, Kathy, Shel and Dan) came for a visit again this month and among other things, Rachel joined us for lunch at BeniHana’s, we visited the Santa Cruz boardwalk and we met up with Maryanne for some sightseeing down Monterey and Big Sur way.
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Here’s another gallery of pictures after many more months of board gaming – from September 2023 through April 2024.
So of those I can still remember the names of, there was: Covert, Raiders of the North Sea, Breaking Bad: The Board Game, Brass: Birmingham, Pipeline, Turing Machine, The Expanse, Great Western Trail: New Zealand, Blood on the Clock Tower, Dune: Imperium, Horseless Carriage, Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game, Heat: Pedal to the Metal, Power Grid, Fliptown, Cosmic Encounter, Suburbia, Trap Words, Flamme Rouge, Twilight Imperium, Fury of Dracula, Pax Pamir, First in Flight, CuBirds
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Onward to White Sands National Park in New Mexico – the world’s largest gypsum dune field. We spent a few hours hiking around and taking pictures. The fine gypsum feels nice and cool underfoot – it doesn’t heat up in the sun like sand.
I had hoped to also visit the Trinity test site but it’s open to visitors only two days each year (once in April and once in October) due to the site being part of the active White Sands Missile Range. We left the park an hour or two before sunset to find a nice dispersed campsite beyond the next little range of mountains:
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Geof, Jennifer, Clay, Adriana and Nacho (behind the camera) joined us to watch the “Barbie” movie…
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This is a gallery of pictures from another summer season of board gaming, including: 49, Flamecraft, Plague Inc., Thunder Road: Vendetta, Yedo, Merv, Atlantic Star, Eclipse, Middle Earth Quest, Chinatown, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Dominant Species, Dead by Daylight, Camel Up!, Hegemony, Clank! Catacombs, Evolution: Climate, Cosmic Encounter, Brian Boru: High King of Ireland, Horrified, Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, Burgle Bros 2: The Casino Capers, Game of Thrones, Bus, The Networks, Thunderstone Quest, Campaign Trail and Heat.
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