Saturday, July 09, 2005
13:53
Big day yesterday. I got new shoes, since the old ones were starting to fall apart. I got them at Fred Meyer for only $15 (60% of $25). Not bad. Later I got a chance to break them in. After making a few phone calls, I found out that there was no game night at Randy's this week, something I would probably have known if I'd been there last week. Instead, everyone was invited over to Greg's house. It was a large group; between fifteen and twenty people I think. Abe and I got there at about 19:30, at which point they were already in the middle of a game of kickball. The way they play, everyone rotates through all the positions, including "batter". We played that until everyone started getting tired and thirsty, then went inside for coolaid and nachos.
Greg's little brother Steve is the one who usually makes the coolaid. He likes to put in about four times the recommended amount of sugar. No one else will do this, but they like it so they let him make it. I watched him do this one time. First, he carefully measured the sugar in a measuring cup, except he did it heaping full instead of flat. Then he did it again (note that the first cupful fulfilled normal requirements). Then he decided there wasn't that much sugar left and just dumped the rest of the container in.
Once it started getting dark, we played a game called "pigstye". Basically it's a variation on dungeon tag. Two people are It. You don't have to actually touch someone to tag them, but just see them and call out their name. And, you don't have to touch someone to free them from the jail; you just have to wave at them, and have them wave back at you. Their next-door neighbors played with us, and we were able to use their yard so we had more space.
After it got really dark, we played three games of Capture the Flags. The teams were divided up randomly. For the first two games, the territory for each team was the combined front and back yards of one of the two houses, with the property line as the border. On flag was in a front yard, and the other was in the opposite back yard. Then for the third game, we put both the flags in the back yards, and made the front yards a "neutral zone" where no one could get tagged.
I spent most of my time in the first two games either sitting in jail, or harrassing border guards. In the third game, I was a jail guard, stationed in front of one of the back gates. That was exciting for the first fifteen minutes or so, when the other team was trying to come through that gate. At one point they ambushed me with two people, and managed to free a couple of prisoners and get away. I would have caught one of them if I hadn't been slowed down by a bush. At the same time, other members of their team came from the other side and tried to get our flag. They were all caught, and right after that we recaptured one of the prisoners who had been freed. The game slowed down after that. No one else tried to come through my gate, although I was still in a good position to survey both back yards and yell information to my teammates. The rest of the game mostly consisted of both sides patrolling the fence (which is less than waste high in places). Occasionally someone would vault it and try to do something. Finally someone on our team snuck around and ran in through one of the gates, grabbed their flag, and jumped the fence with it. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've played Capture the Flags in seven or eight years.
Greg's little brother Steve is the one who usually makes the coolaid. He likes to put in about four times the recommended amount of sugar. No one else will do this, but they like it so they let him make it. I watched him do this one time. First, he carefully measured the sugar in a measuring cup, except he did it heaping full instead of flat. Then he did it again (note that the first cupful fulfilled normal requirements). Then he decided there wasn't that much sugar left and just dumped the rest of the container in.
Once it started getting dark, we played a game called "pigstye". Basically it's a variation on dungeon tag. Two people are It. You don't have to actually touch someone to tag them, but just see them and call out their name. And, you don't have to touch someone to free them from the jail; you just have to wave at them, and have them wave back at you. Their next-door neighbors played with us, and we were able to use their yard so we had more space.
After it got really dark, we played three games of Capture the Flags. The teams were divided up randomly. For the first two games, the territory for each team was the combined front and back yards of one of the two houses, with the property line as the border. On flag was in a front yard, and the other was in the opposite back yard. Then for the third game, we put both the flags in the back yards, and made the front yards a "neutral zone" where no one could get tagged.
I spent most of my time in the first two games either sitting in jail, or harrassing border guards. In the third game, I was a jail guard, stationed in front of one of the back gates. That was exciting for the first fifteen minutes or so, when the other team was trying to come through that gate. At one point they ambushed me with two people, and managed to free a couple of prisoners and get away. I would have caught one of them if I hadn't been slowed down by a bush. At the same time, other members of their team came from the other side and tried to get our flag. They were all caught, and right after that we recaptured one of the prisoners who had been freed. The game slowed down after that. No one else tried to come through my gate, although I was still in a good position to survey both back yards and yell information to my teammates. The rest of the game mostly consisted of both sides patrolling the fence (which is less than waste high in places). Occasionally someone would vault it and try to do something. Finally someone on our team snuck around and ran in through one of the gates, grabbed their flag, and jumped the fence with it. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've played Capture the Flags in seven or eight years.
# posted by Fibonacci @ 9.7.05 
