Cheesy Get-to-know-you Thingy

Haven’t gotten one of these for a few months, so I thought I’d actually fill this one out…

1. What time did you get up? 5:40 AM, or so…though today I slept until after 6…what decadance!
2. If you could eat lunch with one person, who would it be? Einstein — sometimes I just need to be reminded how little I really know
3. Gold or silver? Plantinum — I’m allergic to gold and silver
4. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Collateral
5. What is your favorite TV show? Clean Sweep
6. What do you have for breakfast? Oatmeal if I’m at work, bowl of cereal if I’m at home
7. Who would you hate to be stuck in a room with? Carrot Top — only one of us would emerge
8. What/Who inspires you? The stars at night
9. What is your middle name? Jo (soon to have two middle names: Jo and Mattson
10. Beach, city or country? Country, but not too far from the suburbs
11. Favorite ice cream? Phish Food
12. Butter, plain, or salted popcorn? Butter
13. Favorite color? Most of the various shades of blue
14. What kind of car do you drive? Corolla
15. Favorite sandwich? The ones we make at home with homemade bread and lots of veggies and cheese
16. What characteristic do you despise? Dishonesty
17. Favorite flower? Lilacs
18. If you could go anywhere in the world on a vacation, where would it
    be? Photo safari in Africa, though I’m more likely to do the whole European-thing before that ever happens
19. What color is your bath robe? Blue with stars and moons
20. Where would you like to retire? Southwest USA
21. Favorite day of the week? Saturday
22. What did you do for your last birthday? Bike ride, shopping and dinner out
23. Where were you born? Minnesota
24. Favorite sport to watch? Figure skating
25. What fabric detergent do you use? Tide-free
26. Coke or Pepsi? Diet Coke (Vanilla or Cherry, preferably)
27. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Night owl turned morning person for the sake of my commute
28. What is your shoe size? 9.5
29. Do you have any pets? Yup, three cats: Duncan, Ares, and Artemis
30. Favorite alcoholic drink? Mudslide

From my iced tea bottle cap

The most exciting phrase to hear in science is not “Eureka,” but “That’s funny.”

— Isaac Asimov

More Games More Fun, Week 3

We finally had our third games class tonight — it dragged on due to scheduling problems, but was well worth the wait. Tonight’s games were:

• Drunter & Drüber, a silly German game. The board is a grid with spaces containing either buildings, outhouses or nothing. The town rebuilt, forgetting to put in walls for protection, a river for water, and a road. So, our job is to lay down tiles with wall, river or road. It’s perfectly okay to cover over a building, but to destroy an outhouse requires a vote.

  At the beginning of the game, each player is given a type of building that they are protecting, so they have to try and direct the building of road, river and wall so that their buildings are still standing at the end of the game.

  I creamed everyone. Hee hee hee

• Manhattan, which, oddly enough, is another German game. In this game, you place buildings in one of six areas, in positions determined by cards held in your and.. You can build on top of another building as long as you will have at least as many floors on that building as the player with the most floors. You get points at the end of each round by how many buildings you hold (someone “owns” a building if theirs is the last piece played on that building), how many areas you have the most buildings, and the tallest building in all of Manhattan.

  Fun game, but the other two players ganged up on me — still a bit sore, I think, from our game of Drunter & Drüber.

Overall, this was a fun class, and I suspect that we will be taking another class from the same teacher — but not this fall, because life is just too busy right now.

Smart Duck

More Games More Fun, Week 2

Our second games class was delayed by a couple weeks, but we finally met again tonight. We played three more fun games.

The first game was Ticket to Ride. This is a railroad building game, where each player attempts to connect various cities based on the tickets they hold. While on the surface, this game looks a bit like TransAmerica (which we played in the Beyond Monopoly class we took last fall), the game play is quite different, and I liked it much better. Of course, I killed the competition in this game, so that might have something to do with why I liked it so much.

The second game was Cluzzle, a sculpting game meant to be more of a social game than anything else. Each person takes a card with several different things listed. For each of three rounds they choose one of the things on the list and sculpt it using PlayDoh-like clay (but without the classic PlayDoh smell). Sculptors get points for each player that gets their word, but no points if everyone gets it. Players also get points for each sculpture they guess. Fun, silly game, but probably not one that we’d buy, since we don’t really do the “social” games much.

The final game we played was For Sale, and auction game. Each player starts with 15 chips, and bids on buildings during the first rounds. During the last round the buildings are then sold. I’m not so good at auction games, so, again, this is unlikely to be a game we buy. It was fun, though, and only took about 15 minutes to play.

Dumb Sci-Fi Moments

The article, 10 Dumb Moments in Sci-Fi Cinema, counts down the top 10 bad moments in blockbuster science fiction films. These are not dumb moments from b-films — that would be too, too easy. No, these are dumb things that occur in otherwise good movies.

The moments they describe are entertaining. For example, why would the Empire (of The Empire Strikes Back), builders of the greatest space weapon, the Death Star, use All-Terrain Armored Transports to attack the Rebels on Hoth? These AT-ATs are not exactly stable, and really don’t have much fire power…at least compared to what we know the Empire can muster.

My favorite part of the article, though, is the introduction:

Sure, the genre [science fiction] gets respect, not to mention box office yield, but the poor innocent fans are still depicted as lifeless, dateless, and wearing Vulcan ears.

But, and we say this with love, sci-fi fans often deserve the reputation. Once people overhear some pale guy with wizard hair explaining how a light saber simply isn’t possible, as the exposed plasma from the device would irradiate every living organism with a 5-kilometer radius, what are people supposed to think?  “Sexy?”

(Sigh)

More Games More Fun, Week 1

Tonight was our first games class. We signed up for the community education class, More Games, More Fun, taught by the same guy who taught the Beyond Monopoly class we took last fall. (We had actually signed up for his Two Player Games class this spring, but forgot to put it on our calendars, and completely forgot until the weekend after the class.)

The first game we played was La Strada, which reminded me of Through the Desert, which we played last fall. In the game, you are a merchant, and your goal is to build roads to various towns and hamlets to sell your goods. The more towns and hamlets the better, but if another player has a presence in the town, too, your final score is diminished. Fun game — each turn is fairly simple, but you really want to pay attention to what other players are doing so you can plan your moves accordingly.

The second game was High Society. This is an auction game where you try to end up with the most toys. Everyone starts out with the same amount of money, and there are 10 “toy” cards, 3 cards that up your points by twice, a thief card, a card that decreases your points by half, and a card that decreases your points by 5. I’m not great at auction games, but still had some fun with it.

The final game was Coyote, a game somewhat like Polish poker (or Indian poker…neither of which is very politically correct). Each player has a numbered card on their head that everyone but themselves can see. You go around the group, each person bidding on what they think the total of those cards are, but not going over. If you think the person before you is over the total, you challenge them. Whoever was wrong gets a coyote. As players get three coyotes, they are out of the game. This one was quite fun, quick and easy to learn. Though, it got really hard when the game was down to just the last two people…

Ford Dealership

Andrew got this puzzle for me for Christmas. It’s an old-time Ford dealership, and there is a Model-T in the lower left corner. Have I mentioned my Model-T yet? I don’t think so…I’ll need to do an entry on that.

Eccentric?

I’ve had a clipping from the Minneapolis Star Tribune for years. The title is How to tell if you’re off-center. The criteria, in descending order of importance are:

1. Noncomforming
2. Creative
3. Strongly curious
4. Idealistic: Wants to make the world better
5. Happily obsessed with a hobby
6. Aware from childhood of being different
7. Intelligent
8. Opinionated, outspoken
9. Noncompetitive; doesn’t need society’s reinforcement
10. Unusual in living and eating habits
11. Not interested in the company of others
12. Possesses a mischievous sense of humor
13. Single
14. An oldest or only child
15. A bad speller

I confess that I fit the description for numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 (except a select few people), 12, and 15. At the time I clipped the article, I was also single, and had no desire to find someone — happily, that has changed 🙂

I did a search for Dr. David Weeks, the person the clipping says is responsible for this list, and it turns out that he wrote a book, Eccentrics that I might just want to look into.

Eight Nouns

While looking at the new researchblogs.org page [which no longer exists 1/2014. -b], I saw an ice-breaker idea. The poster has used this for on-line courses, and thought that perhaps it would be good for a “real” classroom as well. I thought I’d see what I came up with.

1. Introduce yourself with 8 nouns

Astrophysicist, writer, friend, fiancé, daughter, reader, survivor, goofus

2. Explain why you picked each noun

Astrophysicist – this is what I do day-to-day. I love the sky, the stars, the magic there, even if I don’t always love the day-to-day part of being an astronomer. I’m also a bit reclusive, off-center, and eccentric, as seems stereotypical of scientists.

Writer – this is what I aspire to be. I’ve always loved writing, but never followed that dream. I do get to do some writing as a scientist and in my work administering web pages for a NASA mission. However, to me, being a writer is really about being a creative writer. That’s where I want to be. And I have started to take this back into my life after a necessary leave-of-absence during grad school.

Friend – friendships are very important to me, both what I get from having friends, and what I get from being a friend. I’m fiercely loyal to my friends, and will do anything once I let you in. But, no, it’s not always easy to get in.

Fiancé – soon-to-be wife. I’m not ashamed to identify myself as part of a couple, though I am (and was) complete as an individual. I’ve found that I am a stronger person since I started my relationship with Andrew.

Daughter – my family is also important to me. These are people I grew up surrounded by, and they can’t help but to have had a profound impact on who I am today — whether for better or worse.

Reader – More than TV and movies and the Internet, books have value to me. I may not always read the most profound novels, but the written word in almost any form is one thing I highly value (somewhat related to being a writer, huh?)

Survivor – no, not the TV show. While I may not have been through as much as some people, I have experienced my share of loss and sadness. And during those times I sometimes wondered how I would make it through to the next day, hour, minute. But somehow I’ve always pulled through. Whether I’m actually a stronger person, or just know more of my strengths from those experiences is hard to say.

Goofus – the other words didn’t really show that I have a silly side, so this seemed as good as any. I have a sense of humor, and can sometimes be found turning red while giggling about some inside joke (inside myself, that is — no one else need know what I’m giggling about).