Week in review: Week to 12 July
Jul. 13th, 2025 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. At board game club this week, we played RoboRally, which I've heard about for years but I believe this is the first time I've actually played it.
I was nearly the first player to get a robot to the first checkpoint, but then I misjudged the effect of a turntable at the corner of two conveyer belts and my robot was conveyed right off the edge of the board. My second robot suffered a similar mishap. My third and final robot nearly got to the checkpoint before being nudged off course by another robot, resulting in yet another fatal conveyance. So I didn't win the game, but it was very funny. (All the other players survived to the end of the game and all got at least as far as the first checkpoint.)
We also had another of our weekend afternoon sessions, where we played Race for the Galaxy and Nemesis.
It was the first time I'd played Race for the Galaxy, and I was only just starting to come to grips with how the game mechanics worked when we reached the end of the game. I think I might enjoy it more next time I play, assuming that happens soon enough that I haven't forgotten everything.
I was pleased to get a chance to play Nemesis again, because I enjoy it but have sworn off playing it at the weekly evening sessions because it's not a short game or one to be played while tired. We had a surprisingly easy game early on, but it reached a critical point just around the time most of the players had completed their objectives and were starting to think about how to get home safely, and suddenly there were alien intruders all over the place and getting in the way. One of the players got away in an escape pod, and the rest of us were picked off one by one; I ended up as the last survivor on the ship, and narrowly avoided being eaten by an alien when the ship suffered a critical malfunction from all the maintenance we hadn't had time to do and blew up.
. I've been spending some time poking around in old files and posts, and found a couple of old limericks that I still like, and after some dithering decided to put up on AO3. I also found a couple of sonnets, which I haven't decided what to do with yet, and a very silly filk that I'm holding back to inflict on a suitable occasion.
. The library notified me that an interlibrary loan had arrived for me: Mary Chase's play Harvey, which I'd noticed in the catalogue and put in a request for out of curiosity. There have been some playscripts I've read that are entertaining reads in their own right, but I didn't find this to be one of them; I'd be interested to see it in performance, but on the page I found the situations flat and the characters, with one or two possible exceptions, not very likeable. The things that the play considers funny or suspenseful don't have much overlap with my tastes in those areas, which is partly down to the passage of time but that can't be the whole explanation because I've read and enjoyed other plays of similar vintage. Speaking of the passage of time, it didn't help that it's a famous enough work that it suffered from that thing where I'd been told all the best bits already.
When I went to the library to pick it up, I was served by a new librarian, who had to be assured that the card I'd given him was an authentic official library card, because I still have the original card I was issued back when the library first computerised, and he'd never seen one of those before.
. It has been quite some time since I've been active on the blog I used to run about the Liaden Universe series, but I never actually officially announced that I was putting it into hibernation: I just let more and more time pass between entries and comments, and eventually decided that I'd been silent so long that the thing to do was to just keep being silent. But this week I got a notification that there was, somehow, a new comment from a visitor who had never commented before, and I felt it was only fair to approve it, and then I read it and had to write a response. Having revealed to anybody who might still be paying attention that I was not, in fact, dead in a ditch somewhere, I thought I'd better continue the burst of activity long enough to write a post officially stating that the blog was in hibernation and no further posts should be expected. So now that's done.
. There's a new Murderbot short story out: "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy". It's a vignette featuring Murderbot's friend ART, set between their first parting and ART's subsequent reappearance later in the series. It answered a few questions I've had about ART since its reappearance, and gives an interesting new viewpoint on someone who, until now, we've only seen through Murderbot's eyes.
. I've broken out one of my old jigsaw puzzles, and got as far as sorting out the edge pieces, but I don't seem to be feeling very enthusiastic about assembling it. On some level, it feels like there's an element of discovery missing, now that I've already done it once. Or maybe it's just that I'm not currently spending much time listening to and watching the kinds of things that made a good background for jigsaw puzzle assembly.
. I am continuing to be much better than I used to be at keeping on top of the washing up.
I was nearly the first player to get a robot to the first checkpoint, but then I misjudged the effect of a turntable at the corner of two conveyer belts and my robot was conveyed right off the edge of the board. My second robot suffered a similar mishap. My third and final robot nearly got to the checkpoint before being nudged off course by another robot, resulting in yet another fatal conveyance. So I didn't win the game, but it was very funny. (All the other players survived to the end of the game and all got at least as far as the first checkpoint.)
We also had another of our weekend afternoon sessions, where we played Race for the Galaxy and Nemesis.
It was the first time I'd played Race for the Galaxy, and I was only just starting to come to grips with how the game mechanics worked when we reached the end of the game. I think I might enjoy it more next time I play, assuming that happens soon enough that I haven't forgotten everything.
I was pleased to get a chance to play Nemesis again, because I enjoy it but have sworn off playing it at the weekly evening sessions because it's not a short game or one to be played while tired. We had a surprisingly easy game early on, but it reached a critical point just around the time most of the players had completed their objectives and were starting to think about how to get home safely, and suddenly there were alien intruders all over the place and getting in the way. One of the players got away in an escape pod, and the rest of us were picked off one by one; I ended up as the last survivor on the ship, and narrowly avoided being eaten by an alien when the ship suffered a critical malfunction from all the maintenance we hadn't had time to do and blew up.
. I've been spending some time poking around in old files and posts, and found a couple of old limericks that I still like, and after some dithering decided to put up on AO3. I also found a couple of sonnets, which I haven't decided what to do with yet, and a very silly filk that I'm holding back to inflict on a suitable occasion.
. The library notified me that an interlibrary loan had arrived for me: Mary Chase's play Harvey, which I'd noticed in the catalogue and put in a request for out of curiosity. There have been some playscripts I've read that are entertaining reads in their own right, but I didn't find this to be one of them; I'd be interested to see it in performance, but on the page I found the situations flat and the characters, with one or two possible exceptions, not very likeable. The things that the play considers funny or suspenseful don't have much overlap with my tastes in those areas, which is partly down to the passage of time but that can't be the whole explanation because I've read and enjoyed other plays of similar vintage. Speaking of the passage of time, it didn't help that it's a famous enough work that it suffered from that thing where I'd been told all the best bits already.
When I went to the library to pick it up, I was served by a new librarian, who had to be assured that the card I'd given him was an authentic official library card, because I still have the original card I was issued back when the library first computerised, and he'd never seen one of those before.
. It has been quite some time since I've been active on the blog I used to run about the Liaden Universe series, but I never actually officially announced that I was putting it into hibernation: I just let more and more time pass between entries and comments, and eventually decided that I'd been silent so long that the thing to do was to just keep being silent. But this week I got a notification that there was, somehow, a new comment from a visitor who had never commented before, and I felt it was only fair to approve it, and then I read it and had to write a response. Having revealed to anybody who might still be paying attention that I was not, in fact, dead in a ditch somewhere, I thought I'd better continue the burst of activity long enough to write a post officially stating that the blog was in hibernation and no further posts should be expected. So now that's done.
. There's a new Murderbot short story out: "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy". It's a vignette featuring Murderbot's friend ART, set between their first parting and ART's subsequent reappearance later in the series. It answered a few questions I've had about ART since its reappearance, and gives an interesting new viewpoint on someone who, until now, we've only seen through Murderbot's eyes.
. I've broken out one of my old jigsaw puzzles, and got as far as sorting out the edge pieces, but I don't seem to be feeling very enthusiastic about assembling it. On some level, it feels like there's an element of discovery missing, now that I've already done it once. Or maybe it's just that I'm not currently spending much time listening to and watching the kinds of things that made a good background for jigsaw puzzle assembly.
. I am continuing to be much better than I used to be at keeping on top of the washing up.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-14 11:27 pm (UTC)"Harvey" would be the one about the eponymous six-foot invisible rabbit, I'm assuming?
no subject
Date: 2025-07-15 01:32 am (UTC)