Week in review: Week to 18 October
Oct. 19th, 2025 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. It was a committee meeting week again. This month, for a change, we had the meeting on a Sunday morning. For me, that worked out well, because I could do prep on Saturday and had all of Sunday afternoon to type up the minutes, but there were enough people it didn't work well for that we're going back to Sunday afternoon for next month's meeting.
. Sunday was also the annual Spring Festival, where community groups and small businesses set up stalls in the park. I went for a wander around the park, and enjoyed the sunlight and fresh air, but didn't end up buying anything; the queues for the food were discouragingly long, and I didn't find anything particularly attractive at the second-hand book stall. (There were a few books I was vaguely interested in, but years of buying books I found vaguely interesting at second-hand book stalls has resulted in a large backlog of books that, when I do get around to reading them, are often disappointing, so I'm holding myself to a stricter standard now, and not buying books if I'm not confident they won't just sit on the shelf for years.)
. At board game club, I got to play a couple of two-player games, starting with one that's new to me called Jekyll vs. Hyde. In this game, one of the players is Jekyll and one is Hyde, and they each have different victory conditions. The game proceeds in a series of quick contests, but the aim is not necessarily to win the most contests: Hyde can win by winning a lot, but he can also win by losing a lot, while Jekyll's aim is to maintain balance by winning and losing in roughly equal measure. (Your actions are constrained by the cards you have to play, so you can't just deliberately lose whenever you feel like it.) In the game I played, I was Hyde and my opponent was Jekyll; he managed to keep things pretty balanced for most of the game, but at the end of the game I went on a massive losing streak that was just enough to tip the balance into a victory for me.
While I had the opportunity, I introduced my opponent to one of my favourite two-player games, "Labyrinth" from The Lady and the Tiger. He enjoyed it, so there might be an opportunity for us to play again some time.
After that, we joined the main group, who had been playing Bang!, and we played Saboteur and then Night of the Ninja. (All hidden role/social deduction games; I don't know if that was deliberate or just how it turned out when they were picking games that could accommodate the number of players.)
One of the rounds of Saboteur had an unexpected ending, where the miners won after the final piece of tunnel was completed by a player who we had all been pretty certain was a saboteur. It turned out that he was a saboteur, but had ended up with a hand of cards that he thought didn't leave him any alternatives. (There are always alternatives, to pass without playing if nothing else, but he's one of the less experienced players so he doesn't always have a firm grasp on game mechanics.)
We've played Night of the Ninja a couple of times in the past few weeks, and I've been having a weird run where I keep getting dealt the same role (Lotus #2) in the random assignment at the start of each round; if memory serves, it's happened at least four times in a row over the course of two games. I remarked at the end of this week's game that I'm getting pretty good at Night of the Ninja, but I'm not sure if that's entirely true or if I'm just getting very good at being Lotus #2.
. The Hidden Almanac seems to have made a permanent transition to having ongoing storylines; the storyline about the radio station being bought out and revamped has resolved, but the next episode introduced what I'm pretty sure is the beginning of another storyline I've heard about from people who've listened to it before me. ("In the garden, a flock of crows has descended and are perched in the trees, calling back and forth. The interns have begun feeding them Cheetos and are asking if we can keep the cute one. Obviously this is foolishness. All crows are cute.")
. I've begun another jigsaw puzzle. I'd been wondering what I'd do after that, as I think I've reached the end of the local supply of inexpensive jigsaw puzzles, but then one of my relatives gave me a couple of jigsaw puzzles that she'd never got around to doing, with a warning that she got them from someone else and isn't sure they have all their pieces. So that's something to look forward to.
. I've started playing Invisible Inc. again. It took me a while to get back into the swing of it, and my first few runs ended with the entire squad getting ignominiously killed, but in my current run I've just finished the big mission that marks the midpoint of the game - and, very satisfyingly, got the entire squad out alive at the end, despite most of them being incapacitated at one point or another.
. I got an email out of the blue from Bookbub, a service I signed up to some time back that purports to email you alerts when your favourite authors release new books. I'd forgotten I was still signed up for it, because I'm pretty sure this is the first alert they've sent me in at least a year, despite numerous new releases by several of the authors I'd signed up to be alerted about. When I mentioned this in an online bookish discussion group I'm a member of, someone said they'd had good results from a similar service called Fantastic Fiction, so I've signed up for that and we'll see how it goes.
. I went for a morning walk, and at one point I encountered a woman walking a large shaggy white dog. When I first saw them, they were passing behind a knee-high obstruction, so it was only after they cleared that that I discovered that they were accompanied by a second dog, a tiny pug.
. I've been watching The Celebrity Traitors, and enjoying it. It's the first time I've been following a season of The Traitors as it happens, instead of coming along later and gulping down the entire season in a few days.
. Yesterday was polling day for the local government elections. I'd been meaning to put in some time to see if I could find out anything about the candidates beyond what was in the official profiles, but I kept putting it off and then I ran out of time. It's been a pretty quiet campaign period here (unlike, say, the next Local Government Area over, where the council is embroiled in a financial mismanagement scandal), and I've seen a few posters around but as far as I know there weren't any public debates or meetings or anything like that. So my vote wasn't particularly well-thought-out, but I figure it's like going to the gym: it's important to show up, even if you don't then get anything much done, so that you'll be more likely to show up and achieve more next time.
. Sunday was also the annual Spring Festival, where community groups and small businesses set up stalls in the park. I went for a wander around the park, and enjoyed the sunlight and fresh air, but didn't end up buying anything; the queues for the food were discouragingly long, and I didn't find anything particularly attractive at the second-hand book stall. (There were a few books I was vaguely interested in, but years of buying books I found vaguely interesting at second-hand book stalls has resulted in a large backlog of books that, when I do get around to reading them, are often disappointing, so I'm holding myself to a stricter standard now, and not buying books if I'm not confident they won't just sit on the shelf for years.)
. At board game club, I got to play a couple of two-player games, starting with one that's new to me called Jekyll vs. Hyde. In this game, one of the players is Jekyll and one is Hyde, and they each have different victory conditions. The game proceeds in a series of quick contests, but the aim is not necessarily to win the most contests: Hyde can win by winning a lot, but he can also win by losing a lot, while Jekyll's aim is to maintain balance by winning and losing in roughly equal measure. (Your actions are constrained by the cards you have to play, so you can't just deliberately lose whenever you feel like it.) In the game I played, I was Hyde and my opponent was Jekyll; he managed to keep things pretty balanced for most of the game, but at the end of the game I went on a massive losing streak that was just enough to tip the balance into a victory for me.
While I had the opportunity, I introduced my opponent to one of my favourite two-player games, "Labyrinth" from The Lady and the Tiger. He enjoyed it, so there might be an opportunity for us to play again some time.
After that, we joined the main group, who had been playing Bang!, and we played Saboteur and then Night of the Ninja. (All hidden role/social deduction games; I don't know if that was deliberate or just how it turned out when they were picking games that could accommodate the number of players.)
One of the rounds of Saboteur had an unexpected ending, where the miners won after the final piece of tunnel was completed by a player who we had all been pretty certain was a saboteur. It turned out that he was a saboteur, but had ended up with a hand of cards that he thought didn't leave him any alternatives. (There are always alternatives, to pass without playing if nothing else, but he's one of the less experienced players so he doesn't always have a firm grasp on game mechanics.)
We've played Night of the Ninja a couple of times in the past few weeks, and I've been having a weird run where I keep getting dealt the same role (Lotus #2) in the random assignment at the start of each round; if memory serves, it's happened at least four times in a row over the course of two games. I remarked at the end of this week's game that I'm getting pretty good at Night of the Ninja, but I'm not sure if that's entirely true or if I'm just getting very good at being Lotus #2.
. The Hidden Almanac seems to have made a permanent transition to having ongoing storylines; the storyline about the radio station being bought out and revamped has resolved, but the next episode introduced what I'm pretty sure is the beginning of another storyline I've heard about from people who've listened to it before me. ("In the garden, a flock of crows has descended and are perched in the trees, calling back and forth. The interns have begun feeding them Cheetos and are asking if we can keep the cute one. Obviously this is foolishness. All crows are cute.")
. I've begun another jigsaw puzzle. I'd been wondering what I'd do after that, as I think I've reached the end of the local supply of inexpensive jigsaw puzzles, but then one of my relatives gave me a couple of jigsaw puzzles that she'd never got around to doing, with a warning that she got them from someone else and isn't sure they have all their pieces. So that's something to look forward to.
. I've started playing Invisible Inc. again. It took me a while to get back into the swing of it, and my first few runs ended with the entire squad getting ignominiously killed, but in my current run I've just finished the big mission that marks the midpoint of the game - and, very satisfyingly, got the entire squad out alive at the end, despite most of them being incapacitated at one point or another.
. I got an email out of the blue from Bookbub, a service I signed up to some time back that purports to email you alerts when your favourite authors release new books. I'd forgotten I was still signed up for it, because I'm pretty sure this is the first alert they've sent me in at least a year, despite numerous new releases by several of the authors I'd signed up to be alerted about. When I mentioned this in an online bookish discussion group I'm a member of, someone said they'd had good results from a similar service called Fantastic Fiction, so I've signed up for that and we'll see how it goes.
. I went for a morning walk, and at one point I encountered a woman walking a large shaggy white dog. When I first saw them, they were passing behind a knee-high obstruction, so it was only after they cleared that that I discovered that they were accompanied by a second dog, a tiny pug.
. I've been watching The Celebrity Traitors, and enjoying it. It's the first time I've been following a season of The Traitors as it happens, instead of coming along later and gulping down the entire season in a few days.
. Yesterday was polling day for the local government elections. I'd been meaning to put in some time to see if I could find out anything about the candidates beyond what was in the official profiles, but I kept putting it off and then I ran out of time. It's been a pretty quiet campaign period here (unlike, say, the next Local Government Area over, where the council is embroiled in a financial mismanagement scandal), and I've seen a few posters around but as far as I know there weren't any public debates or meetings or anything like that. So my vote wasn't particularly well-thought-out, but I figure it's like going to the gym: it's important to show up, even if you don't then get anything much done, so that you'll be more likely to show up and achieve more next time.
