went over to dan's place today in the afternoon for a few hours of gaming, brought along a bottle of root beer to supplement the usual assortment of drinks (no tarantula this time). as soon as i arrived, i went with dan (with clarissa sitting in the child seat) to pick up elias at the wellington station. coming back, we stopped briefly at kappy's liquors to buy a few bags of chips. on one of the utility poles i noticed not only an air raid siren, but a clear glass insulator as well (hoping to go back one of these days and get some photos).

besides elias, there was also mike, and then later yvonne and chris "shack" (never did figure out how he got that nickname). the first game we played was el grande, which that takes place in medieval spain and involves lords and knights (represented by color cubes) and securing spanish mainland territories. i think the best part about that game is an oversized phallic-shaped king marker. say anything was the next one that we played when yvonne showed up. kind of misleading, because at no point was john cusask, ione skye, or holding a boombox in the rain involved, but it was entertaining none the less. kind of reminded me of apples to apples but using a white board to write your own funny improvised answers. there's also an element of betting that i thought added an unnecessary complexity to the game, but nevertheless, it's actually one i could've played some more. with chris onboard, we played wits & wagers next. it too uses the white board, but this time to answer numerical trivia questions and then wager on the result. if that doesn't sound fun it probably isn't but it was still a pretty interesting game.

i got the feeling that dan assembled everyone together just so he can jam out in rock band, which was what we did next after 3 hours worth of board gaming. i play along, but i always do the easy setting; mashing colored buttons in proper sequences is not my forte. by then it was getting close to my departure time anyway, and i left a bit after 5:30, to have dinner with my family back in belmont. i chatted with cymara before i left, to get some more info on their move to pennsylvania then brazil in a few more weeks.

my father and sister were out in the backyard raking the lawn and pruning some trees while my mother was cooking in the kitchen. i threw the ball a few times with hailey. she seems to know how to drop things now on command (though sometimes she won't) but she still had problems fetching, only chasing after a tennis if she feels like it, and not always bringing it back either. my sister has been taking hailey to doggy day care, where she gets to socialize with other dogs in a formal way (as opposed to just visiting a dog park) and that seems to have calmed her down recently, but she can still get really hyper.

before returning to cambridge, i went with my father to my aunt's apartment to get her stuff out of storage, since she's finally coming back tomorrow night from her extended taiwan/california vacation.