Mambo Taxi

Our Nova Scotia vacation was a success. We put 1,600 km on the rental car. [1]

I have something like 440 photos to weed through from the last week. As a lazy first approximation, click on the google-map link above, and anywhere our route took us, check out the existing photos. :)

There were many surprises on this trip, but possibly the biggest came in Mahone Bay where dan (and possibly me too) were caught by what looked to dan like a Google Street View truck. If so, that would be a fun birthday present to me from Google, as we were there on my birthday... [edit, 9 February, 2010: wow! Happy Birthday to me! :]

The most remote location we visited by car was Meat Cove, at the northernmost tip of Cape Breton. Egads, that dirt road. And those cliffs. Whee!

The most awesome food was, of course, eaten on the hiking trails, because nothing tastes better than food you carried up a mountain. In this case: lobster picnic. Yes, that's right. Caught the same morning around 4am, sold to us on the dock at 10am. 5 lobsters for $20. Tossed in a pot by our B&B host and packed up as a picnic lunch. MMmmm tasty. And to follow it up, the next day we had the leftover lobsters in sandwiches, on another trail, just before we saw mooses.

Very grateful for my travel partner sweetie. He did every last bit of the driving in the rental car (rather than $100ish more to add me to the allowed drivers). And he had excellent suggestions, including taking the morning today to drive a long way around to the airport, which meant we happened across the lighthouse on the Bay of Fundy with the highest recorded tidal range in the world (17 meters). We were there at low-tide, and then 30 minutes later we saw waves lapping upward as the tide rose; I will have to look up videos or photos to make up for not seeing high-tide, which given the huge mud-flats, looks like it must be amazing to see as well.

And now that I've run out of superlatives for the evening, with a snoring dog at my feet and a now much smaller pile of email to go through tomorrow, I think it's time for bed.

[1] the google map only shows 1400 km, but we backtracked from our B&B in Pleasant Cove (in the NW corner of the Cabot Trail) a number of times. The squeaky-new white PT Cruiser they gave us came back just a little bit muddy. :)

I was charging my way through sorting a big pile of papers into smaller piles, but at some point, the meaning for the two biggest piles got switched. This is bugging me more than I think it should.

Also, either: my laptop screen's contrast has spontaneously reduced; or I'm having a vision problem; or I mis-remember what the screen should look like. I think I've ruled out vision problems, at least. Leaving the appealing possibilities of hardware failure or tricks of memory. Joy.

Thirdly, I had meant to write about last weekend's music adventures, but it's increasingly likely I won't. Boo.

Also, my body's not being terribly cooperative- neck, shoulder. I should be doing my shoulder exercises, but I'm lazy. Boo.

What's balancing these out is that I'm expecting some good news next week. Also, I'm going to my Grandmother's 100th birthday party next weekend. And, and, and.

Happy Spring, anyway.

Egg Pants.

( EGG PANTS! )

If you are not melted_snowball, you may open the cut. If you are melted_snowball, please wait until I say you can. Thanks. :)

d. and I just went to Scoop DeVille near Rittenhouse Square. I asked for coffee and moose-tracks with mint oreo cookie chunks. They asked if I wanted it blended. I said yes. It is the BBEST.

Oh yeah. We're in Philadelphia.

The flight was 15 minutes too short- the Personal Media System only had 35 minutes to run, and the BBC Planet Earth series runs 48 or so minutes. So I saw 2/3 the Mountains episode. Great stuff, though- I saw mountaintop
brown bears foraging for... moths. Which, we all know, are full of fat. Yum-lish. Also, snow leopards stalking
ibixen (ibixes? ibixae?) and shooting directly DOWN the mountain at them. Wow.

Dinner was a tasty Mexican meal at Tequila's on Locust St. I took a photo, bbbut I'm sure it didn't come out.

My B key is sticking.

A finish of my weekend wrapup:

Sunday was Games Day. After lunch, chezmax and the_infamous_j came over. With dr_tectonic, saintpookie, and kung_fu_monkey, we played "Unspeakable Words", a Lovecraft-inspired game where you try to spell sufficiently angular words (real words) before you go insane. Yup. The best part was the optional rule that if you were one point from insanity, you could play any sequence of letters you liked. I won the game with... darn, I forgot. Maybe I'll tell you the next time I'm nearly insane.

Next up was Arkham Horror, which everyone had played except for d. and I. This was a good ratio of new-to-experienced players, because the game is complicated. Setup took a full 20 minutes, mostly setting up card stacks. We needed a few side-tables along with the dining-room table.

Azethoth, the Great One the size of a planet, was identified as the foe who would awaken and enter our world if we didn't close or seal enough gates before 13 turns elapsed. If we didn't, we'd have no chance to fight Azeroth; he would eat the Earth, game over.

Despite the steep learning curve, I liked the game. Players work together to try and fight the otherworldly horrors visiting the town of Arkham. Gradually, the game adds more Terror and Doom; players gain spells, abilities, items, and clues. It seems well-balanced for six players; apparently it scales well for smaller and larger parties. It is also fairly luck-dependant, and we were pretty much doomed by mid-game.

We only (intentionally) broke one rule, which was to allow melted_snowball to chose his Investigator, the Professor. By mid-game, the Professor's unexpected strengths at offensive magic came out. He was redubbed Professor Kickass. The Prof had the ability to cast spells that cost others one stamina with no charge. We funneled all of those spells in his direction, so he became quite handy at killing nasty bads.

Another investigator I particularly liked was Monterey Jack, the bull-whip wielding archaeologist, played by saintpookie. He suffered some awful luck near the start which lost him his sanity as well as his bull-whip. Eventually he became the Deputy Sheriff of Arkham, careening around the board behind the wheel of his Paddy Wagon, crashing it upon re-entering a portal that opened into a private club. Oops.

I was Sister Mary the Nun. Her best moment came when she was exploring the University, and she helped a scientist fix a machine which could close extra-dimensional gates; and she spent her large collection of clue tokens in order to successfully close three of four open gates (unfortunately trapping dr_tectonic's character and leaving him lost in time and space for a few turns. Oops.)

Anyhow, around 11pm, in turn 9 or so, we were down to one open gate, though it was likely a second would open shortly, since it would be at least a turn before we could close this one. Without any warning, the investigator who was stuck behind it drew an encounter card that automatically forced it closed- winning us the game. Woo!

All in all, a splendid way to spend a day with friends.