Game Night

If you'll recall, last year I blogged about the Whitaker Music Festival which happens on Wednesdays in the summer here in the StL at the Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, this year we've only attended twice; once with some family in town and once on a somewhat cool evening with a group of friends. Otherwise, it has been uniformly too hot and humid or, as was the case this last evening, too wet. Normally, we'd brave the heat but with the extra oppressiveness this year and with the baby still kicking a hole through Kathy's stomach, it just hasn't been feasible to attend.

So tonight, rather than sit around twiddling our thumbs by ourselves, Kathy and I invited Bunny and Bee over for dinner and board games. Bee brought along her new friend of the opposite sex, whom she refers to as McCartney on her blog so, why not? So, Bunny, Bee and McCartney come over...wait. That doesn't work. We've got a forest animal, a stinging insect, and then the last name of one of the greatest rock 'n' rolling Brits to ever grace us with his musical talents. Maybe I'll call him...Anglerfish. Just to stay with the animal motif.

See, this is why I don't make up nicknames on the blog...nicknames are something I'm no good at. So, in the interest of keeping it simple while protecting identities, Bunny is now J, Bee is now B, and Anglerfish is now C.

Got it?

So, A,B,C, and D were walking down the street when they ran into a very scared looking number. "What's your name?" A asked. "Six..." the number responded. "Why are you so scared?" B asked the number. Six looked around. "I'm afraid of seven..." There was a moment of silence. "Um...why are you afraid of seven?" C asked. "Good question," D nodded. Six looked around. "Because....seven ate nine!"

Whoa...where did I go there?

Okay, so, J, B, and C came over for some lasagna, though J decided against it because she has some sort of noodle phobia. Let's face it, I surround myself with interesting people. So she had a salad. The rest of us, being unafraid of noodles, consumed noodles. Then we had hot fudge sundaes for dessert. Now, we had a choice of vanilla or chocolate chip. Kathy asked for half and half. Um, Kathy? Chocolate chip is vanilla ice cream with chips of chocolate in it. But trying to use logic like that with a pregnant woman is a bad idea, I found out. So let that be a lesson to you.

After that, we listened to some jazz and classical records while playing Clue and Apples to Apples. Have you ever played Apples to Apples? That's a freaking amazingly awesome game. The basic premise of it is that one person reads a word from a green card, like, say, "Peaceful." Then the other players have to put down a red card with a word they think matches it in some way. Then the person who puts down the green card reads all the red cards, picks the best one, and thus the person who put the winning card down wins. So, "Peaceful" is the word, and let's say there are four other people playing. Somebody puts down, "Bedtime," while another person puts down "The Ocean." The third person puts down "My High School Prom" and the last person puts down "Ziggy Stardust." The strategy comes in about the second round, when you've seen how everybody chooses. Some people would pick something like "Bedtime" for that one while others would go for Ziggy Stardust every time. It's the best game of all time. Of all time.

So, we stayed cool and dry and still got to listen to some good music, while playing fun board games and getting to know C, who in turn got to be judged by myself, Kathy and J. I'm sure he had fun, though...right?

Right.