Five days if board gaming really ended up being four, since past me decided getting home earlier in the day was a good plan, for some reason. My flight was scheduled to board at 10 and even though I had precheck I still was worried about getting to the airport early enough after the July 4 holiday weekend. I figured a lot of kids would be returning from Disney with their genetically obligated caretakers and wranglers.
I was right. Airports are not great places to find joyful people in general, but parental units who have spent days trying to corral their rug rats are particularly unpleasant. One fatherly pack mule was alternating between trying to get his kids out of the way of everyone in the gate area and swearing as his roller bags repeatedly tipped over, top-heavy with dangling souvenirs. He looked like an awkwardly mobile human version of a junkyard, reattaching fallen items every time anyone in his family moved. His kids moved a lot. No one was happy.
I ended up getting there way too early, since I woke up before my alarm after a fitful hour and 45 minutes of sleep. Late Saturday night I checked on my flight time and discovered the Sunday-gaming-quashing travel planning of past-me. Better to discover this than to sleep in and miss my flight, but not by much. Upon realizing that I was standing in the enormous gaming hall for the last time of the year I allowed my arm to be twisted into more games and socializing with a friend of mine until the wee and less wee hours. This morning I was tired enough to sleep on an airport bench for a while before consuming caffeine and food units.
I have a pretty sizeable number of “con friends” which means that even though I arrived alone I generally had someone I knew to game with. It’s also pretty easy to play with new folks, since the large “Players Wanted” and “Teacher Wanted” signs are like candles for gaming moths such as myself. I responded to both of these frequently.
This year I had several meals with said friends, and got to know some new ones. A couple of them are local to my home base, so I’ll be making efforts to remove “con” from the above phraseology over the coming months.
It’s been several years since I have had a consistent board game schedule. I’ve been running and/or playing tabletop RPGs weekly, and that has consumed much of my time. This means that I lit the “Teacher Wanted” candle more often than I responded to it this year, since I was unfamiliar with many of the New Hotness games. I did get to learn some good ones including Wingspan, Underwater Cities, Quacks of Quedlinburg, Crown of Emara, Hadara, and Pulsar 2849. The Hot Games area stays set up with these, plus many others I didn’t get a chance to try, which means more people get to play them and they’re easy to find.
There’s only so much time in a day, or 4/5 days, or any other frame of time, since that’s how math works. I think non gamers are frequently surprised that there are so many games. There are around 2000 new games published each year, and due to the momentum of the hobby hundreds of them are very good. Even if you spent all your waking hours playing games you wouldn’t be able to play all the new ones. Best of all good games from prior years are still really good. If treated carefully they will last decades, and I still very much enjoy many older games.
This trip I played Navegador after a seven year gap from my last play. I introduced friends to several others I enjoy, such as Jaipur, Las Vegas, 10 Days in the USA, Chopstick Dexterity Mega Challenge 3000, Kings of Air and Steam, Koryo and Hue. All very different from each other! I feel like there is a game for everyone now. There are so many different kinds of games, from deep strategy to tactical take-that, route building, economic or dexterity. I’ve even played a dexterity word game called Konexi wherein letters must be physically stacked to form ever longer words! The creativity driving the evolution of modern gaming is really fantastic. I’m preaching to the choir with most people reading this, but if you are someone who hasn’t tried some of the games that have come out in the last decade you really should find a gaming cafe or a group of friends and try it out.
It takes less time to fly back from Florida than my mental Mercator framework predisposes me to expect. Cartographic privilege means most of us grew up with the seemingly rational notion that our birthplace is the center of the world, and disproportionately important. It also means that many have irrational attachments to arbitrary lines in the literal sand and the control of human movement across them. How many millions have died over the temporary control of a few hundred yards of dirt which existed long before our ascent from the oceans and which will remain long after the last stories are told of our species?
Still, I am not immune. I’m rooting for the successful sportsing of the women playing for the bordered region within which I have lived nearly all of my life. Ten minutes ago I didn’t know they were sportsing, but there was random applause on the airplane, and I figured it out and tuned in. Instantly I became invested in “my” team, because of the Louisiana Purchase or whatever.
I don’t actually like soccer much since it films poorly due to the scale of the field and speed of the ball. On this tiny screen the players are blobs of pixels colored white and carrot. We’re rooting against the carrots in case you are playing along. Granted, there are still other colors of carrot but the fact you know what I mean is also an artifact of cartography, or at least geopolitical line-affinity. It is in fact this very jersey color, worn by the ladies of the Netherlands team, that is responsible for the preponderance of orange carrots. A farmer once bred Netherlands orange carrots specifically to honor a cartographical anniversary, which resulted in their popularity. Every time you eat an orange carrot you’re subtly participating in a cartographical celebration hundreds of years old. I expect they would be proud of their legacy.
You will not, however, gain improved night vision. Yes, carrots have vitamin A, which is good for you in moderation (and toxic not-in moderation), but the idea that this improves vision traces back to propaganda created by the British-bounded folks to convince the German-bounded folks that the reason the air war had turned against them was due to excessive consumption of carrots rather than the invention of radar. Whether or not the German intelligence service was convinced I’m not really sure, but if it caused the Germans to spend any effort farming carrots this is significantly better than pretty much anything else they were doing at the time.
Hey congratulations to the soccer ladies! They won 2 to nothing, which by now everyone who cares knows, and everyone else mostly lives in the USA. I don’t know if this is the final game myself, but I think it might be. I didn’t see a single ridiculous flop, which indicates that “whiny bitch” is a misgendered term. Bad whining-acting is the most significant reason why I can’t stand to watch basketball or soccer (men’s, apparently.)
At least the World Cup is actually teams from around the world, as opposed to the World Series, which is one Toronto team away from being an antinomer.
Oh yeah this is definitely the final, there’s a ceremony. I can’t believe how unsweaty these ladies are. I get sweaty putting on my socks.
The hug/handshake/french kiss protocol is an odd phenomenon. (I mean the other kind of French kiss of course, though the ladies haven’t completed their circuit yet, who knows?) Autistic people must have a hell of a time with that. It’s a subtle exchange of body language negotiating mutual consent (hopefully) which happens in a fraction of a second. Plus now we have added the high five, the low five, the fist bump, the bow/curtsey, the chicken dance and the ear wiggle. It’s enough to confuse anyone.
Now they are going through again getting medals from the exact same people. Do they do the same thing again or different? I’m really hoping someone noogies Macron, if only because I don’t recognize anyone else.
Long shake plus second hand clasp that time… Way to mix it up Macron! Avoid that noogie!
And now the group jump up and down photo opportunity while surrounded by falling tiny pieces of paper, none of which are carrot colored. I wonder if there is a bucket of unused carrotfetti in a back room somewhere and what will happen to it.
We are a strange species.
H