Day: October 22, 2007

Saturday had me working on finishing the last part of Midterm Madness, a proposal for a research project I’m doing for my sociology class. What’s the worst thing about essays? You need to find literature to back your stuff up. Boo! I like the format of your own website where you can spew out garbage that you think is true and people have to believe that you are well informed. Plus, they don’t ask for references.

Once I completed that, Vero and I headed over to Eric and Annie’s pad to babysit Philippe while they went out to the Sens game. Poor kid had a fever so he wasn’t doing much at all. In hindsight, babysitting a baby must be a heck of a lot easier than babysitting kids you can run around because you have to be constantly running around!

In the end, babysitting on my end wasn’t much of a success as every time I got close to him, he started crying. So Vero basically took care of him while I sat and watched Forrest Gump on TV (excellent flick! I forgot about this film.) and after we munched on some St. Hubert, we settled gave Philippe a bath, got him ready for bed and then we checked out a Harry Potter film (instead of Transformers. What the heck?! Why do you have to be scared of robots Vero, WHY?!)

I would have to say that I have seen the first Harry Potter film about…5 years ago? But it was more of a film playing in the background at Eric and Annie’s apartment so I didn’t catch most of the flick. This was the first time I really sat down and watched it.

I would have to say that the film was pretty faithful to the novel (from what I can remember!). I loved some of the choices of actors, such as Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid. He was born to play the part!

It is quite the fantastical film and I enjoyed the depictions of the various elements of the Harry Potter universe – the Quidditch matches, the owls delivering mail…it was all wonderful.

I also enjoyed the musical score created for the film. At one point I noticed that one of the parts reminded me of Empire Strikes Back and lo and behold, I found out that John Williams created the musical score for the film! Bravo!

I am looking forward to watching the rest of the films eventually. Considering the final novel is out, I think I shall re-read the novels, and intersperse the films so I can compare the two. Then I’ll be prepared to read the final Harry Potter novel (which I’ll have to find somewhere).

Friday night saw the arrival of rainclouds and guests. Mike’s Mom and sister arrived at the house as Samantha is in town looking for wedding dresses over the next few days. While one may think this is an exciting venture, Sam has referred to it as “somewhat discouraging”. Let’s send her some good luck vibes for the remainder of the week!

I headed to the bus station Friday night to pick up Philipp who was coming in from Montreal. Unfortunately for me, his cellphone was broken so he didn’t get the message that I was going to be there waiting for him and he ended up getting off at the University of Ottawa and taking a bus to Carrie’s place. Doh! I saw some interesting characters around the bus station for that hour, along with a girl who needed to get to Toronto after her boyfriend kicked her out that morning. I don’t know if any of that was true, but I gave her 5 bucks. However, in hindsight, I should have recommended she look at a ride board at the University as you can usually find people going to Toronto for $20 (instead of whatever a bus ride costs).

After having some excellent low cholesterol spaghetti and having Carrie’s mom jump on the opportunity to tell me how to lower my cholesterol (although, I must admit I disappointed her after telling her what I eat every day!), we settled in to play some Settlers of Catan (or Seafarers of Catan…which is a different version).

Now, years ago, Carrie’s family tried to teach me this game and I didn’t grasp it and it left a sour taste in my mouth and I never wanted anything to do with it again.

Years later, here I am wanting to give it another chance. I had an excellent teacher with Ken explaining things along the way and I’m proud to say that I think I did pretty good for my first time out. Clearly, I need to think strategically in the future but whatever…it was a good game to play.

Oh! I should describe the game for those readers not ‘in the know’. Essentially, the board the players settle onto some land. So in order to build a settlement, you need to have a certain combination of cards – like one lamb card, one wood card, and one brick card. To accumulate cards, you have to be settled next to a piece of land and each piece of land has a number associated to it. Let’s say you are positioned between two pieces of land – one with lamb on it, and one with wood and the one with lamb has the number 6 on it. If any player rolls a six, you get a lamb card. So over time, you accumulate cards, which in turn, you may spend to build more settlements, or you can trade them with other players to get what you want. There’s other logistics to the game, but essentially every settlement is worth some points and the game goes up to a certain maximum.

Anything you have to put effort into ends up being a good thing in the end, much like Settlers of Catan.

I know there is a faithful following of this board game out there in Palmer’s World fan-land. Hopefully I can come play with you soon!