Over five and a half years ago, Q and I drove down to South Carolina for a Rocky Horror Picture Show mini-convention organized by Dawn's group. (From there, we proceeded down to Florida for over a week more, which constituted our belated honeymoon.) Before we left for this trip, I bought a small flask I found that was shaped like a cell phone (you drank through the antenna). It even came with a cell phone-style belt holster. I brought it with me, and kept it filled with my infamous punch while I was away from the main supply in my room. (Those who were bowling with me during that weekend in South Carolina will recall me hitting it frequently between frames. "Whoops, hold on, I've got another call…")

Q just found this flask recently, and it still had punch in it. Punch which had been aging and strengthening for over five and a half years. Q took a sip and got a buzz – "Whoooaaa!!" I just tried a taste, and yeah – that is one hell of a potent potable. Well, waste not, want not…

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EDIT: I can't seem to find any pictures on my computer from that trip, apart from this icon:

Tata Motors Raises $750 Million To Pay Down Jaguar Debt

That's right, India's largest commercial vehicle maker is named Tata Motors Ltd.

Hello, I am Allah Sulu's sense of humor. I am twelve years old.

This is the third and final recap of my Labor Day Weekend TCEP recap; previous entries cover Saturday and Sunday.

I arrived at the Holiday Inn first thing in the morning (9 AM), and found hardly anyone else up yet (and those who were up were eating breakfast). So, I set up my laptop and checked my email over the free WiFi until someone came along and challenged me to yet another game of which I'd never heard before, Dominion Intrigue. We jumped right in, and I picked up the rules and strategy fairly quickly as we played. Had we played a second game, I'm sure I would have done much better – Odds are, though, that it'll be at least a year before I play it again, giving me time for forget the important bits and requiring me to get up to speed whilst playing all over again. Fun, in any case.

I had signed up for the Car Wars/Battle Cattle card game tournament that was scheduled for later on in the morning (11 AM?) as I had really enjoyed that game last year. Unfortunately, it never happened – and since I was waiting for the game that never materialized, I passed up the chance to try to jump into one of the other games that was starting… Games like Munchkin Quest (I have all of the regular Munchkin games, but I've never played the board game variant) or another round of Arkham Horror (this time with the Innsmouth Expansion). By this point Ironkite had arrived; and I managed to find a quick and easy game lying around that I remembered, that I'd have no trouble explaining to Ironkite, and that wouldn't last long in case Car Wars (or something else we both wanted to play) materialized: Plague & Pestilence. We played a couple of games of that; Ironkite could have won the second game (by being the only survivor) but instead went for a mutual loss (none of us had any survivors, similar to one of the Nuclear War games we'd played the day before) because it was funnier.

After we all had to clear out before 3 PM, some people went to Denny's or some other eatery to hang out. I talked to Ironkite for a little while in the parking lot, and then headed straight home. First, I was tired; and second, Q had called me an hour or so earlier and told me that Richard had been punished and sent to his room, not to be allowed back out until I got home. I didn't think it would be fair to dawdle and leave him in there all afternoon (even though he's got a TV/VCR and game system and more other stuff than I ever had at that age if I was sent to my room!)

( Addenda )

I was tempted to join a D&D game (the original AD&D rules from the 80s, the last time I played the game) for nostalgia purposes; but it wouldn't have fit into my schedule (with the couple of things I'd signed up for in advance). Pity, because I still have some of the original polyhedral dice which I bought back in 1982-ish, although I sold or gave away all of the rule books (including a first edition Deities and Demigods with the Cthulhu Mythos!) when I gave up on the game a few years later. Also, in reference to this conversation with jefF, I looked up all of the boardgamegeek.com URLs in advance before writing this entry. Finally, to SethCohen, you were trying to explain my default strategy to someone at some point – I made an attempt near the end of my recap from last year (in the Car Wars/Battle Cattle section).

Already looking forward to next year.