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Posts Tagged ‘puzzle hunt’

Up, Shinteki, and Fondue (Oh my!)

Monday, June 1st, 2009
up posterI saw Up in 3D last Friday, and loved it. Despite having pretty high expectations due to all the positive reviews (and the fact that it is a Pixar movie), I still thought it was amazing, not only because there are even more talking dogs than are shown in the trailer. I was surprised that there were actually a lot of adult themes in the movie, considering it’s relatively-mild PG rating. I won’t give anything away, but if the first few minutes don’t make you at least a little misty-eyed, you’re probably a robot. (In which case you may find this entry helpful.) Other exciting Pixar news was that they showed a teaser for Toy Story 3, which is apparently coming out next summer!

shintekiSaturday I nerded it up and participated in Shinteki Decathlon 5 with Matt, Peter, and Walter. Besides the fact that I didn’t realize it went until 10 pm, (and subsequently disappointed a few people…) I had a lot of fun. The game started in San Francisco (one of my favorite clues was inside the Exploratorium where we had to find a whole bunch of different exhibits and answer questions about them), went around the city a bit, went into the Marin headlands, and finished in San Rafael. We finished all 10 clues and took only 18 points in hints, and I even contributed some in a non-grinding way. Yay! I think we ended up placing somewhere in the middle of the 25-or-so team field, which I was happy with, especially considering 9 teams got perfect scores. As Walter put it, we’re near the top of the teams that suck. YES.

Sunday we went on an accidentally-too-long 8.5-mile training run, which was pretty rough, but we slogged through it. More importantly, we finally put the fondue pot YGB gave me to good use and had a fondue party! AllRecipes once-again came through with amazing cheese fondue and chocolate fondue recipes. I wasn’t involved with the making of the cheese fondue, so I can’t really comment on the recipe other than the fact that it was DERICIOUS, but if you decide to make the chocolate fondue, I took the advice of some of the commenters and used chocolate chips (half milk chocolate, half semi-sweet) instead of grated chocolate, and instead of instant coffee, about a third of a cup of brewed coffee, and it turned out great. The fondue pot performed like a champ and the glass insert was super easy to clean. Given how easy and delicious fondue is, I’m kicking myself for not doing it earlier.

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BANG!

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Another weekend where I’m just on-call for work instead of having to go in. Two in a row omg! I filled in last minute yesterday on Yar’s team for BANG (a puzzle hunt, for those of you not in the know) which took place in San Rafael. This was only 8 hours long and was all in a few block radius down town, so we got to enjoy the beautiful weather. I was basically useless for the puzzles, but I did have a ton of fun, and our team ended up coming in third!

Afterwards we had yummy (and cheap!) Chinese food in SF before heading down to Mountain View for Matt’s Hootenanny fundraiser. That was also really fun; a little Rock Band-ing, and some guitar playing and singing along. I got to play the couple songs in my repertoire, which are More Than Words, and Tears in Heaven, though I have forgotten most of the latter one. Justin also taught me To Be With You. Hootenanny!

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Shinteki

Monday, May 12th, 2008

I played Shinteki Decathlon 4 this past Saturday with Peter, Crystal, and Matt. It was my first Shinteki and only my 3rd or so puzzle hunt ever, so I was worried I’d just be dead weight. As it turns out, I was actually able to contribute (though there were definitely spans of me spacing out while everybody else worked), and I had a lot of fun. It was a 12 hour game, so I was pretty tired at the end of the day. I was even more tired because I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. Why, you ask, did I not get much sleep? Because of Lil’ Sack-Face, that’s why. I invited Yar and Rahul over on Friday to watch The Orphanage, and while it was good, it was definitely scary. So, dear readers, if I ever invite you over to watch a scary movie, tell me I’m stupid and try to talk me out of it, please.

On Sunday, Buddy and I met a friend at Ti Couz for brunch (mmm…crepes), and I did some housework until it was time to meet people at Cafe Mums for all-you-can-eat shabu shabu. Mmmm…. So basically, I was a big fatty. What did you do?

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Das Wochenende

Tuesday, September 27th, 2005

Friday night Rahul, Yar, and Maureen came over to my apartment to hang out. Chillax, if you will. First I had the distinct pleasure of watching the tape of a very small and very cute young Yar win Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Do it Rockapella!! Afterwards, we watched The Neverending Story, the latest in our series of 80s movies that somehow passed Yar by. I enjoyed it despite the constant running commentary from Yar and Rahul.

Saturday morning I had a good Dish run with Buddy, Florence, and May Ling, followed by lunch at the Creamery. That night was a party at Matt’s place.

Sunday evening I playtested Bang 12, which was fun, but I revealed myself as mostly useless in solving the puzzles. But I ate Skittles like a pro.

I’ve been rockclimbing pretty regularly with peeps from work, so I bought my own shoes and harness last week. It’s a lot of fun, but my arms are pretty dead today.

The other exciting occurance of last week is that I finally broke down and got an iPod. It’s a black 4GB iPod Nano (review coming later). On the back I had engraved:

ShaPod Nano:
Now with 50% Less Sha!

This has elicited mostly stunned “Really??” reactions from people, which I didn’t expect. I’m not sure why people find it so surprising that I actually got that engraved, but maybe that’s because I live inside my head, and have learned to know what to expect.

I’ve been listening to a lot of NPR podcasts on my iPod, and I’ve enjoyed them a lot, but I’ve also come to understand why people might hate NPR. It’s kind of amazing how pretentious one can sound just reading the day’s news.

Finally: The other day I glanced at the movie poster for 50 Cent’s new movie Get Rich or Die Tryin’ on the Apple movie trailers website, but I misread the title as “Getrich Dietrin” and thought it was some new indie German flick.

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