HoodedHawk

First picture below was “Adel Verpflichtet” (“Hoity Toity”), and I’m not a fan (lots of bidding, etc.).

The rest are from Power Grid (with the Korea expansion). This one I definitely enjoy even if I rarely come close to winning.

Tom Reiss gave a reading and signed book his book, “The Black Count” at Politics and Prose bookstore in DC. Very engaging speaker, and I actually finished this book prior to the talk. Great time.

My second game of Seasons, this time with 4 players. I enjoyed the game, though it will take me a few more plays to know what all the various (50 different) power cards do. I didn’t come in last.

Great game of Manhattan Project last night. Pat (playing the blue pieces) won, and while there really aren’t runner-up postions if there were I would have been last as I had loaded zero bombs. Pat built 2 at the same time to win the game. The color in the photo is a bit off; that’s not a pink board, it is purple. :)

I just noticed that some expansions are available, or are upcoming! This game has been a hit (with most) at game night, so I’ll have to pick up the expansions as they become available.

I read an entry on Benjamin Banneker from the book, “The Freedmen’s Book” (1865). This entry is about a man born in Ellicott City (then Ellicott Mills), MD in 1732. He built the first clock in America, after only having seen a watch. Then taught himself astronomy and developed an Almanac (again, first in the country):

“When he was fifty-nine years old, he made an Almanac. It is a very difficult job to calculate all about the changes of the moon, and the rising and ebbing of the tides, and at what time the sun will rise and set every day, all the year round; and it was a much more difficult task then than it is now; because now there is a great improvement in astronomical books and instruments.”

I so would have liked to meet him!

Many other passages in the above book are great; I just started reading it…

I found the above after reading a letter sent by a former slave, on the Letters of Note blog. These interWebs are just great for finding information you didn’t even know you were interested in!