(Intangible) Things I want and need:

- A deeper relationship with my siblings, particularly my brothers.
- An occasional phone call from one of the above
- Someone to pick me a dentist and schedule me an appointment
- Encouragement (and help) planning and shopping for meals in advance
- Decluttering help and encouragement
- Some time to think  and encouragement to ask and answer the hard questions
- Insight into and practice to become a better friend

(Tangible) Things that I want and need:

- An Ultrasonic Humidifier
- Manly Thank You Notes  (Too many are feminine or wedding TY notes. Not what I need!)
- A Knife Sharpener
- Good Steak knives, and maybe an extra paring knife or two
- A storage solution for my Dominion collection
- Oneida Community Twin Star Serving Pieces (Esp. the Pie Server and Pierced Serving Spoon)
- A Green Tie
- Pocket Squares with Yellow, Orange, Red, or Green accents

Things that I want but probably don’t need:

- Argyle Socks
- Argyle Sweaters
- German Style Games that I don’t already own (ask if you want to know) (I’ve had my eye on Small World and Incan Gold)
- David Allen’s books: Getting Things Done and Making It All Work
- Gretchen Rubin’s book: The Happiness Project
- A Cast Iron Dutch Oven (Kitchen Style, not Campfire style)
- An Immersion Blender
- A Rice Cooker Cookbook, like The Pot and How to Use It
- Dr. Who trinkets

What do you want for Christmas?

So, in all, I managed to work in The Haunting, Chicken Shish Tawook, Count Chocula, a Cider Mill (and the resulting cider!), coloring, Catching Fire, Dominion: Seaside, refusing to dance, blue hairspray, “For All the Saints”, The Lord of all Catan, pork roast, butterfinger brownies, and pumpkin carving into my birthday weekend.  That’s pretty good, right?  What did you do?

5. Michigan v. Utah August 2008

I’m going to let these pictures do most of the talking on this one. Go Utes!

4. Killer Bunnies

I picked up a copy of Killer Bunnies for my birthday after I read a copy of the rules at Kara’s place (one of her roommates had it). The game play seemed unique, and now that I’ve had it out and played it with various groups of people, I can say that it is fun. Almost everyone that I’ve played it with have enjoyed it. Flo still hasn’t come through for me.

Bang! was another game that I really really liked a lot this year. I got it for my sister for Christmas, and enjoyed it so much that I got it for myself. I selected one individual game as my top 5. We were playing at my apartment, at some point midsummer, and I had drawn the Renegade card and Chalsea had drawn the Sheriff. Somehow, I had managed to knock off a whole bunch of players in a very short time frame, effectively tipping my hand as to who I was. Somehow, it came down to a shootout between Chals and myself. I kept drawing cards that would keep her from shooting me, which was fortunate. In the end, I shot her and won. It’s very hard to win as the Renegade, so it was memorable.

Another one where I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Ok, so Settlers of Catan will probably always be my favorite game. This year has been a great year for Settlers. I’ve had a great group of friends who like to play, and who make for a great game. The rivalries between Jonathan and myself, and between Jonathan and Mike, (Wow, Jonathan, lots of rivalries. What does that say?) have been epic. The victories have been sweet, and the defeats have been bitter. The occasional food has been delicious. I’ll admit that I even had to go buy two more chairs specifically so that I have enough seating for Settlers at my house. In short, I pretty much love Settlers of Catan.

So there you have it. My favorite games of 2008. What were yours?

A while back, I went to Pennsylvania to a reunion of friends who had been involved in the A Treasure’s Trove arm-chair treasure hunt. Among the festivities, we played a freaking hilarious game called “1000 Blank White Cards.” Apparently, this game was “invented” a while back, but I’d only heard of it recently. It has even been included in the Hoyle’s Book of Card Games. The rules are very basic and mostly deal with the structure of the game.

In a nutshell, you get to make the cards yourself. You make a few before the game, but you are encouraged to add to the deck during game play, modifying the rules, giving yourself points or others penalties and creating general havoc.

1KBC – 12R3 Version – #2
Originally uploaded by moscow32

I’ve got some scans here of the cards that were created. One of my favorite plays in the game was when I played the “Soccer Rules” card on the player sitting next to me. The card prohibited her from touching her cards with her hands. She immediately got the Yellow card played on her, and resorted to turning over the cards with her mouth. Someone then played the “Icky Spit Card -5pts” on her. Eventually she got around to labeling her cards as belonging to someone else so that she could play them. It was hilarious!

1KBC – 12R3 Version – #3
Originally uploaded by moscow32

Really, there’s not much point to the game, but I had a great time thinking up new rules, trying to thwart other rules, and at the end of the game, I don’t even know if anyone won or not. It was a laugh a minute though.

You can check out more info on 1000 Blank White Cards at Wikipedia. There are some online repositories of cards around the internets, which are fun, but I will warn that they can tend to be slightly more “adult” in nature.

What would your card be?