Melbourne: Friday

Starting off the day with a typical vacation activity: pouring concrete. You see, Marguerite has some artificial trees, and there needs to be some weight in the pots to keep them from blowing over...so we put a layer of concrete in the bottom, then a thick layer of styrofoam so it wouldn't be ridiculously heavy, then a finishing layer of concrete, then some cedar mulch.

After stopping in a cathedral for part of a Good Friday service, we went to Josh and Gwen's place for Game Night. We were joined by Gwen's brother Chris (who lives there), James and Kylie, Tim and Monica, and Russell.

We had a round of Munchkin to get started with--first game of Munchkin I've ever played. I got up to level 9 but got hit by a wandering monster which dropped me back to level1, thanks to that conniving fiend Chris. It looked like he was going to win but a couple of us conspired to throw the game to Kylie instead.

We split into two groups for Dominion, with one group playing a cutthroat version and

my group playing a more production-oriented game. I've played Dominion before, but it was a couple of years ago. For the Prosperity version we played, it seems to be important to have a sense of tempo, so you know when to switch from "building up your resources" to "buying your victory points". I delayed a little too long, and Gwen didn't, so she won that game by quite a margin.

After that we had "barbie", which means Josh grilled beef, sausages, and satay chicken, plus salad and potato wedges.

For the third round, my group went back to Munchkin. I got up to level 5 and stuck there. Josh got up to level 3, fell back to level 1, but then used his items to have James win instead of Kylie, "If I help you win, will you mock her unmercifully for three days? No? How about three hours? Okay, done. Unmercifully. You can't go back on your broath."

Had a lot of fun and Josh and Gwen's friends all seemed like good people.