This past Saturday I left Jen and Daphne at home on the couch and drove up to our monthly Board Game Meetup event at the village hall in Derby Line.

First we played a dinosaur game called, “Holotype” which turned out to be more of a “paleontology academics simulator” than “my T-rex is uses her ‘Tiny Arm Slash’ attack on your Triceratops.”

At one point someone mentioned they were playing a “green thesaurus” dinosaur card, and I received zero response when I asked if it evaded predators by confusing and distracting them with flowery language.

After I was utterly destroyed in this game (never been very good at the whole academic thing), we took a quick break to watch the local fireworks show. As you can see on the banner there, it was “Community Day” in Derby Line.

After a few other games (7 Wonders Architects, Belratti, and The A.R.T. Project) we called it a night. I helped put the chairs and tables away and was back at home by 12:30am.

For some strange reason, external forces tend to conspire against my attendance at this event each month. Either we’re doing something with Daphne, or we’ve made dinner plans, or we have family in town, one of us isn’t feeling well, I’ve forgotten it’s even going on, etc.
And if I don’t arrive right at 5pm, games get started with the players that are actually there.

And we’re not talkin’ Candy Land here, people. These games are complicated, sometimes requiring 20-30 minutes just to explain how to play.

Often the games themselves take literal hours to determine a winner. And yes, I very much enjoy it.

Forcing some semblance of order onto something that would otherwise be chaotic is a very human thing to do. It’s like having all of your tools/hardware hung on the wall in an orderly fashion. Or organizing your dishes exactly where you want them in your kitchen. Or designing your garden in perfect rows.

It’s low-stakes comforting.

On Sunday we took down the tree limb that had been hanging next to our mailbox for months…

As I’ve said, I don’t trust myself enough to operate a chainsaw. So my neighbor came over with one, along with a hydraulic trailer to dispose of said limbs once they’d been removed.

The whole operation took about 45 minutes, and now the tree looks like this…

We also took a walk up our road to survey the damage and determine what, if anything, the city had done to repair things. (Spoiler Alert: They’ve done nothing in over a month.)

At which point we discussed that ravine that’s directing water into my field, and how exactly that might affect our water line. But rather than dealing in theory, we set off to find the actual spring to help figure it out.

It took quite a while of wandering blindly through the woods…

And eventually we did find the spring. (Although it required rough directions from someone who’d found it once before.)

I dropped a pin on my phone with the exact location, so I could find it again if necessary, and then we hiked back down.

And that pretty much rounded out the weekend.

Speaking of which, I really need to get back to work.

j.s.