2.27.2006

game night

this past saturday, we celebrated trent's birthday by having a game night at my sister's house. it wasn't well attended, as my family is not much for caring about other people's birthdays, or existence, but we made the best of it.

I love game nights. I am not a horribly competitive person, but I have just enough fight in me to be a good game player. we started out playing a game called moods, which is so totally right up my alley. there are 10 cards on the board with different "moods" listed on them, like suspicious, sarcastic, silly, and even adjectives that don't start with S. when it's your turn, your job is to read an innocuous statement in the mood that is selected for you by a secret turn of the dice. the other players have to correctly guess what mood, of the 10 that are showing on the board, is the one you are portraying. it's hard to explain, but suffice it to say that you have to be pretty good at portraying a mood based solely on your line delivery and not on actions or the actual words that you're saying. anyone who knows me would probably say that I can get pretty expressive with my face when I want to. I am happy to report that trent has followed suit and is also very expressive - and that means that he and I were excellent at moods.

after moods, we played a game that nicole gave us last year called wise and otherwise. it's like balderdash, in that you have to try to come up with a plausible ending to a proverb or adage from a different culture. each person writes the ending they think others will accept as real, and then everyone votes. the adages themselves are pretty funny and difficult to figure out. again, you're probably totally clueless to what I'm saying but believe me when I tell you it's fun.

next, we played one of my favorite games of all time, pit. it's a card game about the stock market. the card suits are based on commodities of the time period that pit was invented - hay, flax, wheat, barley, etc. and the idea is to get all 9 cards in your commodity first by trading with other players. only no one takes turns - you're just all yelling out for trades of 2 or 3 or 5 or what have you. it seriously is the most fun game I've ever played.

and finally, a tip of the hat to boobecca - we played, and I have to get this right, dance dance revolution extreme II. they have 2 mats, so my niece chelsea and trent got to go head to head. I went head to head with my sister denise (yeah, denise, patrice...cute, huh?) and I totally won. actually she did but I don't think she reads this so it's easy to pretend I won. but I loved it and plan to buy it for our house so I can embarrass myself in private and maybe even get in shape. I have a feeling, though, that I'll buy it and play it like 3 times and then never use it again.

unless....

anyone up for game night??

9 validations:

lonna said...

I miss game night. When I was in high school and home from college I would play a million games with my friends. We could get up to ten of us playing a mean game of Balderdash or Trivial Pursuit. Anything to kill time. I even spent a lot of time playing hearts with my friends. I really miss that. We have some games here, but no one to play them with:( I don't know if Dermot could stand game night anyway. He'd probably stomp on everything and throw everything down the stairs.

the beige one said...

Yeah, let me get plane tickets to Philly, why not?

Oh, and I totally understood the game descriptions...Pit sounds like a blast. How many players are allowed?

Missuz J said...

I LOVE game night. If I had takers, I'd have game night EVERY night. Moods sounds great--but I'd probably suck at Pit, as I don't get the stock market at all.

As for DDR, I haven't played in months. I need to bust it out again. But that would require moving major muscle groups. So maybe not.

dasereht said...

I LOVE PIT! My family used to play all the time on vacataions. In fact, we're still pretty into game night, especially on camping trips. The last time we went to Raystown we played Imaginiff and had a blast. I think you would dig it.

So game night... count me in.

Stine said...

Man I need to start instigating a game night here in Seattle. That mood game sounds fun. Although I'm sure it could get really silly with a bunch of actors.

amandak said...

Oh man, I SO miss game night at Boo's House. That was the BEST! Stine and I love to stay up all night playing Rummy too. Clark's not into games, so we don't play much together, but I do love me some games. Sounds like a great time.

p.s. I haven't tried the dance revolution yet, but I'm confident enough in my mad skills to challenge you, someday, somewhere.

Steph said...

Pit! I haven't thought of that in ages! Do you play it with the spoons in the middle of the table?

It's something like a sneaky card version of musical chairs - one fewer spoons than there are people. When someone gets a full suit, they sneak a spoon while still pretending they're bartering, and as people notice there are fewer spoons they sneak one too, until the inevitable scramble for the last one when last couple people notice at once. I don't remember if the last person loses or what, just that it was a lot of wild fun. Whee!

JJisafool said...

I love me some games. I'm pretty sure one of the things that kept my wife and I together through tough times is our willingness to throwdown a couple rounds of Yahtzee or Gin (she usually wins those) or Gin Rummy or Scrabble (I always win those).

The trouble round IronyVille here is finding enough people that will play without rolling their eyes and getting entirely too cool.

NME said...

I don't think I could play Moods. I'm not the acting sort. Or DDR. At least not in front of anyone.

I am glad you liked Wise and Otherwise. I love me some Balderdash. Was it as fun?