You Can Play Shuffleboard Sans-Gimmick?

I finally played shuffleboard! We were staying out of town to visit some of our relatives, and the place we were staying had shuffleboard in the lobby. So, naturally, I insisted on playing a game.

I’ve never paid a lot of thought to shuffleboard. It was, naturally, a game that involved shuffling something, across a board, and I had the general aesthetic of it from watching GMM – Good Mythical Morning, for the unfamiliar, have done a guessing game version where they’re guessing, say, 100 Years of Party Snacks, and the shuffleboard sections are decades. Getting the concept right, then getting the shuffleboard part right, are two separate steps, and a massive production with sticks to push pucks a la very-confused-pool-cues. So I had never actually seen it table-sized.

Shuffleboard, it turns out, is really simple! Covered in sand, which I had never noticed, and about the size of an air hockey table, which I had never thought about, and a game of control-of-movement that can be played as Munchkin-ly or friendly as you like. That is to say, you can play it as friendly as you like – no promises about your friends!

To start, one player will take a puck (I don’t know if that’s what they’re called, but each player has four, and players alternate) and shoot it from one end of the board towards the other – again, much like air hockey. The board is separated into two halves, with a moat around the outside; push too hard, and you’ll go off entirely, but the further along you get without falling, the more points you’ll score! Playing bumper cars with other people’s pieces is valid and encouraged, at least in the resources I’ve seen. (Shh. GMM is a perfectly valid source.) It can also backfire tremendously, as your pieces and theirs veer off in unforeseen directions! Once all the pucks are in play, the person with the puck furthest along scores for each puck before the first of their opponent’s. After that, nada, and only the person who has that furthest scores. But! They also have to go first next time, giving the other person the bumper car advantage.

This was a delightful little skill challenge, physics experiment, and time-killer pre-airport on our day of checkout. I look forward to many more games of shuffleboard somewhere in my distant future! Especially with people who play Munchkin. Swoosh! Plink. Clatter.

(Translation: both pucks went zooming right off the board!)

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Outdoor Gardens, Indoor Gardens, and Banana Gardens

Mom posted recently about out trip to Tenerife and our accomodations in Puerto de la Cruz specifically, so of course I’m going to post about… our day-trip to a completely different town!

Icod de los Vinos is a scenic bus ride from Puerto, and an absolute delight. Or at least, the one block we spent any appreciable amount of time on was!

On that block were Parque del Drago, home to a tree at least eight hundred (and possibly a thousand) years old; Mariposario del Drago, a butterfly house; and Casa del Plátano, a museum all about the cultivation of bananas! And a restaurant attached to the park. Had we been staying in the area, it was the sort of restaurant that we’d have been back to multiple times.

Beyond the namesake and massive elder tree (and the restaurant), Parque del Drago had a number of other native species, a cave, and an herb garden, with signage about all of them. The mariposario had birds, as pictured above, and Casa del Plátano had chickens – a form of natural pest control – and gives you a banana upon entrance. “Your ticket,” they said, as they handed us each a fruit. If you eat your banana around the chickens, they will stare disconcertingly. Or at least, they did for me. (It’s worth noting that Casa del Plátano also grows bananas, and the chickens were outdoors. They were not unleashed inside a concrete museum. Or whatever the primary building materials might be.)

All told, the three of these were small enough to fit easily into a day, inexpensive enough we didn’t feel cheated for it, and delightfully complementary. Between thought-provoking nature, head-empty pretty nature, and the process by which humans interact with nature, I was having a good time. Did you know that a continuous stem of bananas is really heavy? I didn’t, and I’ll never take them for granted again.

Also, curry leaves are silver. Who knew?

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It’s My Nemesis: Good Intentions!

In this game, you’re harried not just by your opponents’ attempts to ruin you, but also this caveman’s attempts to help! It’s Groo: The Game, based on the Groo The Wanderer comics, and he’s not technically a caveman… which is probably a good thing. He’d be an insult to cavepeople’s intelligence.

Born to more of a medieval setting, Groo is the bumbling buffoon who will trample the new Town Hall you’re trying to build. As such, his good intentions are something to be weaponized, set on your opponents so that he’s far, far away from your work! Unfortunately, Groo’s movements are often dictated by the dice.

Rolling isn’t where your turn starts, but it’s where the explanation does. It’s your turn. You roll the dice. Most of them are resources, except the one that’s moving Groo; resources are spent on cards in your hand, to use them! Buildings, for instance, add Victory Points and special effects to your arsenal, while Troops allow you to defend and attack. When you have Troops at the beginning of your turn, you can use them before rolling and building, but that’s a Later Problem: first, the dice!

See, there’s a catch to the dice, in Groo: The Game. In Groo’s spirit of helping people, any dice you don’t use get passed to your opponent. And, if your first opponent doesn’t use them, on and on, til all the leftovers are used up! Or until they get back to you. Whichever’s first.

That game of “how much of what I can do can I do now?” continues with combat, in which attacking (committing Troops) begets defending (committing other Troops), and all Troops used in the fight are discarded. Can you afford to get rid of your defense? Can you afford to not? Every point by which there are more attacking Troops than defending is a Victory Point of Buildings the defender has to discard. And you only need seven points to win!

This one’s competitive and swingy and thematically a delight. I should check out the comics.

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RIP JOANN Fabric

Tragically, JOANN Fabric and Craft Stores are closing, that distant monolith of my childhood doomed to date me like memories of Blockbuster and PanAm date my elders. As the closing sales grow steeper, however, I have been introduced to things I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, like the plastic flowers and birds I’ve used to decorate curtain rods and light fixtures, at least one pack of stickers, and a good solid container for our cat toys to be stored in! So thank you to JOANN for that. I’ll remember it fondly… and keep the garlands out of cat-batting distance.

A corner where two walls meet the ceiling, with bronze curtains over one set of windows and light blue over another. Above the bronze curtains, a garland of plastic white roses stretches out and around the corner, meeting a garland of fake sunflowers over the blue.
A little yellow fake bird, attached to the arm of a protruding light fixture, such that the little bird sits upright. Its right eye is staring at the camera.
A false daisy is clipped onto a curtain rod, right where the wooden window frame beneath it begins. Together, they stand in stark contrast to the cool deep blue of the curtains, and robin's-egg blue of the wall.
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Garden of the Groves

A little while ago now, we found ourselves in Freeport, Grand Bahama, with one day to spend, a high-wind warning, and, consequently, a cancelled kayaking excursion. What to do?

It was not a particularly difficult decision to go to the local botanic gardens, as one does, and spend our day there. And it was a day well-spent! The gardens were gorgeous, naturally, bright and colorful in a way that Illinois in mid-early March was not. They had multiple water features, which ducks and turtles took full advantage of, and a couple of garden cats, lounging in the sun. And parrots! One of the parrots said “Hello!!” and bobbed along to music.

Mostly, what we found was it was quiet. Some of that was circumstance – the same wind advisory that nixed our kayaking cut garden-and-something excursions, leaving it super empty – and part of that was the space. With several, meandering paths that all loop back towards the central space eventually, and bushes and tall flowers obscuring the rest of the paths from view, it managed to both be relatively compact – we saw everything – and private. And there are swings, which was a nice bit of nostalgia.

Of course, I can’t talk about Garden of the Groves without mentioning the shops there. Local artists have vendor space, in a row over by one of the ponds, selling magnets, jewelry, etc. Not all of the shops were open – again, cancelled excursions, and consequent shortage of customers – but the ones that were open all had something we wanted, at reasonable enough prices that we got something from each! They took an already lovely, peaceful day, and made it just that bit better. And it was my perception that the shopkeepers were attentive without pressuring, which I definitely appreciated.

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Mmm, Garbage

Because what everyone has been desperately waiting for the opportunity to do is rifle through the trash and eat it, right? No? Ah, well, it makes more sense for a raccoon. In Trash Pandas, you have two objectives: succeed in the press-your-luck dice part of the game, which earns you the right to gain and stash cards, and then play and stash cards to have the most points at the end of the game. The card and dice mechanics dance together well!

In a lot of ways, the card mechanics are also a press-your-luck vibe, because cards you stash are scored by who has the most of a kind, and stashed cards are usually secret! Do you use the card for its ability or its point value? Can you afford to expend it? Is it worth the risk?

Of course, some cards have no point value. You’re unlikely to stash/eat the Kittehs and Doggos, because their only purpose is to block attempts to steal from you! And Blammos are a flat one point each, but they also let you re-roll your last die. Decisions, decisions.

Mechanics aside, this one really leans into the garbage theme! Ew, you say. Hilarious, I’d contend. The Nanners have mushrooms growing on them. The “Mmm Pie!” has a D6. All of it looks like a biohazard and a half. The artist(s) must’ve had a blast!

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The Gift of La Viña

I’m honestly very tempted to make wine. I’m not interested in drinking it, and I think making it could be fun. And then I’d gift the bottles to Mom, who actually would drink it! Flawless system. In La Viña, the “gift” is actually the vineyard – shocking for anyone who speaks Spanish, I know – and should come with an asterisk: you and your fellow players all might inherit this vineyard, but to prevent fragmentation, only one of you gets to! So you have to prove yourself as grape- and wine-savvy to win the prize.

The general premise is that you’re moving through the vineyard, collecting grapes, and each time you exit the vineyard you can sell them to wineries – some wineries want blends, which are at least half one variety of grapes, and others want one type exclusively. Grapes have values, wineries have minimums, and you can only make deliveries with one basket at a time, which can only hold so many grapes. It’s a juggling act! Grapes sold, you get prestige, which is both currency and victory condition!

The game ends when someone has used all their barrel tokens, given to wineries each time you make a sale, and everyone else gets to finish their last pass of the vineyard. Barrels vary by number of players, as do a lot of things – basket upgrades for purchase, tools to be found, even the length of the vineyard! Which determines the amount of available grapes on a given pass, while the tools (picked up with some grapes) give you better access to cards that might be inconveniently placed. All of which makes for a very carefully weighted vine-to-wine experience!

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Wiley Treehouse Gardens

Last week, I talked about the joy of various online niches, and this week’s a subset of that: it’s very cool to see the different subsets of nature photography! One of them is Michael Nordeman Photography, which I’ve already talked about, and another is Wiley Treehouse Gardens, with a variety of outdoor plants in the Pacific Northwest and indoor varieties, especially succulents. This was the first plant blog I found on Tumblr, and it’s easily still one of my favorites! Plus, they traveled to Madagascar a while back, so somewhere in that tag are lemurs.

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Venusaur Propaganda

May I just say once again I adore the variety of niches I’ve acquired? So particular is the joy of learning someone else has and is willing to share an extremely specific passion. In this case, Venusaur!

In short, this Tumblr user has taken it upon themself to draw every other Pokémon somehow interacting with Venusaur, for an eventual total of one thousand and twenty-five. A task I can’t fully imagine, but they’ve taken to it with gusto! And as I’ve only had partial and sporadic experiences with Pokémon, “I like the art style and the characters’ expressiveness” has incidentally taught me a lot. Mostly that in the right context, every single one of them can be cute!

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