Barney's Extravaganza

I found this on Yahoo's 9.
Even the presidential dog has its day.

Barney's Extravaganza

Borders Gift Swap

WOW!
Normally our Tuesday game group at Borders runs about a dozen or two people. Tonight was special, for we were having our second annual gift exchange. The rules to the gift exchange are simple: the first person drawn takes a gift from the table and opens it. The second person can either then take the first gift or choose one from the table. If you get stolen from you immediately get to steal another gift or choose from the table. Once a game arrives at a fourth person, then it is considered locked and can no longer be stolen.

As I mentioned, we normally run about about a dozen to twenty persons. Tonight we had somewhere between 35 and 40! People I hadn't seen all year were crawling out of the woodwork. Most of the games were so-so and a few were below average (like the lunkhead who put in a copy of a Wing Commander computer game). Personally, I added a copy of Risk: LOTR with a shrinkwrapped copy of Saga hidden inside. I ended up taking home a copy of Munchkin- it could have been worse.
Some of the better gems offered up: Roads and Boats, Power Grid: Benelux Map, Shear Panic and Union Pacific.
And the icing on the cake? One of our local merchants, Chess Cellar, put up four games for an additional gift raffle (TTR:1910, Leonardo, Tempus and Puerto Rico PC game)
I figured it would be as much fun as last year, so I even brought along a camera. Check out the photos here: Borders Gift Exchange

As for game play, I only got in one game. I played Oltremare with George, Scott A, Mike and John B. John and Mike had never played before but the rest of us were kind of rusty. In the end Scott and I remembered how the game was played and I managed to eke out the win by 4 points. After that I took some photos, helped Tim and Melby with the gift exchange. By 8pm, I was fading fast (Chestercito kept me up late Monday night) and I headed for home.