The P@rix

Monday, November 03, 2025

Penny Lane - The Beatles

Today is November 3rd, 2025. The song of the day is "Penny Lane" by The Beatles. (Go get a soda!!)

Sunday, November 02, 2025

High Enough - K.Flay

Today is November 2nd, 2025. The song of the day is "High Enough" by K.Flay.

Saturday, November 01, 2025

I Am... I Said - Neil Diamond

Today is November 1st, 2025. The song of the day is "I Am... I Said" by Neil Diamond.

Friday, October 31, 2025

2025 Games - October

73. Settlers of Catan (avg score: 5) - Remember how like a decade ago, this was the BIG game that everyone loved? We didn't get on that train. We got this gifted to us a while back, and we've only played it a handful of times. It's an OKAY game - definitely was overhyped back in the day - and I think a large percentage of the fun that it can provide is dependent on how things develop early on. If there are some bad rolls and you can't get your production going, it can be extremely difficult to catch up as everyone else is busy making roads and growing cities. That happened to me this time around. All I kept producing was freaking wood, and wool, which nobody wanted or needed. Anyway... Might give this another shot at some point, because I do remember one of the earlier times we played it having a lot more fun than I did this go around.

74. Seven Dragons (avg score: 5.5) - Card game where you attempt to create a chain of seven colored dragons. An okay time waster, but not anything I'd immediately think of playing.

75. Shadows of the Forest (avg. score: 1) - a mildly decent concept, beyond frustrating in execution. The game is played in as dark a room as possible, where one player - the seeker - moves a tiny lantern around the board, trying to locate the tiny cute figurines that are moved by the other players. So, essentially, a game of hide and seek, but on a board, in near dark. And the tagged players can "uncapture" their friends, meaning that the game just goes on. and on. and on. WAY past the amount of fun that it might provide.

The little forest creatures are pretty cute, though.

76. Sleeping Queens (avg score: 6) - card game where 12 queen cards, each worth between 5 and 20 points, are laid out on the board face down and you attempt to wake them up. Other cards people can play can either steal them, or put them back to sleep (and there are defenses against those as well). Pretty simple, but decent enough for a round or two.

77. Smash Up (avg score: 6) - another card game, where everyone has two factions of "cool" ....things. (Robots, Zombies, Pirates, Wizards, Dinosaurs, Aliens... you know.) Each card is either a 'minion' or an 'action'. There are 4 base cards set up at a time, which give various points if you play enough minions on them to score them. This FEELS like it could be a decent card game, but also like they wanted to jam as much stuff in there as possible, and so it feels overbusy. And the rules for what effects what is many times annoyingly vague. There was also a sense that things weren't exactly balanced very well.

78. Sorry! (avg. score: 7.5) - I unabashedly love this game. I know it's far from perfect, and it's ENTIRELY (well, like 98.4%) luck based, but, the amount of weird coincidences that happen in this just make me absolutely adore it. Over the years, we've tweaked things to make it even more interesting/weird - like changing it up to where you have to get a piece in EACH of the 4 homes, rather than all 4 in yours. Or, adding a 5th piece. Or everyone starts with 5 cards in their hand to strategically play during the game. All of those make me like it even more. This time around, we did start playing with just the normal base rules, but along the way, Silas decided to add in a 5th token...because he was going to win "too early".

So, we all added an extra piece. And.... Steph ended up winning. LOL.

I really do wish there were Sorry! competitions, like they have with Monopoly and other board games. Maybe there are.

79 & 80 - Spot It! and Spot It! Basic English (avg score: 5) - children's games where you have cards with lots of pictures (and in the case of Spot It! Basic English, pictures and words) and you have to match them before your opponent. Grouping these together, because even though they're different games, they're basically the same thing. Anyway, these were just ....you know. There. Really only played them because we're doing all of the games.

Road to Nowhere - Talking Heads

Today is October 31st, 2025. The song of the day is "Road to Nowhere" by the Talking Heads.

Thursday, October 30, 2025

She - Green Day

Today is October 30th, 2025. The song of the day is "She" by Green Day.

Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Wordle Wednesday #37

10.22.25 - Animal rights activists were livid and called him a freak and a chump and dangerous, but there’s no denying that his last stunt - attempting to joust against an octopus - was a memorable one.

(I do love throwing animals into these. Anyway, a jousting octopus sounds like a pretty cool thing to see. You know, like via a cartoon or cgi or something. Not in real life.)

10.23.25 - The cashier at Walmart didn’t bat an eye when I bought a quilt, a chain, a drill and a bible.

(This one feels somewhat like cheating, since I was essentially just listing the words, but, hey, it still works.)

10.24.25 - Tuber themed decor for your home is inexpensive, super nutritious, and will amaze any potential buyer.

(I suspect eventually we'll all be living inside potatoes.)

10.25.25 - I’d gauge that cough drop to be at least two thousand kilometers wide.

(That is one massive cough drop.)

10.26.25 - The chart indicated the bluff should wield tons of plump blueberries, but six hours of searching resulted in one lousy blueberry picked with it making a sad plunk in my bucket.

(Blueberries for Sal getting a grimdark reboot was not on my bingo list, but, here we are.)

10.27.25 - On the tenth anniversary of taking over humanity, as a gift to the few survivors, the cyborgs released a retro killing machine made of metal, and that was a sweet thought, however, the fetid odor it produced somewhat cancelled out any appreciation we may have felt.

(It's the thought that counts, but it's the smell that REALLY counts.)

10.28.25 - The precinct experienced the full wrath of the chief when someone put up holly, tinsel, and Christmas lights in October.

(additional sentence - Stephen King invoked the wrath of his fans when he made Holly Gibney the chief protagonist repeatedly.)

(Yes, super mad police chiefs are tired and done to death at this point, but, I love the idea of one getting pissed at someone putting up decorations too soon. And, yes, October is WAY too soon, you greedy bastards. Also, Holly is fine, but, I just don't get King's obsession with her. [shrug])