it's always better on holiday

I definitely need to go to bed, since it's perilously close to 4am. I had a nice day; I didn't wake up until almost noon (throwing away my good intentions), then hurriedly showered and dressed so that I could meet Oniel for a quick lunch before meeting Claude to see Jet Li's 'Fearless'. I thought the movie was great, and I cried at the end--I don't know why, but certain Asian martial arts movies ('Hero', 'Fearless', 'House of Flying Daggers', etc.--even the end of 'Kill Bill vol. 2') make me cry, even though there are many Western movies that leave me dry-eyed. Perhaps it's because I value honor about just about everything else, and those Chinese period flicks are rife with it.

Anyway, after the movie I organized all of my paperwork (baby steps, I know). Then I went to Shedletsky, Joanna, and Eric's house for dinner. That turned into a nine-hour marathon; we had dinner (delicious french onion soup, which made me luckily too full for Shedletsky's Indian food:), and then Patrick, Can, Eric S., and Jen left. But, Doug came over and we played some board game that I'd never played before--Carcassonne, which involved drawing random tiles and connecting them to make bigger structures, with a point system based on which areas you control throughout the game. It wasn't bad, and I would be fine playing again, but I didn't fall in love with it.

However, after playing Carcassonne, Shedletsky, Doug and I figured out a way to play an interesting, effective form of three-person Mafia. This would typically be impossible because you need a moderator, but we figured out a way using the colored man-shaped pieces from Carcassonne and Doug's hat, so that we could draw to see whether we were in the Mafia, and then put in our kill choice (or a blank, if you were a citizen) at night to determine the kill for the next day. Of course this relies on an honor system that people will 'fess up to their proper roles at the end of the game, but it worked for us. We came up with an even better variant in which there's a 25% chance that there is actually no mafia member, in which case the optimal strategy is to get yourself lynched, because the lynchee is the one who wins that game (and to make things more interesting long-term, we were keeping points for wins/losses). Anyway, trust me when I say it was entertaining, and managed to keep us engaged for three hours, which is actually kind of dumb now that I think about it. But, I had a great time tonight, so I don't regret it.

Now that I've gotten my fill of being a dork for a few days at least, it's time for me to go to bed. If anyone calls me tomorrow, be prepared to be screened out and then ignored for weeks to come--I'll either be asleep, taking a nap (i.e. asleep), or working, or reading for my short story class. The lone exception is my parents--but calling before noon would be extremely ill-advised :) Goodnight!