Other good things in my life

[liv]

My partners' youngest turned six. I can't believe I get to have an ongoing affectionate relationship with such a great kid, especially since it's depended on him being incredibly patient with my deficiencies in relating to tiny children.

He had a bowling party for his birthday with friends roughly his age, and then invited his adults to dinner at the international buffet place, Nines. He prefers to choose his own presents over getting a surprise gift, so he asked for matching robot animal robots from me and jack.

On the actual day of his birthday, he invited me over to watch videos, eat McDonalds and sleep over. We watched a cute animated version of the children's book The highway rat, which stuck pretty closely to the (delightful) text. The main addition was a silent scene where the rat is lost in the cave and learns about the value of kindness; I'm always an easy sell on redemption scenes. And then Emoji movie, which is a fairly standard take on the usual children's morality fable about how it's more important to Be Yourself than conform to others' expectations. I don't think it deserved all the Razzies it won this week, it's merely forgettable rather than terrible. And I quite liked the microcosmic world it imagines to take place inside mobile phones.

Other than that we've been playing his birthday game Loot, which is pitched just right for a mixed ages game, simple enough for a young child but strategic enough to be interesting, and the pirate theme and associated art are just lovely. Also lots of Pokémon. And multiple re-watches of Descendants 2, a made-for-TV tween film about the children of various Disney characters. The acting and special effects are awful, but the costumes and music are great, and both the children are really fannish about it in ways that are lovely to participate in.

And in actually succeeding at socializing beyond my partners news, kaberett showed up in Cambridge and caused an extremely excellent pubmeet. It was made even better by the arrival of deborah_c, and we had a long overdue catching up conversation after most of the party had headed home. I've also managed a couple of long conversations with rysmiel and angelofthenorth, (online, not in the pub, due to evil geography) and that's always pleasing.

ceb also celebrated a birthday, and organized a particularly excellent celebration. We started out with a really cool treasure hunt game, Cambridge codebreakers. It was pitched fairly easy if you're used to serious puzzle hunt type games; most of the puzzles were simply finding particular exhibits in the museums, with fairly minimal deduction. It was delightfully atmospheric and really well set up to be fun. Our team won, mainly because it turns out that fivemack is unreasonably good at this sort of game.

We repaired to the excellent Mee and I for lunch. I hadn't known that this place had opened as the successor to the much missed Dojo, and it really is great. Exceptionally tasty pan-Asian food, mostly of the street food type rather than fancy. I'm definitely going back there. We visited the newly reopened Kettles Yard – the house, which I'm really curious to see, was fully booked, but we had a nice time in the gallery. Many of the guests aren't very familiar with modern art but were willing to give it ago.

That was followed by a brilliant house party in the afternoon and evening, including a few rounds of the so-bad-it's-good DungeonQuest, which damerell is amazingly hilarious at GMing. Also planetxanna and auntsarentgents were there, both excellent people I see far more rarely than I'd like. Also there were pancakes, I don't want to forget the pancakes! And many hugs and plenty of wide-ranging conversations.

Purim happened. We had a very nice party for the Sunday school children the weekend before where I got my share of hamentaschen. I was looking forward to the actual Megillah reading but came down with a really horrible cold so didn't make it to shul for that. I was better by the day of Purim, and spent the evening with OSOs and got to tell them the story and give them mishloach manot, treats both edible and playable. I did not succeed in giving coins to beggars though, because the extreme cold weather had driven them off the streets. And I didn't drink. So you know, not a perfect Purim, but pretty good, really.

Comments

[kass]

Yay for all of these fine things.