Friday night we celebrated my boy Iwan's birthday. We met up at the beach shortly after work, and had some margs and chips and dip and hung out. Then we headed out for a nice li'l mexican dinner, and back to our pad for more sitting around and yapping.

At some point, the game Risk came up in conversation, and there was a groundswell movement to play. I can only assume coincidentally, the ladies decided it was a good time to crash out, and retreated to various bedrooms and guestrooms while the boys gleefully set up the board.

Risk is a funny game. I certainly like playing it, even through there are distinct, significant parts of the game that I don't like. Specifically, I don't like the progression of sets, and how quickly a team can turn in a set, get a whole buttload of armies, blurp 'em out all on one country, and basically decimate a continent. The end-game of Risk is always the same.

In spite of that, it was good fun. We played until 2:30am. Iwan ended up winning, I think mostly by being patient while Gabe, Eryn and I all mucked around uselessly with each other.

Saturday, Diana and I were going to do a little shopping and head out for a hike. We made it as far as shopping and had a nice little lunch, but ended up just sitting by a fountain at the stores and hanging out. It was nice.

That evening, we headed over to my parents house, to celebrate my pops' birthday. We had dinner, opened some pressies, and went downtown to see Shakespeare's "As You Like It", which I really enjoyed. It was done in a "traditional" fashion (that is, they didn't change the setting to 1940's Berlin or something silly), and it didn't take itself too seriously (which I don't think Shakespeare comedies should. It was a good time.

We've been playing a lot of chess at work, during breaks and stuff, and I knew that my parents had a chess set that belonged to my great-great-grandfather. I didn't know if this was earmarked to be handed down to me or not, but I figured I'd ask if I could have it. And now I do. I'd forgotten how beautiful a set it is. It's absolutely gorgeous, I love it! My grandmother wrote a note explaining it's origins. She says that her grandfather either bought it or received it as a gift, probably around 1885. Her grandfather also taught a woodworking class, and made a box for them about 100 years ago exactly. Really neat. I'm very happy to have it.

Sunday, Diana spent most of the day working on school stuff and started to get sick. I spent most of the day working around the house (emptying, cleaning, and refilling the jacuzzi and trimming back some bushes), and watched the Charger game. The damn Chargers are so frustrating to watch. If they got blown out of every game, it would be one thing, but they always seem to be just out of reach, tantalizingly close to winning, but yet never able to finish. Argh.

And that was about that.