dagibbs | Trip so far...

My little trip has been pretty good so far -- lots of good people.

First leg was Ottawa-KW. Arrived at

mycrazyhair's work around 5pm, took her for a quick grocery shop, then home. She and

whynotsteve have a lovely house, very nicely setup and decorated, I especially liked the sit-in bay window and built-in bookshelves in the dining room. They also have an impressively huge collection of stuffed animals, and one stuffed something. I also delivered the 2005 penguin calander that

foms had sent for mycrazyhair, to her delight. I expect it is on the wall by now. :)

Wednesday night we played a 3-way game of scrabble, easily won by

mycrazyhair, while

whynotsteve and I split the side games of cribbage one a piece.

Thursday during the day, I mostly spent at their place reading quietly, except when I was startled by things in their house. To continue the discussion of this I was having with whynotsteve, I agree your house is generally quite quiet, and it was this general quietness that made the noises that much more startling.

Thursday evening, we were joined by

horsetraveller,

corbet, and

redsash for a wonderful evening of food and conversation.

Round about this time, I started occasionally twitching from not having been online for a couple days.

Friday morning, got up and visited

corbet's and

redsash's new house. It is still rather bare, and they seem to have further plans for things they want to do with it, but it does look like it should be a nice home when they're done. We went out for breakfast/brunch/lunch (one each, I think) and then carried a couple of boxes of stuff from their old place to their new, after which I got back on the road westwards, once more.

Next stop, an afternoon drop by with

jeffreyab where I ate some chili and lost a game of Settlers to lj-less-Steve.

And, then, back on the road again, headed for Michigan, between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbour (west of Detroit). Arrived at

elizilla's and lj-less-Michael's place, grabbed a shower, then headed out to a New Year's party at (lj-less?) Erik & Nancy's place. A pleasant evening, talking with friends.

Today a couple of Michael's friends joined us, and we spent the day gaming. Two games of Puerto Rico (win, 2nd), two games of Merchants of Amsterdam (I won both) and a game of El Grande (I came third). We'd all played Puerto Rico enough to be moderately experienced with it -- the other two games we were all, essentially, learning -- either hadn't played them, or had played them long enough ago, and infrequently enough, that we couldn't remember any of the strategy (I'd never played MoA, and had read the rules, but not played, EG.)

Someone pointed out a nasty looking bulge in the sidewall of my front-right tire, and this means I'm going to have to replace it before travelling home -- not sure if I'll do that tomorrow, or Monday. Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow, maybe more gaming... and hopefully a visit to

tammylc and

eviljohn.

As I said, it has been a good trip so far, and especial thanks to those who have welcomed me into their homes. I truly appreciate it.