Thursday, July 27, 2006

Surgery, Wellness, and the Space Between

Yesterday the Spousal Unit had surgery. As far as operations involving general anesthetic go it was pretty minor and everything went as well as possible. It was out-patient and she's home and doing really well. Whew.

Her dad arrived the day before the surgery and is staying for about 5 or 6 days to help take care of her and attempt to prevent her from going to work while she's still on serious pain medications. Good luck with that Daddy. While Daddy and I waited in the appropriately named waiting room, we killed time by trying out Daddy's new copy of Battle Line, which the Spousal Unit and I bought for he and his wife as an anniversary present. We're a couple of real romantics, huh? Battle Line is a deluxe version of a game called Schotten-Totten which Sylvia and I have had for a long time and like quite a bit. In Schotten-Totten you play sets of cards on your side of 9 "stones". If your set is better than your opponent's set on a given stone you win that stone. Get 5 total stones or get 3 stones in a row and you win the game. We hadn't tried Battle Line before but liked Schotten-Totten enough that we thought the souped-up version would be good too. It also gets a great ranking at boardgamegeek.com. Battle Line is just like Schotten-Totten except there are also 10 cards that have special abilities. One is a wild card, one allows you to move a card you had played previously into a different set, one lets you steal one of your opponents cards, etc. I think Battle Line is way better than Schotten-Totten. There are a lot more options and the game is a little more chaotic because of them. I highly recommend it as a great 2 player game. If I remember correctly we started 3 games but only finished 1 due to interuptions by doctors and nurses and such for consultations of various sorts. I won the only game we finished but Daddy was faring a whole lot better in the other 2 so who knows what would've happened in those.

Sylvia was doing so well after her procedure that she felt good enough to play a few games so she could take her mind off the fact that it was another hour before she could have more Darvoset. Daddy and I were happy to oblige. She was a bit medicated but still played well and I think playing did help distract her from her ouchie a little. Since she was the sick one she got to pick the games. This naturally meant the first game was Ticket to Ride: Europe. I managed to win with the help of a lucky card near the end of the game. During a late turn I decided to pick route cards and happened to pick a 10 point route that I had already finished in the process of completing earlier routes. 10 free points for me! Daddy and Sylvia tied for second about 15 points behind me. I really like T2R games when it looks like absolutely anyone could win right up until you do the end-game scoring. That's how this one turned out. After that we played Carcassonne with a few of the expansions. Some great farmer placement earned Daddy a narrow victory with both Sylvia and I close behind. She was up for one more game so we introduced Daddy to Ingenious. This is a neat tile-laying game a little bit like dominoes, but not really. Like many Reiner Knizia games it takes about a minute to explain the rules but after playing a half-dozen times I still feel like I don't have a firm grasp on how to be good at it yet. I did manage to win though.

I'm sure we'll get some more gaming in before Daddy goes home and Sylvia officially gets back to work. I like when he visits. I like when Sylvia is healthy even more.

2 comments:

Elle said...

Schotten-Totten sounds like it would mean "shit" in German.

Sylvia... get well soon (and save me some of those pain killers)!

Phollower said...

And you better hurry. Drugs don't last long when Daddy's in town.