Sunday, May 08, 2016

Hodgepodge again

I have quite a few clothes that I haven't been able to fit into over the last few years now but they have stubbornly stayed in my closet, probably because I was still hoping that I would one day be able to wear them again. :) However, my nephews had recently gotten a lot taller and we are now all about the same height. Rather than having them buy new clothes, I decided to give them many of my shirts that don't fit me anymore, all of which were still in pretty good condition.

This meant that I now needed a bit of a wardrobe update. My new rule when trying on clothes is to sit down while trying them on and make sure I am not subconsciously pulling my stomach in. :) I found two button-down shirts that fit me quite comfortably - one from Aeropostale which was on sale and the other from American Eagle. I also realized that of the collared shirts I own, only one of them is not a solid color. I decided I needed more prints so I also got one new collared shirt from Springfield and four new ones from Nautica (all of which were on sale too). Most of the relatively new brands tend to be slimmer so I was really happy that Nautica was on sale because their shirts are not as slim. :) (Springfield is a more affordable brand than Nautica but only one shirt there fit me decently LOL.)

As if new shirts weren't enough, I also ended up getting a new pair of shoes. I actually didn't intend to and I only had a mild need for new athletic shoes. I was just looking around at Nike and just randomly trying on shoes when the salesman suggested Metcon 2. He said it was very highly rated. I thought he was just trying to make a sale but when I tried them on, they were a perfect fit for me. I had enough self-control not to buy them right then and there but I did research and apparently, these shoes have really good reviews. I ended up getting them the week after. They are quite expensive but I will say that they feel very comfortable. And they look good too. :)

Of course, life wasn't all about shopping. I also recently got to meet up with some friends. Raych was in town to celebrate a milestone birthday and since there wasn't enough time to catch up during her actual celebration (I will write more about this later), she wanted our set of friends to meet up for dinner. As luck would have it, I ended up having to deal with a couple of major issues at work that day so I ended up being very late but I still managed to catch up. We had dinner at Dong Juan and we were having such a good time that we didn't realize the place was already closed. In our defense, we were on the second floor and none of the waiters told us that they were already cleaning up.

I also caught up with some of my other friends at DyceNDyne. Denise was first to arrive in the early afternoon so I taught her how to play Splendor. We went through a few rounds of this game until Katco arrived. We then switched to Fresco. I had played this game only once before so I needed the help of the owner of DyceNDyne to teach my friends how to play this game. Mike arrived midway through the game but he said he could only stay until early evening and as we were wrapping up Fresco, Melody arrived. Mike then taught us how to play Camel Up and it was actually quite interesting and fun. Once we were done, everyone but Melody had to leave so I played a couple of rounds of Splendor with Melody before we moved on to Imperial Settlers. We played a couple of rounds of this before calling it a night. I realized that Imperial Settlers is not a very balanced game; in my opinion, the Barbarians tend to win quite easily over the Romans.

That wasn't the only game day/night I had. I also met up with a few friends and met a couple of new ones to play three different games: Viticulture, Politricks (a local card game), and Concordia. Of these three games, I found Viticulture to be the most interesting. In the first round, I was in the middle of the pack and in the second game, I started out tremendously behind everyone. But a key move I made prevented someone from finishing the game early and I managed to rack up several points in a row to finish a close second. That was a very satisfying come-from-behind second place. :) Politricks is a fun card game and we played one round of it while setting up Concordia. I won that game, but more by luck than through strategy LOL. We started playing Concordia after midnight, we realized very late in the game that we made a mistake in interpreting one of the rules that caused our game play to be extended. People were tired so we made a call to end it prematurely, which sucked for me because I wasn't able to optimize the engine I built over many rounds to help me start racking up points. I am hoping we can play this game again soon - this time the right way - so that I can redeem myself from my not-so-good result. :)

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