Being Remembered & Game Night

After open gym my buddy Derek gave me a remote control for my iphone camera. So now when I take pictures at NerdStrong I can use the remote and not have to use a camera app. Thanks Derek for this cool device.

I read this amazing article about a Canadian gay man in the 40's and it got me thinking how people would have perceived me if all they had to go on were the things found in my apartment. Of course now a days with social media and such it's nearly impossible to disappear out of existence. With Twitter, Facebook, Instragram and blogs, parts of your life are digitally saved forever. That's one reason why I enjoy blogging. Long after I'm dead and gone this blog or something similar will remain. My future family members will be able to see who I was and how I lived my life and that to me is pretty awesome.

After work I headed to NerdStrong, not to workout but to play board games. Tonight is NerdStrong Gym game night. We set up five tables and each table had a person teaching a game. I was co-heading a table with my friend Lauren, we were teaching Ticket to Ride.  Joining our table was Liz and Shannon, neither of them had played this game before and were excited to learn. We explained the rules and jumped in. It was a fun game and alot less cut throat then some previous games I've played in the past.

Afterwards we played a new game that I had just purchased a few weeks ago (I blogged about it as well). I played this game in England with I was staying with Erlend and Mat and fell in love with it. It's called Kaker Laken Poker.. well that's the German title, in the States it's simply Cockroach Poker.

Here's a bit more about the game and how to play it.. Cockroach Poker is a reverse set collection game that has nothing to do with poker – except that the game is all about bluffing, but with cards that show cockroaches, rats and stink bugs instead of queens, 10s and aces. The goal of the game is to force another player to collect 4 of any one type of critter.

The deck includes 64 cards, with eight copies of eight types of critters. On a turn, a player takes one card from his hand, lays it face down on the table, slides it to a player of his choice, and declares a type of critter, e.g., "Stink bug". The player receiving the card either... Accept the card, say either "true" or "false", then reveal the card. If this player is wrong in her claim, she keeps the card on the table in front of her face up; if she is right, the player who gave her the card places it face up before him. Of you can peek at the card, then passes it face down to another player, either saying the original type of critter or saying a new type. This new player again has the choice of accepting the card or passing it, unless the card has already been seen by all other players in which case the player must take the first option.

The game ends when a player has no cards to pass on his turn or when a player has four cards of the same critter on the table in front of him. In either case, this player loses and everyone else wins.

Shannon, Lauren, Liz and I were joined by Erin and Mike and the six of us started to play and we quickly became the loudest and most entertaining table there. Lauren's way of quickly looking at the card was hilarious while Mike couldn't bluff to save his life. Everyone loved this game and I'm happy to say it was a huge success. We had people standing around watching us play. When the game was over a few of us swapped out so more could play, Anne, Jess, Josh and Tyler joined in the fun. Three people actually purchased the game right then and there in the middle of playing it... that's how much fun this game is. We played a total of 3 games (probably could have kept going) but it was late so everyone called it a night.

Another awesome NerdStrong Game Night.. thanks Derek and Andrew for putting these together.