Yesterday was our first “full” day in Portland. As expected everyone woke up ~10 AM and I was already 3 coffees deep and finished with my blog post lol. Glad for the solo time though. It gives me a chance to reflect on what we did the prior day and what I’m looking forward to for the new one. I also get to finish my flashcards, which is really just an added bonus. God the flashcards are slow going though lol.
Breakfast At the Food Trucks
We got breakfast at food truck place, and it was super good. They had a ton of different choices. I ended up with Korean Bibimbap. It was a little jankier than I expected and overall, like a 5.5/10, so above average. The best part was the bathroom, because I love tagged/stickered up bathrooms. My friend from Texas got Tex-Mex which was really funny considering he could get that back home no problem lol. It looked good though. Maybe I’ll get that today if we go back.
Portland Science Museum
We decided to walk to the science museum and I spent the entire time trying to get my phone to work. I’m actually really mad about it. They had some really good puzzles there and I couldn’t spend the time proving that I’m an honorary member of Mensa (I’m not, but it’s a good bit). I love brain teasers though. Then we went to this microbial lab area and that was cool, and in an adjacent area there was an Axolotl I didn’t get pictures of because I’m an idiot. Reminded me of when I got one as a kid. They had it for sale in a small fish store I went with my mom to. So we get this thing, bring it home — it’s a tadpole at this point — and we put it in the fish tank. It was like, evolving in front of my eyes lol. In about 3 days it grew legs and crawled out of the fish tank and died in our laundry. I was so distraught! That thing was so cool looking it devastated me. They had a submarine you could tour out back but it cost money so we decided to pass on that. I mean, a sub is a sub is a sub, and I’ve been in a few but it’s always fun to check them out.
Guardian Games and Mysterium
After the museum we walked to a games store and almost everyone picked up a board game or a card game. Dave bought “Durian”, which is a hidden information game where you all work at a fruit stand managed by Gorillas and the Gorillas eat the inventory sometimes so you have to guess when the customers have ordered too much stuff for your store to handle and someone gets in trouble with the manager. It goes faster than you’d expect because of a graduated point system that gets worse for you as the game goes on. Great game!
Cleve bought “Insider”, which is like 20 questions where the “Master” knows the phrase and the “Commoners” have to ask yes/no questions until they get to the word. The insider also knows the word but their whole thing is they have to get the group to guess the keyword without drawing attention that they’re the insider. So they have to hide it the entire game and deflect blame at the end when people are like, “Dude you must have known the word because you kept directing the conversation to it.” It was really fun. I’d recommend both of the aforementioned games.
Joe bought “UnMatched” which is like, a hero battler(?) using a deck of cards and gimmicks for each champion. There are 4 choices of champions in the one he bought. You can be: The Three Witches, Hamlet, Titania or Shakespeare himself. Shakespeare gets this bonus when he performs “Iambic Pentameters” with his cards which is really cool. I wanted to be Shakespeare, having been an English major. Game was super fun and I think by the end I got a feel for what my hero (Titania) does. It’s a bit complex, and I enjoyed that because it feels like more skill expression than duplicitous games. I wear my honesty on my face too much to be good at those lol.
I feel like a wrestling game called Poetry Slam would be sick where you play different poets and have to “Slam” the opposing poets with insults while following some kind of structure. Who’s gonna back my Kickstarter? Lol
Canard for Dinner and Board Games Later
We went to this super fancy place for dinner and dropped like $60 dollars per person on some oysters, scallops, chicken, maitake mushroom and sliders. It was awesome. Super delicious! I think that was my “one fancy meal” per vacation but they seem to have some ideas about other fancy restaurants lol. I’m down with it. I love eating good food. I think we’re getting octopus later, which holy **** I’m excited for that. I love octopus. I made this a whole section because I got pics to put under here, but there’s not much more to say other than the food was phenomenal albeit pricey.
We went back to the hotel after and played board games. It was fun. I didn’t get to play my Samurai game I bought or face Joe in Union Arena, which I also bought. The starters were on sale for like $7 each so we got a couple. It’s always interesting learning new card games and seeing the mechanics, so I’m looking forward to playing it, just to try it out. I won’t be getting into it as a card game because the content is kinda cringe lol. It’s all Anime IPs, which, I’ve been burned by anime card games in the past, so it’s probably not for me– I’m also not sure how in-depth the game is. It looks a bit simple and I think the draw is probably something like, “Straightforward and you can play your favorite anime characters.”
With that, I’m gonna get to studying so I don’t have to punish the rest of the group if they get up earlier than 11 today lol.
