Seaside

IN THE (SEA)WEEDS:  Tomorrow afternoon we have an art installation to do. It involves trying to turn a school hallway into the Salish Sea. No big deal, ha ha.

To that end, for a couple/few weeks now, we've been working on a banner that speaks to how all Pacific Northwest dwellers are "Salmon People." 

Oh, and there's a giant Pacific octopus we have sculpted. For days and days, we built the thing out of expansive spray foam in a can, creating its head, and its body, and then shaping its tentacles out of foam pipe insulation, attaching suction cups and painting it all.

The installation also included some home made kelp. Enter green dollar store tablecloths and shower curtains, cut into strips and carefully hand stretched. 

Oh, and there was the 'stream' overhead, with the baby salmon swimming their way out into the world. Sorry, but I don't have a decent photo of that. :/

Of course, as I look at these pictures, I see all that is wrong and lacking in the execution, but their overall effect was less awful than what's shown here, mercifully.

All in all, a big and worthwhile project.

GAMERS: On Saturday afternoon, CJ and Annabelle had big fun just four blocks or so from home, at the Skyway library, being board game testers.

I'll let CJ tell you more about it. ... 

(Saturday), at our local library, my sister and I play-tested two board games, as part of the library's monthly board-game event. We were at the library for two hours, during which we playtested the following games:

The first, Mephisto, was a Boss Monster or Munchin-esque card game in which the objective wi to acquire the most "souls", obtained by slaying monsters in a dungeon. Weapons (typically) needed to slay the monsters are taken from the table, upon which their former space is replaced with the next card in the deck. After the deck is empty, each player takes a final turn before counting their number of souls.

The second, Conspire, is a more open-ended role-playing game in which each player, after a setting for the role-play being determined, would write a role. The role is then written in erasable marker on a sheet, which is then distributed randomly (most likely to somebody else). With the sheet that you would get, you would write three goals for the role given to you: One that personally satisfies, one that impedes somebody else, and one that helps somebody else. The role sheets are once again mixed, and distributed among the players (if you receive a sheet with roles that you wrote, it needs to be re-shuffled).

Each player gets three tokens, which, when one is played, would suddenly make a certain statement true in the setting (with some exceptions. For example: You usually can't use a token to make a statement that would immediately end the campaign).

SUCKER: At this point, we've probably all seen so many 'flashmob' videos. But I'm still a suck for them. I especially love the classical music/orchestral ones.