settled

friday night was game night at dana's. this means food and wine (and fancy lemon soda for me), and settlers of catan.

do you know about settlers of catan? people are quite taken with it. there was a lot of catan playing at the delaware beach house over the summer but i chose to just laugh at other people's intensity about the game instead of playing myself. there is just something sort of hysterical about hearing otherwise rational people shout out things like, "but two sheep for one wheat is a completely unfair trade!"

this time i joined the fray, with heather as my patient tutor and teammate. we didn't win, but we didn't embarass ourselves either, so i am chalking my first catan experience up as a success. next time around my strategy is going to include not sitting next to an open bag of gummi bears, as an hour or more of intense game-playing does nothing for my self-control, and a whole bag of gummi bears in one sitting does nothing for my general sense of well-being.

game night also included a rousing round of celebrity.

do you know about celebrity? everyone writes the names of a bunch of celebrities on pieces of paper, the pieces of paper go into a bowl, the people go into teams, and the teams have to guess what's (or rather, who's) on the pieces of paper. the first time around you can use any words but the celebrity's name to describe them. the second time around, you only get one word (same set of names). the third time around (same names again), you can only act them out.

i will warn you that playing celebrity with a cerebral group such as this one comes with a unique set of challenges. namely that the "celebrities" chosen included hilda solis (secretary of labor), adrian fenty (mayor of d.c.) and william makepeace thackeray (author of "vanity fair.")

for some of us (ahem, me), not too easy to describe (er, recognize), let alone act out. (yes, i wrote down lady gaga and charlie sheen.) but, let's just say that when i pulled out "mr. butt-man" on the charades round, i killed it.