San Antonio Day 2

Oof.

I visited 18 houses yesterday.  Two of them we couldn't get in, because the key didn't actually work.  One smelled strongly of smoke, so I knew it wasn't even worth going farther than the entryway.  The rest I took pictures of.  (And wordpress resized my pictures down to "bite sized" despite my setting the Leave Them Alone Dammit option.  Grr.  I tried putting the pictures on my computer first for the last couple sets and it was WORSE.  And the hotel wireless connection was also WORSE, so between fighting with wordpress and the wireless, it took me almost 2 hours to upload 20-ish pictures.  I ended up giving up on wordpress and just emailing the last ones to Rachel so she could see them full size.)

I didn't get to test commute from Stone Oak because my iphone alarm quit trying to wake me up before I actually did.  The iphone is a terrible camera, worse than my old one, because it has no actual "take picture" button so you have to use the touchscreen, only that's amazingly awkward when you're actually trying to take a picture with it, with the result that it's very easy to accidentally turn the ringer volume way way down while taking pictures.  "Ringer" volume appears to affect every noise the phone makes, including alarms.

But I have to say the iphone saved my butt when driving with realtor #2, who did not have a gps and kept getting lost because she thought she knew better than the directions she had printed out from Google.  It's also handy for finding intersections nearby for my GPS o' Suck, which is severely allergic to actual addresses.  Of all the addresses I've plugged into it, it's found one: the huge mall with the Apple Store in it, where I got a car iphone charger.  That's my biggest complaint about the iphone; the battery life sucks.

I went to the San Antonio board gaming group from 6 to 9.  8 people were there for board gaming and about that many for D&D.  I played a LotR game that is like Stratego, which I hate -- Stratego, that is, but I don't think I'm fond of the LotR version either -- as well as Race to the Galaxy (twice) and Ra.  I liked Ra a lot.  I'm not sure yet how I feel about Race.  There is no direct interaction between players, so it really is like a race in that sence, and races are amazingly boring.  But Brian was a playtester and still likes it after hundreds of plays so maybe there is more to it.  (It's also very highly rated on BGG; here are the two best reviews: 1, 2.)  After 2 plays I was just barely getting the hang of it so I will have to reserve judgement.

I did win my very first game of Race, though.  Beginner's luck, and everyone was disgusted.  The next game I scored half what the winner did, for 4th place (out of 5).  So balance was restored to the universe.

The Board Game Group didn't have much advice about finding a home, other than to stay south of 1604 at all costs.  Since I keep hearing that from everyone except the people living north of it, I don't think I will bother making the commute experiment.  I'll just find a home south of it, thanks.