Tonight was a special treat for me.

Brian and Ron from the old game group came over this evening, along with Kyle, a guy from the dance club the club president told me like board gaming as well, and I got to break out a very popular and somewhat hard-to-find game called Concordia.

The game was awesome, and we all really got into it.

The hours spent prepping for them to come over earlier in the day was not so grand. For one, I took some time to clean up the grill in the backyard, and after the fact, it turns out the grill was not operating excessively well. By dinner cook time, the grill could only peak out at 250 degrees, and for steaks, that wasn’t going to cut it. We had to instead broil them inside on an old pan not ready for the task, and the delayed cooking period pushed game time back an hour.

I also ran through the house and tried to clean up the kitchen, front room, and bathroom this afternoon so that my guests wouldn’t realize I was a total slob. My efforts were okay, but I am just not a highly-skilled cleaning person, and with cats around, there is always black hair being deposited on the furniture and carpets. The house did look good after in those rooms, but the clean feeling will be gone by midday Tuesday when enough cat hair has spotted the floors again.

Everything in prep went in slow motion. I guess I was tired today.

I did also go to Lowe’s to investigate the availability of chile pepper plants this afternoon. Once there, I scanned the vegetable plant aisle where the pepper plants were, and there were no Big Jim options- only something called the New Mexico 6-4L pepper. I asked the folks at Lowe’s, and they couldn’t tell me what the difference between the two was, and why they didn’t have any Big Jims. I am still trying to figure that one out. But some of my backyard work was also pulling the old plants and weeds out of the garden box to get that ready for new plants. I will need to get some soon- it is already late in April.

What my absence in the back yard until today also told me is that my rose plants need attention. They are blooming now and are beautiful and fragrant. But a little out of control.

Concordia? Awesome game. As we played it a first time while trying to learn it along the way, it took us probably 3 hours to finish what is typically a 90 minute game. We all agreed it was a great game, though, and it will go faster the next time we get together and really play it.