Weeknotes 22 Feb 2019

Last week wasn't the most exciting so I decided to skip a week.

Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna

My wife and I both try never to miss a Cirque show when they roll into town. They never cease to amaze and this one was certainly entertaining.

If you've never seen a live show you deserve to treat yourself to one. Any of them.

The opening of this one in particular really gave me goosebumps for some reason. They placed some electric fans in a circle and threw up a long piece of transparent red material which floated around in the center as if it was a ghost that materialized there. And it did that for minutes until someone running through it launched the show.

The set pieces and acrobatics are always great. The standout at this one was the music, which was quite good.

Dinner with the Boyle's

Years ago I helped out with producing a few films. My involvement with Mye Hoang's Viette came out of simply knowing her through the Dallas Asian American Film Festival.

Through here, I met Dave Boyle (now her husband) and ended up as a producer on his film, Man from Reno.

I was really proud to have been involved in my own little with with each film. And I'm excited to hear about some potential upcoming projects that Dave can hopefully make a reality.

Mye & Dave happened to be in town this week, so we got together for dinner and to catch up. A great time and I can't wait to get back out to L.A. so visit them on their own turf.

Work

I've been finishing up some initial GraphQL work which has been something I've enjoyed. I'm getting ready to shift focus, though, and jump into assisting a small team of consultants (who we've worked with previously) as they help us out with a project.

Movies

• Witchboard (1986) was February's selection for the Alamo Drafthouse's AGFA Secret Screenings series. Pretty sure I haven't seen this since a VHS rental way back when it was originally released. Again, a fun time with a crowd of other people who enjoy movies like this.

Boardgames

Darkest Night is still on my table from my last post. I haven't made much progress in the game with everything else going on, but I did get to a few others.

Qwirkle has been a long-time goto game for family. Easy to explain and fun to play. Getting a Qwirkle in the game (completing full row of size pieces) is always satisfying. My step-brother, his wife, and I were out and the place had a copy. We played.

I have a copy of the travel edition, which has smaller pieces and these felt gargantuan after having played so long with the smaller set.

Trekking The National Parks The Board Game was a recent Kickstarter acquisition I got because it sounded like something my wife would actually play. The theme is right up our alley since we've really enjoyed visiting national parks. And the gameplay is similar to Ticket to Ride, which is another game she enjoys.

The game was enjoyable and a tight race. You gather cards and use those cards in two ways. You can use the numbers on them to move that many spaces on your turn. Or, while on the space representing a park for a displayed card that's out, you can use the symbols on the card to camp out and claim that park's card for points. You also gather the stones around the map to represent how many places you've been.

We ended up in a tie, but my wife won out in the tie-breaker.