Carcassonne is both a fortified French town (I’ve been!) and a lovely board game which I have become slightly obsessed with in the past few weeks. To be clear: I now own expansion packs. Two of them. That’s a very fulsome level of commitment.
Carcassonne! The game, not the French town. Although both are beautiful.
People with whom I have lured into playing Carcassonne recently: Randi, Randi’s mum, Chloe and Aaron (a couple who also share our love of Indian food).
People with whom I have failed to play Carcassonne with recently, but it was still nice to see: Nolan (he visits!), Karol (he brunches!), Debra and Andrew.
And when I haven’t been playing Carcassonne, I’ve been winning and losing Worms in equal measure against Katie and playing Plants vs. Zombies 2 in solitary loner mode. (I checked this blog, and it’s been a full five years since I went through my addiction to the original game, so it’s been a decent gap before my relapse.)
Don’t worry, I have some travels booked, so this blog won’t be board games forever.
Pretty much every Minnesotan I’ve met for the past two years has urged me to go to the Minnesota State Fair, and this Labour Day weekend I finally experienced it for myself with Randi, Simon and Steve. And it was amazing!
Minnesota (keep reading and we’ll get there)
But first: Simon and Steve arrived in Chicago after some extensive road/plane/train-tripping across the United States already, so we had a couple of days to relax and introduce them to important Chicago institutions such as Kuma’s Corner and the Cubs. (In their game against the Pirates, which we saw with Todd and Carolyn, the Cubs were thoughtful enough to throw in some unnecessary drama at the end where it looked like they might squander the whole game’s lead, but they ultimately triumphed in order that Simon and Steve could hear the victory song.)
For the first time in too long we also saw Improv Shakespeare, who rejected our suggestion of ‘President Trump’ (wise) and performed The Coughing Lumberjack instead: a worthy saga combining the industrious Don Lumberjack and a dastardly French invasion of England.
And then it was roadtrip time! Highlights of our journey included a ferociously weird Spotify playlist (I Feel Like Jeremy Corbyn became the trip’s anthem, which you can Google if you must) and multiple stops at Culver’s. By Friday night we reached our hotel in Madison – a popular town if my friends are anything to go by – and spent Saturday morning exploring the farmers’ market and/or arguing with creationists (Simon and Steve took one for the team here) before moving on.
If you weren’t there, you won’t understand how funny Simon’s slow and laboured air mattress inflation was
The state capitol
One of Todd’s favourite shops provided colouring-in
On Saturday evening we arrived into Minneapolis, ate some non-fried non-American food and shared some beers with Catherine while we prepared ourselves for Sunday. Fair Day. There’s so much I could write about the fair itself because it’s so vast: we arrived at 9.30am and left eleven hours later, and not once did we get bored or run out of things to do. To start with, there is so much food: most notable (for us) were the incredible cheese curds, the famous cookies from Sweet Martha’s Cookies Jar and some delicious corn on the cob. There are fairground rides, political stalls, a host of farm animals (some within the ‘Miracle of Birth’ tent) and an art gallery. We saw the finalists of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way contest carved out of butter, rode the cable car over the fair and and the Ye Old Mill canal boat through pitch black tunnels underneath, cheered on a lumberjack competition and admired many, many tractors.
In short, it was wonderful. Apart from the GOP’s Trump tent. Which was less wonderful.
State Fair!
On the incredibly fun (and incredibly wet) River Raft Ride
On the tractor
Princess Kay butter sculptures
Turns out ‘all you can drink’ milk is a mixed blessing
Prize winning corn
In the Democratic booth
My Hillary badge became a talisman
Almost dropping the cookies
We weren’t the only ones going for the cookies
The Crazy Mouse ride: our final attraction
There were a couple of other pre-fair events back in Chicago which I should mention. I went to a very compelling one-day course from Edward Tufte: nominally on data presentation, but he has the moral authority and professorial gravitas to talk about whatever he wants and make it compelling (plus he’s friends with Randall Munroe from xkcd). I made use of both Jason’s pool and the wonderful, free public pool in Pulaski Park before the summer ends. And we had a three-way dinner date with Robert, Grace, Luis and Marti before seeing The 7th Annual Living Newspaper Festival: a collection of topical short plays inspired by newspaper stories. (The most enjoyable was set in a robotised future classroom in a Trumpian dystopia. Election day draws ever nearer.)
Here is a story about people being nice. Way back in March I saw the first half – but only the first half – of Interrogation. This was very frustrating, as a pretty crucial component of a whodunit is finding out who actually did it. I told this sad story at Grace’s farewell dinner last week at Saujanya’s (whose cooking is incredible, by the way) and it reminded me of my open email thread with the good people at The Artistic Home to clear things up. So I prodded them and, the next day, the full script of Scott Woldman’s Interrogation lay waiting in my inbox. It read beautifully. And now I know who did it! Thank you, kind theatre people.
Only one team had the requisite power and speed
We went back to another Cubs game with Todd and Carolyn – this time against the ‘Los Angeles’ Angels of Anaheim, with scale quotes added for Randi’s benefit and a naming controversy which ended up in court. But I digress. We went back to another Cubs game with Todd and Carolyn, but this time we sat in seats which didn’t fill me with any fear of being hit in the face with a baseball, and I enjoyed it immensely. Presumably the Cubs did too, because they won comfortably.
Held prisoner in my chair as I had my hair cut, I did finally see some of the Olympics through the demented breakfast-news lens of NBC. Sandwiched between advertisements and sponsorship messages came a feature on a sports charity doing great work for schools in Mozambique and the story of a ‘celebrity’ penguin who ‘mysteriously’ returns to the same beach in Rio each year. “THE OLYMPICS! IT’S BEHIND YOU!” I wanted to shout, pantomime fashion.
My favourite view
One direction from my new apartment affords a superb view of Chicago: the full city skyline, lying beyond the Metra tracks and the (less aesthetically pleasing, but representationally accurate) motorway. But it’s not my favourite view. Looking the other way, out from the corner of the window by the landing at the top of the stairs, are the backs of brick houses. This could be North London. This could be Carolyn’s back garden. And this makes me happy.
This morning I wandered downstairs in our new apartment for a morning cup of tea, stuck on the BBC’s Olympics coverage (thanks but no thanks, NBC) and watched Britain beat Canada in a game of women’s rugby sevens. Which was great for three reasons: patriotic fervour, warm memories of London 2012, and the fact that thanks to Jen and my trip to Wellington I now appreciate (and largely understand) rugby sevens.
But to rewind: new apartment! After two great years of living with Billy, last weekend I successfully moved a full 1.3km away into a new place with Randi and our flatmate Amanda. And very nice it is too.
New home!
Our first guests were Jason and Carrie, with whom we played the Would I Lie To You? board game in boys vs. girls teams. You can guess who won from the pictures below.
There was a master strategy. It just didn’t work.
No comment
Last weekend we also saw Star Trek Beyond with Todd and Carolyn, which was great company (obviously) but a disappointing film. There were plenty of enjoyable moments for existing fans, but not enough overall to elevate it from standard action movie sequences if (like Randi) this was your first exposure. My much more successful attempt to indoctrinate Randi into my childhood favourites has been the Robot Wars revival, which we’ve been watching on Sunday nights with great enthusiasm. 3-2-1-ACTIVATE!
It was also great to have lunch with Carolyn’s friend Beric as he reached Chicago on his American road trip, as it was to catch up / argue about market failure with Alex at Oyster Bah. After a bit of a theatre dry spell we also saw This Beautiful City – a musical exploration of mid-2000s evangelicals in Colorado Springs – performed by the ATC’s youth ensemble and produced by the ever-wonderful Grace Cannon. (I write that with some resignation as her Chicago leaving party is next week.) Last but certainly not least, last night Randi and I went out to celebrate her new job… hooray!
The restaurant pretends to be in Santa Monica, but we’re definitely still in Chicago
The weekend before last, Randi revealed her birthday present to me after I had been too rubbish at anagrams to figure it out in advance: a murder mystery weekend at Mont Rest Inn, Iowa! This is a wonderful B&B in its own right, painstakingly rebuilt after a fire. My favourite feature was probably the miniature world’s fair diorama, complete with little binoculars for closer inspection. (I spotted the Boots at the back along the British high street, naturally.)
We were also lucky enough to visit while the owner was paying a visit, and during the tornado warning (“get on the lowest floor possible”, the TV alert announced, before switching to a flash flood warning which instructed us to “seek higher ground”) we accepted her offer of shelter in the basement. It didn’t take long to realise that, just like last time, we were in a strongly Democratic B&B, with mementos from the visits of past presidential candidates on the walls. Lobbying is totally overrated: if you want to meet powerful politicians, just open a B&B in Iowa.
Austin Powers meets Michael Gove
For the murder mystery itself, we were assigned characters and costumes with the other guests, and learnt the basic outline of the case, before settling down to a scrumptious meal to discuss who might be to blame. This is a bit of a mistake in the format, really, because the food is so delicious (freshest salmon ever?) that it’s hard to stay focused on catching the killer. Especially when the killer turns out to be one smug looking Randi Lawrence. So yes, she escaped justice without facing a single accusation.
They also do themed nights without any murders: this table was set for the Titanic
The next morning we stopped by the Maquoketa Caves State Park, which is distinguished by an extensive series of caves to wander through. (Top tip: the wandering is much enhanced by the thought that you’ve bought a fresh pair of shoes and socks to change into later.) An unusual park and highly recommended!
In the caves
Still in the caves
Escape from the caves!
Finally, on the way home, we were only about 15 minutes shy of being these people. Darn.
Just slightly late for this photo of a collapsed Blue Line station to be interesting
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
