Birthday Weekend

I had a wonderful birthday weekend. It started on Friday night with dinner at Kushi Izakaya. On Saturday the foodie group had hot pot at Peter's condo. Gabe and Peter bought a variety meat and veggies and other goodies. I brought some ice cream - Heavenly Hash and Black Cherry. Since we got there first we washed and chopped the stuff they bought.

Fiona made some cookies for me for my birthday. That was nice of her. Justin ended up eating most of them though.

After dinner they gave me a carrot cake cupcake with a candle on it. I made them sing, Happy Birthday, to me.

After that we played Monopoly Deal card game. I think Peter picked it up in Hong Kong while he was there. It ended up taking a lot longer to play than we expected. After than Martin and Edna went home. That left Peter, Gabe, Emily, Fiona, Justin and me.

We played Saboteur next. It's Emily's game. I played it once before when she brought it to game night at Shopsy's on Woodbine. I liked it.

This time we had seven players, which according to an online game players poll, is the best number of players to have.

The game isn't too complicated. The objective of it is either to build a path from the starting point to one of three cards opposite of it, one of which is "gold", or to block players from doing it.

At the beginning you are given a card which deems you either a miner or a "Saboteur" (the name of the game). If you are a miner you have to build a seven card path to the gold. If you are a Saboteur you have to block the miners from accomplishing that task.

You are dealt five cards next. The cards will allow you to build or block the path to the gold depending on your objective. Other cards are maps cards which allow you check one of the three cards to see which one might be the gold (so you know which one to build the path to); action cards which allow you to penalize or free people from taking their turn depending on who you believe is your enemy or ally. There is also a card that can blow up part of the path to delay the miners from their goal.

People take turns either playing a card or discarding one (if they choose not to play one). They then pick up a new card from the deck and the next player goes. If the miners don't build their path to the gold by the time the cards run out the Saboteurs win that round.

It's a really fun game. You never know who to trust. Games are short and miners and Saboteurs constantly change. Though, this evening, Justin ended up being the Saboteur at least 8 of the 10 or so games we played. I was a Saboteur twice.

We ended up staying at Peter's until nearly 2:00 a.m.

On Sunday I met Lawrence for dinner at Tucker's Marketplace near his place off Highway 401 and Highway 27.

Dinner at Tony and Iris' Place

We had dinner over at Tony and Iris' place this past Thursday. Normally I would have gym night on Thursdays, but for the past two weeks I believe the high school (where we rent the gym out) has been using it. So I've been free to do whatever I please.

This was the first official gathering at Tony's place since he and Iris got married. And the first time that they've invited people over since last summer. Tony used to have people over on a semi regular basis, but things had been piling up around his apartment. Iris helped him clean up and now they're planning to have more get togethers.

Another reason for the dinner party was that Iris' brother just came into town (this past Monday). He's going to be staying in Toronto for six months studying English. They found him a place at Yonge and Finch for now. I'm not sure how long he plans on staying there. That area is quite heavily populated by Koreans, which could either be good or bad depending on how you look at it. He won't have to go far to get traditional Korean food. But, he'd better be careful not to fall back on speaking Korean too much if his intention is to improve his English.

Tony and Iris arranged to have hot pot for dinner. They had all the normal hot pot fixings like thinly sliced beef and pork and an assortment of vegetables and fish balls etc.

Iris invited her bridesmaids Eunjung and Mariko. Tony invited me and Andrew and Gloria.

After dinner we played an old, traditional British game. I can't remember what it was called. I'll have to find out. It's played with coins on a slate board. The idea is similar to shuffleboard. You have to slide your coins down the slate tablet between white lines. That's basically the premise behind how you score points.

We played guys versus girls. It started off quite evenly with the girls eventually pulling ahead by a couple of points. We came back with a late flurry to win 14-12 in the end. For our victory I suggested the girls should give us back rubs. Unfortunately that didn't happen ;-)

Tropicana Team Dinner

back: Rupert, Wendy, Grace, Winnie, Anthony's girlfriend, Anthony

front: Steve, Sang Hee, Chris

This is our "Sports Night" team, Tropicana. Every Thursday night over the winter we get together with the other two teams in the Cornerstone church league and play different sports. For the first seven weeks we played European Handball. Since the school is closed over the Christmas/New Year's holidays we decided to get together for dinner.

We met up at Kam Toa off Leslie Street, north of Highway 7 for Hot Pot. We were going to go bowling across the street at World Bowl afterwards, but we ran late. The food was good, but service was really slow. We ended up staying over three hours because of that.

While there we had an "Evil Santa" gift exchange. Everyone bought presents that cost about $10. Then we drew numbers and picked from the gifts available. Normally being the first pick would be the most advantageous. But, in Evil Santa being last is best. Because each successive person can steal any of the gifts they see from people picking ahead of them.

I was fortunate enough to be number 10, the last person to go. Normally I'm not that mean when it comes to Evil Santa. But, this year I "stole" a gift that I thought was pretty decent. It was a Bailey's gift box that Chris bought. Sang Hee was funny. She stole the gift that she brought from Grace. It was a mug that she really liked. I don't know if I would have ever done that. Stolen the present that I brought myself. Anyway, we all had a fun time there.

Until we meet again in January... have a Happy New Year.