Evil with donkey ears

Well, Halloween has been and gone again. There were trick-or-treaters wandering the neighbourhood, but none came to our place whilst we were home. The funniest group were a gaggle of four foot high witches, some in stripy socks, who seemed to have picked up a single eyore-eared fairy. The effect was truly terrifying, and I'm sure they snagged a decent haul of candy.
Our weekend featured a very pleasant trip North to visit M&D in PN. There was win and cheese, boardgames and curry, and much gossip. The boardgames were very fun, and have left me with the desire to play more.

It turns out that I am hopelessly incompetent at TransAmerica. I lost about 8 out of 9 hands, sometimes by a substantial margin (the worst was 9 points, which is quite bad when you consider that you die when you've lost 12 points).

On the plus side, my craving for Puerto Rico was satiated, in a very satisfying manner. Hearing giffy talk about the bean game made me mad-keen for Puerto Rico, and I actually did pretty well for a change. No chance to play Settlers or Caracasonne - next time maybe.

I also did a little shopping for the prizegiving. A colleague and I toodled down to the local bookshops to choose books for the kiddies who have excelled this year. We went with a dual theme - NZ Flava (History of, Authors/Poets, Biographies of famous -ers), and anti-America (Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore etc.). Hopefully the rest of the committee will be happy with our purchases!