Vericon Sunday: completing the circle of Buffy; filk

At the first Vericon 10 years ago I was introduced to the Buffy board game. On Sunday even, I think I had to leave early to catch my Greyhound. So it feels fitting that I got to shepherd some people through a game myself, probably on the same physical set. First game was absurdly quick: Mayor scenario, Willow got living flame at start or first draw, I as Buffy found the Box, game over. Then I took over as Evil, being the only experienced player, and I think the other four enjoyed their cooperative tactical experience. Judge scenario, Dru got the arm, but I had her hold onto it for a few turns to be sneaky and to avoid having to roll the Evil die. I shoud have held longer... It's very tempting to let the high dice and health boss rampage around, but then you get whacked by rocket launchers and ganged up on, when you should probably rely on a renewable screen of minions and use boss stats to survive and discourage attacks. I lost Spike, failed to replace with Veruca, killed Xander and Buffy, and vamped Willow, before were-Oz finished off the Judge. They had starting rocket but no other good weapons, Spike had Balthazar's Amulet, I always got to move the Judge. They had a Kendra+other help+stake combo from Xander, but it failed to dust Spike.

Played a couple games of Race for the Galaxy. Tried miliary both times, came in last, and 41 in a 26 41 49 point spread.

Taking 70 bus to filk group in Waltham. Passing through Brighton, which I think is officially Boston, but it's looking grody low density. One story businesses with space between them, car lots, malls and parking lots. What happened to the land values? Passengers are a lot more nonwhite than I see elsewhere, blacks and Spanish-speakers. And a lot of people; the inefficiency of bus boarding is really telling. 22 minutes from Central to Watertown squares. 40 to Main and Prospect in Waltham.

Filk was fun. The business meeting was weird, I've never seen small scale democracy up close like that. Seemed kind of anal.

Bus back near 9 pm was probably 33 minutes. I noticed that singing quietly to myself, relaxed and exhausted, meant I sang quite luidly with almost no dropped lyrics, unlike some con performances, where I forgot frigging "three rings for the elvenkings".

I can has cam lib card; Celsius as a second language

I finally got a Cambridge library card. This seems slow -- I've been bouncing around here for almost 3 months. Then again, the key word there is 'bouncing', I've only had conventional documentation of residence for the past two weeks. I was given a choice of conventional card or keychain card, opted for the latter for novelty and convenience. Starting to get a lot of those... I was told spontaneously where the computers are, and that they were in the old building, which might be nice to look at. And it was nice to look at. All the new SF I looked up was in the system, as was the Spirit Level. Not all of it was on the shelf, especially Surface Detail which was supposed to be on the shelf. Still, I walked away with 4 hardcovers.

A friend has apparently outpaced me in intuitive grasp of Celsius, so I've been working on that the past couple of days. Got Wunderground to display Celsius (classic mode can show English and metric units), and as I walked to Vericon Sunday thought about the scale. I'd already memorized every 10 Celsius in a useful range, but I'm still translating to Fahrenheit. But now I know that 21-22 is the ideal comfort range, 18-23 is broader comfort (so obvious 17 would be cool but still good, to refer back to our conversation), 37 is body temp and way too hot. 0 is freezing of course, though it has cognitive conflict with 0 F being really damn freezing.

What I particularly figured are the jumps. See, every 10 F can be thought of as a minor layer change or increase in discomfort. 10 to 20, 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 60 to 70, 75 to 85, etc. If you have the ideal clothing and activity for temp X, you can probably get by in X-10 or X+10 with discomfort but not danger. And that's about 5 C. OTOH, a delta of 20 F is major clothing/behavior change or danger. 10 to 30 -- both need warm clothes, but 10 F needs more thorough bundling, you can't skimp. 30 to 50, 20 to 40, 50 to 70, 70 to 90. And that's about 10 C. So this should help transtion, where I can at least relate an unfamiliar C temp to more familiar ones, rather than translating to F.