San Juan seven times

San Juan is as popular as Puerto Rico was; I played it four times last night, and there were at least three games played with mnemex’s set. I don’t think it’ll still be that popular in a month. The high luck factor means there’s less of a strategic element, and therefore less brain reward for heavily thinky gamer types.

And it turns out the cards are just a bit longer than standard collectable cardgame cards, just long enough to get wedged into the sort of standard (150-count) card box you might buy if you wanted something smaller than the oversized box the games comes in to carry it around in. Pain in the ass. Mnemex suggests getting one of the slightly larger boxes designed to hold cards in protectors.

When I win San Juan, I tend to win big: 37-39 points. I haven’t figured out the quick win. Though, like I said, there’s a lot of luck involved.

Museum of Natural History

The office was closed yesterday for Good Friday (nice for the employees, not so nice for us freelancers), giving me a chance to visit the American Museum of Natural History on a weekday and sketch birds and bats. (It’s research.)

First I stopped off at Kinokuniya Books to replenish my stocks of 0.5-mm non-photo blue mechanical pencil leads. They had three packs, and since a pack lasts me three or four months, I bought all three, which should do for the year. Now I have the sole supply of these leads in the NYC area! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! I also picked up yet another brush pen, this one having a small, fine point, like my old Splash pen, but with faster-drying ink.

Then off to the museum. Lots of subway stations have been redecorated in the past decade or so, many with mosaics, and the 81st Street station is my favorite. (My second favorite is the one with all the hat mosaics, which I could’ve sworn was the 28th Street station on the Broadway line. The mosaics they actually seem to have there are pretty cool, but not what I remember. Oh, hey, and I haven’t seen this at the 14th St station on Eighth Avenue. And check out Whitehall Street.) I like getting out at the north end and walking down the length of the platform to the south end, which has an entrance directly into the museum.

The museum trip was a mistake; not nearly as successful as my last visit (almost two years ago!). Not only do my sketches mostly suck — I could probably have been more productive just downloading reference photos off the net — but after very little time there I just lost all my energy and wandered around zombie-like. I sat for a while in the primate section, marveling at the parents who think a museum is a good place for a child still in a stroller. This kid seemed to be pretty freaked out by the primates, and no wonder. That white-handed gibbon is one creepy-looking sumbitch:



Eventually I gave up, left the museum, caffeinated myself to the gills, and headed off to Games Club.