Scythe Lake City

As both the girls went out and did their societal duty in school and at work, me and Dave had to sit at home and do the most important part in society: Playing board games.

We started the day with a game of Through the Ages. It’s a Civilization type of game, without a map. I love maps, to get the whole feeling. But it was fun anyway. Lots of statistics. I wouldn’t call it a “spread sheet game” though, it was more fun. Every turn you got victory points, and I got a lot of them in the beginning by having Michelangelo spice up my churches. So I tried to finish the game as early as possible while Dave kept building his massive Utahn army. But the game took its time, he built the machine and crushed me. I accept him anyway.

The grass in the lower right of the picture is their garden. So every single day, they look at this mountain. Maybe they have even forgotten that it exists. But I was like “WOW”. And despite the mountain being all snowy, it was quite warm down here. Almost 20 Celsius/70 Fahrenheit.

I took a walk with the two dogs, while David took his nephew to her job, as the truthfully woman she is, while the haunted men fight it out in the game world. One dog wanted to sniff in the grass all the time, while the dog in front wants to keep on walking. And here I am, all twisted in the middle. Oh life and all its difficulties!

Once thing that I’ve heard a lot in USA is beautiful wind music. We also have these in Sweden, but they just go like “kling, klang, whatever”, while these instruments actually makes beautiful, harmonic music as the wind blows. This is just an image of the tree the instrument hang in, but play some Vivaldi or something to get the feeling.

Me and Jackson trying to defeat Dave in Beowulf. It’s a Knizia game. Knizia is (or was) our greatest game designer ever, for doing tons of games. Has a PhD in mathematics, which helps a lot. But … I think too many of his games are crap. I do like Samurai though, but even more Nuggets. Anyway, Beowulf was too random for me and Jackson. Although, of course, this was my first game. After 10 games I might get it. Or hate it, like Carcassonne.

Anyway, then Christmas started! We tried Scythe. It’s a steampunk game, meaning that you’re in the late 19th century, but somehow can build armoured tanks and everything. Just a tiny bit of luck, such as fun cards to read in a Gamebook style. I played the Germans. And won.

The mother came home from her job at the hospital (X-raying people) with pizza! And we got to play again 🙂 I was the German this time too, here coming with my wolf and tank to scare the shit out of those Viking farmers and steal their oil.

And I won again, hereby getting to sign their precious paper three times. Oh, I’d love my own game with such a paper!

Jesus himself, on the fridge. I think this is to remind you where your food comes from. It comes from antibiotic-infested meat factories where we permanently damage billions of animals every year, and from fields that we spray with pesticides that removes all our insects, which I guess Jesus wouldn’t support at all. Religion is a way of educating people into doing the right things and not the wrong things. But as society has changed the last 2000 years, some things need to be a bit updated. I don’t know anything about religion at all, but I think that the Jews have scholars that makes all kinds of recommendations on modern matters, using all kinds of new science. But if that has affected the pigs and insects in Israel, I have no idea of.

And speaking of food, here we have the ingredients of a smörgåsbord! I’d love to add pea soup as a Swedish dish. Recipe here. Eat it every Thursday! It’s very healthy, and if adding a bit of bread (or pancakes!) then you can skip the pig meat and still get complete protein.

As we played Scythe, I tried to help the daughter to play Murder in the Alps, a secret-item-game, that I actually used to work a lot on in my translation company. Here’s the title. I normally get 40 euros an hour to play such games though :p

After a round of Roll Through the Ages (I can’t tell who won as that would be bragging) it was time to say goodbye and I got a ride to the subway station. I’m the only passenger in the train. The guy you see is working. I actually had to ask him a question as I got too much into my stuff that I forgot where we was, so he did have to work a little bit!

Arriving at the central station, I found the Amtrak station, and then had three hours to kill. I found this night club! Utah is know to be a fairly conservative state in USA, but here we do have a club with “Free Drag Show”. Was I curious? Of course! Maybe they had a free show of Mormons dressed up as Protestants and Catholics, being all wild in cages?

Nope, there were 80% gays in there. Which, of course, is my estimate. I didn’t ask anyone about their sexuality. But LOTS of cross-dressing, including the guy/girl inside the cage. I had to leave my bags at the entrance and was allowed in for free.

There were no people in the bar. They are all on the dance floor, where it would feel a bit disrespectful to take photos. You never know what it’s like to be a cross-dresser in other places. In total, they were like 15 people, so quite cozy to say the least. Most of them cross-dressed, including a guy/girl in a very nice dress that I had to sneak-look at. I went up and danced all sober. It was very scary the first seconds, but then I realized: I’m that encouraging guy. They were mostly dancing really really professional, but when others sees this clumsy almost 40-year old sober Swede dancing around they go like: “OK, I can also dance!”

They closed, and I moved on to the last place in town, The Sun Trapp. And who did I found, if not three of the very best dancers from the last place! We talked a bit. The girl was very worried that the colleges in Utah had closed because of the Corona virus. This was the semester that she was planning on graduating, but now, nobody knew what happened. And then we talked about the women on this commercial for the Swedish vodka Absolut.

And then we danced the shit out of this place! Which was really gay btw. Lots of bi people, so you had no idea of who’d make out with who. A girl wanted to drive home, and the super-gay staff went like “If you drive drunk, we, as the staff, have to call the police!” A guy invited me home to his nearby place for some vodka and cigarettes. Which was very nice. But this is a sober week, and maybe he had some other plans. Plus, I was the last person in the whole place that he hit on hehe. So I just went to the train station.

We all sat inside a special room, and a guy came, checked our tickets and then led us to the train.

I’m not sure if I should mention my feelings about the “I hate myself and want to die” comment. Or the “Bill Clinton is a rapist” one on this picture.

You see, even the staff washes their hands here! No Corona on this train. Just a good night’s sleep in the sleeping bag.