Went out to Andy and Jeanettes (Mr and Mrs Barrett) tonight for a BBQ and some beers. They got a new BBQ a wee while ago with some department store vouchers they got from their wedding. Nice BBQ actually - 4 burner masport thing.
So, we christened it - it hadn't been used before. It was also Andrews first time (I think) as chief BBQ'er - he did a good job for his 1st time. He discovered that if you have crumbed food on his BBQ, you need oil :-)
After dinner, we played Monopoly. Andrew is a big star wars fan, and Jeanette got him Star Wars monopoly for Xmas. So we played that. It appears the rules for monopoly have changed from the edition I used to play on. My father has a monopoly set from the 1950's - it's quite cool. The standard rules that are different now are whenever you don't buy a property you land on, it goes to auction. Highest bidder gets it. Also, taxes from the board and fines from community chest don't go into the middle of the board - they just go back to the bank. On my fathers version, if you get fined the money goes into the middle of the board and when you land of free parking, you get the $$$.
Because it's the star wars edition, they have some new rules. The most notable new rule is what happens when you throw a double. Usually when you throw a double, you get to throw again. With this game, you can either throw again, or "use the force". Each double enables you to do something different. eg, double 1 = move anywhere on the board. Double 3 is get a sith card (old community chest). The best one is double 6. If you throw a double 6, you can challenge anyone for a property they own that they don't own the complete set of. You each take a die, and highest roll wins. If the challenger wins, the get to take that property. If the defender wins, they don't lose the property - it's quite good. Of course, with my bad luck I was 0 for 2 on that.
Jeanette got bored near 10pm, and decided that she'd sell me all of her property for $200. She donated all of her cash to Andrew. I was clearly losing the game, but with her cards I had the majority of the property - and my average property value would have been higher than Andrews. We played till 10pm, added up, and declared it a draw. My net worth would have been slightly ahead, but that's only because I got a whole stack of property for real cheap. I had quite a fun time.
I stayed late into the night, and ended up staying here.
Got to go back to my parents soon - I should be seeing my friend Sarah T from Wellington tonight. She's in Christchurch until the 28th. I think Jenna, Hayley, Sarah and I will be having another boozy evening at Jennas. Last time we did this was about 1 year ago, and Sarah and I got Hayley quite trashed playing Gravy Train - hehehe.
Holidays = a chance for me to give my liver some exercise.