For the first time in ages, the entire gang was present for game night. We even had a plus one in our young friend from Wyoming. (We have a habit of "adopting" people in need of a little extra supportive family, and this person is our latest adoptee.) Including the baby, we totaled twelve. It was an active, boisterous, wildly enjoyable game night, with our regular pod. (If you are wondering, everyone but the baby has been vaccinated--that was our condition for returning to in-person games.)
We are still on hiatus from Mr S-P's D&D campaign, so we broke into two groups and played different games. My daughter wanted to learn mah jongg, so that she can play with some people from her work, so I taught her the rule set I have. It isn't the Chinese gambling version, but rather the air force spouses social version. It's still possible to play for points in our rules, but we always just played for an excuse to get together and visit, so I am not even sure I remember how to score points.
The other group, the one playing in the hot front room (I was parked over by the a/c on purpose), played some sort of nuclear annihilation game. I vaguely remember it from college, when Mr S-P and I lived with another member of our game group. I remember them being absolutely brutal competitors in everything, thus scaring me off of several games I might have liked if they weren't so cutthroat. So if I played this game back in college, I quickly learned not to get between the guys when they were going at it, and stopped participating at all. Tonight I had much more fun teaching two people how to play mah jongg open-handed, encouraging them to do well, not trying to get one up on anyone.
If the amount of fun we had wasn't enough to make you wish you had been there, perhaps this will: We picked three large mixing bowls full of tart cherries off our tree, inspiring me to make a creation to share. I had trouble finding gluten-free cookies at my local King Soopers for a crust, and rather than go to a different store when I was already tired, I resolved to use a brownie mix as the base. I mixed up a 3/4 batch of cheesecake batter (3 packs of cream cheese and 3 eggs, instead of the usual 4), and baked those together. I pitted a bunch of cherries, and boiled them with sugar. I tried to make a syrup, but there was too much water, so it stayed runny. At the end, I mixed in a splash of cherry liqueur. I poured the topping over the cheesecake in bowls, since it was so liquidy. I have declared the name of this concoction to be schwartzwalderkirschkäsetorte. That might not be entirely proper German, but it felt fun to say.
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