And the lost one has returned

Precious got out of the back yard yesterday morning. :-(

When I left the house this morning, the plan was for iraunink to go around and put up "Lost Dog" posters today. I saw a "Found Dog" poster at 40th & 10th that sounded very much like Precious - small black & white dog found near 40th & 12th on 5/31, with a phone number. I stopped and called iraunink, giving her the phone number. 6:45am was a touch earlier than I was willing to call the number.

About 9:30, iraunink called to tell me Precious was home. The person who had found Precious took her to their vet, who found her chip, looked it up, and called us. iraunink confirmed that she was our missing dog, and the finder helpfully volunteered to drop her off at home (since iraunink has no car today).

Yay!

On the other hand, I did have a fun playing Advanced Civilization yesterday!

davidwilford, David C, Don B, and Jonathan A (WANOLJ) all came over to my house to play Advanced Civilization (the board game). I had an announced 'get here' time of 12N, we probably actually got started about 12:30-12:45, and finished just shy of 10pm.

By the rules, it was supposed to be three map boards and 47 population tokens. We decided to try four map boards and 55 tokens. It gave us elbow room.

Don played Egypt, Jonathan played Babylon.

David C played Illyria and nicely illustrated the fact that the game does punish you if you get too spread out. He came in dead last - his final score was less than half that of the fourth place finisher.

davidwilford played Crete, and marched straight through to the end without getting stopped on the Archaeological Succession Table (AST) once.

I played Assyria, and semi-purposely took a hit on the AST at the second barrier (three cities, 9 Civ cards, all five Civ card groups). I think this make my overall game much easier - it didn't look like I was doing as well as I really was. Also, I set myself up in Asia Minor, negotiated a border with Jonathan early, and we backed up the border with a row of cities. I was able to have a nice stable contained civilization - it didn't grow to speak of, but didn't shrink either. It looked smaller than most everyone else's, and I wasn't being a threat to anyone.

Everyone else did claim that I was very good at trading.

Jonathan and davidwilford both said they needed to improve their Trade Card trading skills. I think it was more true of Jonathan than davidwilford.

I ended up winning by almost 500 points, or a margin of ~15%. IIRC, David W was next, then Jonathan, then Don, then David C. I am unreasonably pleased with myself.

I almost forgot - thanks to davidwilford to the nice maps!