Sometimes when my aunt Renee is in town she and I play bridge with my grandparents.  Neither of us understand the game all that well, but it’s fun to see my grandparents so competitive.  Even my grandfather, whose age is catching up with him, remembers every bid and trick.

My grandma (who was my partner) made some aside comments to Renee in the middle of a hand.

Renee: I think you’re trying to trick me.
(A few cards later)
Renee: You were trying to trick me.

At this point, my grandmother stood up and did a little dance on her way to making “game.”

The skill in bridge centers around giving subtle hints to your partner through bids and leads.  I’d often ask my grandma, “What do you think I have?”  As I eyed the glut of clubs in my hand she’d say something like, “10-12 points and at least 4 hearts.”  Whoops.  By the end of the night we started to get on the same page, although I spent much of it as the dummy.

The construction workers constantly jackhammering outside of Jellyvision’s offices finally did it. We heard a particularly loud crash and then all the power in the building went out. This actually happened last year too when a crane knocked down a power line a block away. (Hooray!) I love it when the power goes out. It forces you to change your behavior for a little while and I think that’s nice — especially when your new behavior involves playing Mafia with all your coworkers.

Unlike Celebrity, Mafia has a comprehensive Wikipedia entry written by someone who isn’t me. (Although I was prepared to do it if one didn’t exist. Here’s a fun little experiment: See if you can find something that doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.) If you don’t know how the game works, you can read about it there.

Like last year, Amanda dominated the game. She is the most ruthless murderer I’ve ever met — playing dumb, giggling, spreading rumors — all of it coldly calculated to manipulate us while she quietly kills the entire town.

Last night Karen and Gordon invited some folks over to play Celebrity. As their friend Pete was explaining the rules I realized that he was much more succinct and eloquent than I was when I wrote the Wikipedia entry for Celebrity. Yes, that’s right. I’m eFamous.

I went back and looked at it today.  There have been 44 edits since my initial post, but it looks like my description has remained largely intact.  I was especially pleased to see that my example of a fictional character, A.C. Slater, hadn’t been changed.