Luck Was With Me

Yesterday we had our department holiday party, at the trendy bowling alley Strike. I’m not much of a bowler, but it’s fun to do once in a while. We all had a good time, and a few folks definitely seemed to get better as the afternoon went on.

I still haven’t figured out how to get the ball to roll smoothly down the lane – it sort of skids and slips instead – but I did manage to improve my aim significantly, to the point that at the end of the second game I bowled three strikes in a row, and managed to get a photo of my accomplishment:

Three Strikes and I'm Doing Okay

Yep, Josh still won. Josh has some actual bowling experience in his past, so I was delighted just to be even in the same ballpark as his score.

Tonight I went over to the last Wednesday gaming night of the year at Subrata‘s, where we played Ticket to Ride Märklín and I was fortunate to draw a few coordinated routes and piled up a huge number of bonus points on a fairly short train network and was able to win that game even though I was concerned up to the end that it was going to be extremely close, mainly because my network was so short. But I guess I haven’t played enough of that variant to have a good feel for what position everyone is in late in the game.

I can’t really ask for much better fortune in my game-playing than that. I’m even feeling like I’ve been drafting better at Magic lately – I think the Lorwyn expansion suits the way I think much better than the Time Spiral block did.

Now if only I can figure out how to get better at no limit poker that I’ve been playing with my friends, then I’ll be happy with my gaming across the board…