Indoor activities

Like I said at my previous blog post, winter is rather upon us, which brings the need for more indoor activities. I cannot think of myself watching TV or surfing the Internet all day (ok, I don't know about the surfing part), and I realized that I have a good number of board games and the like to make time pass when scraping snow off the car's windshield is just not worth it.

I've always enjoyed playing Scrabble, both in English and Greek, and it felt awesome beating hubby once or twice. (in English. In Greek I win by default because he's clueless). Last week I picked a card game variation of Scrabble called Scrabble Slam, in which you have to create a 4 letter word by changing letters on a word already played by another player. It looks like it's gonna be fun for 2 people.

Another game that I have missed playing is backgammon. Hubby never learned how to play, being a chess type guy. I tried to learn chess when I was a kid and let me tell you, I sucked like nobody's business! I can't think that much in advance to strategize effectively. So, he's reduced into playing chess against his laptop, while I've played backgammon against my iPhone. However, just the other night, he mentioned that he was willing to learn backgammon to play with me. We have a nice wooden set that I bought for when my sister visited, and it should really get some action!

Then, there are games that require 3 or more people, which means that our (remarkably few) friends would have to brave the elements to come visit and play. One of my favorite such board games is Apples to Apples, in which you have to match cards with various nouns to a card with an adjective; thus, G. W. Bush can be fluffy, the Grand Canyon can be dangerous and Michael Jackson can be patriotic. I have spent many hilarious evenings playing this game.

For last, there's this DIY game that my friends back in the 'burgh called it "The Best Game Ever". The players divide a piece of paper (A4 or 8.5 x 11) into horizontal divisions - then they write a random phrase on it and pass it on to the next player, who has to draw a picture of said phrase, then pass it on to the next player that has to make a new phrase out of the drawing. It's like Broken Telephone on paper, and as a matter of fact it's available as an online game here.

This post is getting rather longish, so I'll make a part 2 for console games and the like in a future post.