Ah, the good old days of playing board games in the dark. Does anyone else have fond memories of blackouts? Bainbridge had them every year, and sometimes the power would go out for days. We would trek down to the pizza place, usually through a layer of white snow, and warm ourselves over fresh gas-oven baked slices. At home we would bring blankets and sleeping bags around the fireplace and play chess, and when it got too dark, we would fall asleep by the dying embers.

I enjoyed some alone-time while Jessica and her family went to church, and they returned with a group of Jessica’s Korean friends to play Settlers of Catan. We got two games going, and the one I was in lasted forever… until all of a sudden we were all a point away from winning and it was all over in one round. Suffice to say I didn’t win. Entering our second game, though, the power blinked off. Poof! No electricity! Apparently these things are rare occurrences in San Francisco these days (probably due to the lack of trees). As things got darker, we just brought out candles, and squinted to differentiate colors on the board. The other, faster, group moved on to Jenga in the Dark, which added points of acoustic interest to the evening.

I didn’t win again, but the power came back on in time to pack things away and send the folks off to study. Ah, school… there’s always school to return to after the blissful failure of technology, isn’t there?