Fa-La-La-La-SPLAT!...My Holiday Gaming Summary

Somewhere around December 29 I heard my brain ping and then splat. That may have been the moment when I officially hit my gaming threshold for a one-week period. Maybe. Or perhaps that was the morning after The Greatest Husband in the World, my brother-in-law, and I all decided that the grandest finale to our board gaming bender was to drink non-stop Appletinis and White Russians (a lovely digestive combination, by the way), loop The Big Lebowski on the flat screen, and play a blitzkrieg of games. Yeah, maybe it was the aftershocks of one too many "Get a JOB, SIR!" shouts at the dice. Lazy dice.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The purpose of this post is to recap my holiday of gaming while I nurse my raw, stripped stomach back to health with lots of milk and Jell-O. Here's what went down, by the numbers:

Number of days brother-in-law-who-loves-board-games was visiting from Florida: 7

Number of different board games played: 13

Number of overall completed game plays: 38*

Number of games started...and then demolished, or forgotten in drunken stupors: Hard to say, maybe 5

Number of times The Big Lebowski was watched in one evening: 3

Number of hours it took for us to learn how to play Dungeon Lords: 5

Number of times a game required one of us to call other players "varmints": About 11

Number of fruit-themed games I was banned from playing with my family ever again: 1

Number of board game reviews I managed to type and publish during this time: 1 (yea, me!)

From the moment we got home from airport pick-up duty, we were gaming--at the kitchen table, at a coffee table in the living room in front of a movie, or at a card table in front of the fireplace (because damnit, it was cold!), we were gaming. Here's a roll-call of the games played (in no particular order):

Apples to Apples - 1
Clue: Master Detective - 2
Boggle - 2
Bananagrams - 10 (...guess which fruit-themed game I was bananned from?...get it? Ahh, fruit humor.)
Infinite City - 1
Alien Frontiers - 3
Mad Magazine Card Game - 3
Dungeon Lords - 3
Pompeii - 4
Go - 7
Puerto Rico - 2

And also add to that an unspecified number of games of Pictionary Man and Scattergories that were played Christmas evening with my lush of a sister. Probably dozens. Hard to say. After you've heard one Scattergories "penis" joke, you've heard a thousand.

So at the end of the holidays, did I scratch off every line of my Holiday Gaming To-Do List? Nuh-uh. Not even close. (Poor Small World.) But I think we may have set a new record in our household for number of games played in a 168-hour period. And if it wasn't for that last terrible night of dice tossing, when a rocks glass sat in each person's left hand, and a martini glass in each person's right hand, it might've been a spectacular--nay, glorious--holiday gaming blow-out. Instead, it was the worst long-term gaming + alcohol hangover I've ever had.

Sorry readers, you might need to give me a few days before I'm back in gaming form again. Happy New Year!