Entry tags:
Reasons for Insomnia
Still doing these omnibus weekly posts because I'm not actually getting around to posting more often.
Last weekend was the MIT Mystery Hunt. This year's hunt was themed after the movie Inception. The first round, a dog-show themed hunt, turned out to be just a dream. The subsequent rounds had hunters waking a team of famous sleepers to escape a series of nested dreams and extract a secret from the mind of the ultimate dreamer (in this hunt, the Coin was hidden within the Alchemist). Despite some technical difficulties, the hunt was very well put-together. Repeating last year's feat, my team (Death & Mayhem) completed the hunt, placing third. (The coin was found at 6:53PM on Sunday, hunt HQ closed the hunt at 9PM, four teams were able to finish the final runaround.) I put in a bit of effort to help with some of the puzzles remotely, but I don't think I was a significant help with any of them this year. Puzzles and solutions are up here.
A few favorite puzzles from this year:
Off the Leash (figuring out the form of the puzzle takes some cleverness)
Road Trip (a simple, feel-good puzzle)
The Case of the Dangerous Game (another clever puzzle form)
Losers (wordplay puzzle)
identify, SORT, index, solve (the classic Mystery Hunt puzzle form)
Time Suck (a spongmonkeys puzzle!)
The Gibous, Non-Euclidean Program (spooky punchcards)
The rest of the week went well. Though Eris has been having a few wakeful nights, the worst two nights ago when she wanted to feed for half-an-hour every two hours. My mom was in town for the week and was pleasant company and tremendous help.
The baby has acquired a belly-button, in the traditional passing of belly-buttons on to the next generation.
Julie's family was going to be visiting this weekend, but their plans got waylaid by a Nor'easter and they had to reschedule. We'd all had reservations at East Coast Grill, a historic Inman Square restaurant that soon will be closing forever. Wound up inviting some more Boston friends to take advantage of the reservation. East Coast isn't my favorite Boston restaurant (probably not even in my top ten favorite restaurants in this neighborhood, though to be fair Inman and Union Squares have a lot of really excellent restaurants), but they were a good spot and a very significant part of the neighborhood.
Julie's family will reschedule their trip for March, when (hopefully) the weather will be more accommodating.
I'm continuing to make progress on my todos and random houshold tasks. I got some WD-40 to oil a squeaky hinge, so now my engineer's toolkit is complete.
Last weekend was the MIT Mystery Hunt. This year's hunt was themed after the movie Inception. The first round, a dog-show themed hunt, turned out to be just a dream. The subsequent rounds had hunters waking a team of famous sleepers to escape a series of nested dreams and extract a secret from the mind of the ultimate dreamer (in this hunt, the Coin was hidden within the Alchemist). Despite some technical difficulties, the hunt was very well put-together. Repeating last year's feat, my team (Death & Mayhem) completed the hunt, placing third. (The coin was found at 6:53PM on Sunday, hunt HQ closed the hunt at 9PM, four teams were able to finish the final runaround.) I put in a bit of effort to help with some of the puzzles remotely, but I don't think I was a significant help with any of them this year. Puzzles and solutions are up here.
A few favorite puzzles from this year:
Off the Leash (figuring out the form of the puzzle takes some cleverness)
Road Trip (a simple, feel-good puzzle)
The Case of the Dangerous Game (another clever puzzle form)
Losers (wordplay puzzle)
identify, SORT, index, solve (the classic Mystery Hunt puzzle form)
Time Suck (a spongmonkeys puzzle!)
The Gibous, Non-Euclidean Program (spooky punchcards)
The rest of the week went well. Though Eris has been having a few wakeful nights, the worst two nights ago when she wanted to feed for half-an-hour every two hours. My mom was in town for the week and was pleasant company and tremendous help.
The baby has acquired a belly-button, in the traditional passing of belly-buttons on to the next generation.
Julie's family was going to be visiting this weekend, but their plans got waylaid by a Nor'easter and they had to reschedule. We'd all had reservations at East Coast Grill, a historic Inman Square restaurant that soon will be closing forever. Wound up inviting some more Boston friends to take advantage of the reservation. East Coast isn't my favorite Boston restaurant (probably not even in my top ten favorite restaurants in this neighborhood, though to be fair Inman and Union Squares have a lot of really excellent restaurants), but they were a good spot and a very significant part of the neighborhood.
Julie's family will reschedule their trip for March, when (hopefully) the weather will be more accommodating.
I'm continuing to make progress on my todos and random houshold tasks. I got some WD-40 to oil a squeaky hinge, so now my engineer's toolkit is complete.