alobear | Annie-and-Dave-Con 2011

Yesterday was the second annual Annie-and-Dave-Con, in honour of our wedding anniversary and it was a great success.

I was sorry to miss those who weren't able to make it, but there was a good turn out overall, and it was great to see several people I rarely encounter these days. Many thanks to everyone who came, and I'm glad everyone seemed to have a good time.

The venue excelled in all the areas where last year's venue fell short, so we will most likely be going there again. Rather than mocking our choice of activity, they took our desire to play games to heart and one of the staff actually went out to purchase some games for us - the amazing selection of Hungry Hippos, Buckaroo, and Jenga, all of which got played and very much enjoyed! Also, rather than kicking up a fuss about minimum spends and keeping track of how much money we'd spent, at the end of the night, they just decided we'd probably bought enough and happily assumed we didn't owe them anything. Both these things made dealing with the staff a pleasure rather than a pain.

I played six games in all throughout the day, and thoroughly enjoyed all of them:

Pool - Dave and I started off the event with an extremely silly game of pool, in which he potted all of his balls, I potted none of mine, but he then proceeded to pot the black in the wrong pocket, so I won anyway!
Dominion - we had a new set of cards to try out, and the one game I played with some of them was a lot of fun
Stone Age - I came across this for the first time on the May holiday, and this time managed to introduce Dave to it as well; we're now buying our own copy to play with my parents on visits to Rustington
Alien Frontiers - an enjoyable game of the resource-allocation type I particularly like, plus a rare opportunity to catch up with Sinead
Hungry Hippos - a childhood favourite, enthusiastically revisited
Funny Friends - always a good laugh, and this time was no exception

I managed to avoid Agricola and Acquire, neither of which I like very much, and played at least one game with all but three of the attendees.

To top it all, the evening ended with a wonderful moment of serendipity. As Dave and I walked through the empty shopping centre towards the car park, the PA system was playing our song. *big goofy grin*

So, an excellent day all round - and many thanks again to all those who contributed to it - I'm looking forward to next year already!