Long Weekend Report: Puzzle Day

I took vacation days for Friday and Monday to have long weekend, to be lazy, and not think about work :)

Julie came over on Friday and we had a "Puzzle Day".  To celebrate, she wore the puzzle necklace I got for her at Christmas.  It's got etched puzzle pieces inside the big puzzle piece.  Very cool imho ;)

Puzzle Necklace.

We got dishes from T&T for dinner: Singapore noodles, sweet & sour pork, tofu with mushrooms, veggie and black fungus, lotus root (there wasn't enough lotus root so the lady gave another item to top it up) and green curry beef with fried tofu.  Also got a large hot & sour soup and large white rice with the meal deal.

T&T Meal Deal.

We stayed up til 9am Saturday morning finishing two 1000 piece puzzles while watching TV, Lego Movie, and He-Man episodes.  It was a long but fun "Puzzle Day".  It's very calming and relaxing working on puzzles too.

Puzzle #1.

Puzzle #2.

Food this weekend ->
I slept in and then did some grocery shopping on Monday.  I picked up some mussels at Costco.  I steamed them in caramelized onions, chopped garlic, and 1/2 cup of water.

Steamed Mussels.

Then I scooped out the mussels into a bowl.  In the remaining liquid in the pan, I added cooking cream and butter, and boiled it down to make a cream sauce to be poured over the mussels.  It was very buttery and good.

Mussels in Cream Sauce.

Useless Transformers News:
After taking Julie home Saturday morning, I went to Walmart and picked up the new Transformers Gordon emailed me about.  I got the 4 figures from the latest deluxe wave of Titans Returns:  Twinferno, Hot Rod, Breakaway, and Triggerhappy.  Didn't find the Broadside or the new Legends: Gnaw, Kickback, and Bumblebee.

Newest Deluxe Transformers.

Useless Gaming News:
After sleeping all day on Saturday, I got up to go to Brian's for 4-player gaming that night.  We played TIME Stores Marcy Expansion first and finished it on the 4th try.  I don't know why our group insists on doing "exploring" games.  I would prefer to finish the game with the least amount of tries, a-la-spirt-of-the-game.  That way we can get a better end game bonus.  I was getting annoyed that Brian kept wanting to read/explore every card in the game.  You don't have to read/explore every card!  You can leave cards as unknown now and to be explored next time; or just read them after finishing the game!  I felt like getting up and leaving at one point.
With TIME Stories done, we played Ben's "Escape The Room - Mystery at the Stargazers Manor".  Basically a 90 minute escape room in a box.  A good game for beginners, but we are veterans at this so we finished this escape game fairly quickly (probably less than 30mins?).  The puzzles aren't very hard, but it almost became a 1 player game with Brian trying to take control (and insisting his answer was correct when it wasn't at one point).  The game allows up to 8 players, but more than 4 and it gets difficult to share the puzzles.

Escape the Room Game.

We finished the night playing "Roll for It" for a few rounds.