u/Plethorian

It's an interesting game, with a great variety of point scoring options. Build an environment and populate it with animals. It moves quick, too. 20 turns per game. Period.

Everyone I've played with has liked it. Just saying it's possibly a good way to bring up the concept of Cascadia: "Want to play a game?"

Handing them to someone isn't always possible or a good idea. But it would be nice to mount them in some way.

The off-season can be very interesting.

For Thanksgiving of 1978, I flew to San Diego. Not for fun: No, I was joining the Navy. There was this really, really interesting and cool job that I could only do if I joined. So I got on the bus at the San Diego airport along with the other idiots who were there for their own reasons. It was the middle of winter, at night, and it was warm. We were driven to a gated compound that looked like a Soviet gulag concentration camp. It turned out to be just about as nice.

First stop was amnesty and telephones. Phone home, let them know you made it here safe. Also, there's a big box with a list of forbidden items on it: guns, knives, drugs, drug paraphernalia, pornography, alcohol - it was a pretty inclusive list. You could walk up to the box, drop something in, and no questions asked. I'm pretty sure the Company Commanders (Navy's version of Drill Sergeants) sorted through it all and kept some. While we were about this, in lines for the pay phones, the guy in front of me says "hold my place." He dashes off into the semi darkness, across the grass to the decorative anchor (there's always a decorative anchor or 6 on base). I assume he's gotta pee; but he goes out to the ring of white rocks surrounding the anchor, lifts one, and apparently puts something under it.

I am incurious. It's not my problem, and I've been informed multiple times by all my male relatives (who all served) that the way to survive is to mind your own business, and keep your head down. He looks at me when he comes back to line, but I am clearly not paying attention. He's an older recruit, a little rough looking. Like in his 20s. He ends up being our "chief recruit" or something (I can't remember, but 2 or 3 recruits had some supervisory authority).

There are a large number of classes, presentations, processes, and such to complete, also meals and other recurring daily tasks. To facilitate completing all this, each day of each week is universally structured into blocks: 1-1 day is haircuts and uniforms, 3-2 might be UCMJ, 5-4 might be polishing brass on the fake ship. IDK. Firefighting and other stuff was in there too. So each company stepped through each day in the schedule.

Well, our schedule was all fucked up. We had weeks and days whenever we could get them; because facilities and instructors were on vacation all over the base. We did some week 6 stuff in week 2, but each day was an adventure for everyone involved. Also, our own Company Commanders were absent a lot - it was Christmas for them, too. But not us.

This left us more than a bit disorganized, and probably way too unsupervised. The giant bag of pot stashed under the white rock was retrieved, soon apple and Coke can pipes were in service. Then, we had our "service week" over Christmas itself. We worked all over the base - it was part of the standard schedule, we just got it in week 4 or something. I was a milkman, and I polished a lot of brass in the Admin building. Got high with the musician company, lol. Never with my own guys, though. At 6'4', this eastern Washington farm boy didn't get challenged or hassled much. I kept to myself. I also had letters from my overly crafty girlfriend: There were collages, spiral writing on construction paper boobs (kept that one), photos (woo-hoo!), and more words than I had time for. (We've been together 51 years now)

So during our service week, one of the guys bought 200 hits of acid from a 2nd class mess cook. On a Friday. That weekend was insane, and started some shit. First, Friday night both the real Company Commanders took off for the weekend. One would stop by Saturday afternoon, in civvies! The other came Sunday after church. Remember, our Recruit commander was dealing pot. He and the others involved in that, all dropped acid. They also dosed some guy's Cokes. Friday night the "guards" (you had 2 hour guard duty where you walked up and down the aisles quietly) encountered lots of giggling, people standing at intersections acting as traffic cops, a quiet modern dance exhibition in the common room, pot smoking on the stairwell, and other shenanigans. We called it "Giggle Night."

I remember many discussions about how we could get TF out of here - we could see the airport (hell, the planes took off directly over us), but the Marine boot camp was between us and them. They were supposed to have captured some escaping Navy recruits, and put them through Marine boot camp before turning them over. If it wasn't for that story, we probably would have gone for it. It was miserable.

Anyway, we continued our fucked up schedule, and eventually graduated and went home. Well, almost. After graduation, we got formed into two lines: One line turned in their linens, picked up the box that had your civilian clothes, and got on buses. The other line kept their linen, and were marched off to a detention barracks by a group from NIS. The Naval Investigative Service (they added the "C" later for political reasons) had already rolled up the mess cook, and sneakily let everyone graduate, rather than flunk them out of Boot on Giggle night. That way they got lots of great convictions on guys that still had to play out their service. So much for school guarantees or a real future.

TL;DR: There were no trees. There were r/trees.

We're approaching fireworks season, and may pets are going to be quite distressed. Some may run away.

Be aware that WAIF in Coupeville (annex for cats in Freeland) should be your first contact for lost pets. Not only do people drop off found pets there, but they do a tremendous job taking care of strays. It's one of the little gems that keep the island as pleasant as it it.

https://waifanimals.org

I was just trying to be helpful while the human elements of the new team were in their adorable "sleep" mode. I removed all the extraneous wrappers and packaging in their pantry, increasing available storage space by almost 30%.

How was I to know that the wrappers contained not only cooking instructions, but also identified specific ingredients! Who wraps steel cans with paper labels that have two-dimensional representations of the contents? How stupid is that?