I thought at first that piquet would be too hard to learn, but it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it and keeping score is easier than for related games like belote, in my opinion. I spent much of yesterday playing it against a computer to make sure I understood the rules, and I now can beat the highest level of computer opposition a fair majority of the time. I don't know how good the computer is at it, though. Anyway. I'll teach it to the wife and we'll work on it. The tricky part is the mechanics of it. Écarté and Schnapsen both seem fairly simple in terms of mechanics and score-keeping. I greatly prefer games with an easy system of keeping score (ie, don't need a lot of paper (piquet works because you keep the score verbally with each play)) and I don't like games with bidding. These fit the bill.

More suggestions, of course, are welcome.

Schnapsen rules. Schnapsen on Board Game Geek. Good pictorial introduction to the game.

Piquet rules (includes advices). Piquet on Board Game Geek. Good reference card. And another helpful page about it from David Parlett. Piquet is interesting in that it's a trick-taking game with near-perfect information about your opponent's hand.

So we have a longish and complicated game (piquet); a quick, semi-complicated game (Schnapsen); and a quicker, relatively simple game (écarté). Though they can all be fairly deep, tactically speaking.

I am continuing to truck along in those boat books. I'm on #13, The Thirteen Gun Salute.

We went to a wedding this weekend. Quite fortunately, they did not write their own vows. It was all right, though it was an 8pm wedding and we could not stay very late.

Trip to visit in-laws in H-town went all right. Amusing moment on Friday when we realized that nobody had, in fact, told the grandfather that everybody was coming to his house. Crazy weather. 80 when we landed, but had to scrape the ice off the windshield in the morning when we left.

Still watching early Simpsons. We finished season 1.

Semester ending soon. Performance in one class is waning a bit, but I think I'll be able to get the hang of this last bit of new material. It's tricky stuff and I really need to make sure I've got it. The other class is not going to be tricky and homework is not turned in, so I can devote all of my resources to this class.

The train was out of commission at my stop yesterday. Apparently the train hit a car at a stop just down the line. This made me give up on getting to the gym before it closed, so my training is even more off schedule. Whatever.