[Composed August 3rd, 2024]
And on the 6th day, the family rested. Ahhh, Shabbat. After days of hurried mornings and packed itineraries, I truly relished having a day where we had nowhere to be and no tasks to complete.
The weather cooperated and we spent the morning playing in our home's pool. The pool, by my standards wasn't the largest or most extravagant. But the kids, to their credit, were nothing but overjoyed to be spending hours playing in the pool.
For the last few trips, I've tried to bring along a new board game that we can all learn and play together. I'm out for a unicorn, of course, but my main criteria are: a high degree of portability, cooperative game play, quick to learn, and an emphasis on strategy over luck. After reviewing a number of posts on the web, I arrived at our candidate: Pandemic the Cure.
After lunch, we finally had a chance to sit down as a group and play the game.
It was...OK. It did indeed check many, if not all the boxes. It was relatively portable: the game comes in a full sized box, but consists mostly of dice and cards that fit in the provided dice bag. It's not pocket friendly, but it's certainly checked-bag friendly. It is collaborative, too.
I initially found the number of rules and sequence of game play to be confusing. I felt like I had to hold too many concepts in my head at one time, but we did eventually get comfortable with the flow. As for the strategy vs luck side, here too, it met the goal. The game is dice based, so there's definitely luck involved, but as a team we had the opportunity to make many decisions which determined the outcome of the game.
The game also has no writing it in, which makes it more Shabbos friendly (it worked for us; though I'm sure for some handling dice on Shabbat isn't kosher). Players take on different roles, with each role having a sort of super power. This allowed each one of the kids to have moments throughout the game where their character had the focus and saved the day.
So if it checked all the boxes, why aren't I fully raving about the game? Eh, it's hard to say. At times, the game moved a bit slow and players could be checked out. BUt mostly, we just didn't love playing it. We finished a couple of games but didn't have the drive to play it over and over again.
I will say that for a game that was developed before the Covid 19 pandemic, it did a solid job of capturing how you might gameify a pandemic.
I'll try again with another board game next year, and am glad to have Pandemic on our shelf for home game play.
We decided to close the day out with a movie. Finding a movie that appeals to everyone is tricky business, but I'd recently re-watched a favorite from growing up and thought it was perfect. The film: Uncle Buck starring the legendary funny man John Candy.
Uncle Buck was released in 1989, which makes it positively ancient. At 35 years old, it's the equivalent of my Uncle putting on a film from 1955 for my teenage cousins and I to enjoy. I'm well aware that many films from the 1980's are positively unwatchable. But, I'd recently re-watched Uncle Buck and felt like it held up. While most of the film is your basic goofy comedy, it does brush up against serious topics like sexual assault. In its own way, I think it handles these well.
Of course the kids groaned when I put the movie on, sure that this crusty film was going to be a flop. In no time, John Candy's physical comedy had the kids laughing out loud. But it's the more sensitive side of the plot that really shined. Candy plays the out of touch Uncle Buck (UB) who finds himself caring for his brother and sister-in-law's two innocent young kids and one very cantankerous teen.
What UB lacks in traditional parenting skills he more than makes up for with non-conventional problem solving and a giant heart.
At the end of the movie the kids had to begrudgingly admit that they enjoyed it. Score one for non-conventional problem solving by UB (Uncle Ben).
What a fun and relaxed day. Of course, now I'm fully recharged and ready to take on our last day in Puerto Rico. So enough resting, let's get to playing!
