Well, 2006 is here at last. Personally, I believe that January 1st should be universally recognized as “Recovery Day”, as I feel I need a full day to recover from the sleep deprivation and dehydration that accompanied last night’s festivities. We had some friends of ours over for the New Year; the plan was to play a bunch of board games and maybe watch some movies, and then to go out to a diner for breakfast at midnight. We did wind up playing, though we only really got to play one game. We didn’t watch any movies. We went to the diner, but we had stuffed ourselves so thoroughly during our little party that nobody really ordered much. Anyway, here are some holiday capsule reviews for you.

Apples to Apples
This is the only game we really got to play last night, but it was worth it. We played for about four hours, and it never really lost its appeal. It’s basically a word-association game; I’ll explain. Everyone has seven cards with various words or phrases on them. These might include things like “Eddy Murphy”, “Wheat”, or “Picking Your Nose”. Every round, one player plays a Green Apple card, which has a descriptive quality on it. Some descriptive qualites are “Touchy-Feely”, “Trustworthy”, or “Scary”. Then, everyone tries to play a card that matches that description as best as they can, face-down; only the first four cards are counted. The person who played the Green Apple card then judges them, and the winning card gets the Green Apple. The person with the most Green Apples at the end wins. Pretty simple, and pretty damn hilarious. Highly recommended.

iPod Shuffle
Speaking of apples (or Apple, I suppose). The iPod Shuffle was my big Christmas Present this year, and I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it since I got it. I got the 512MB version, which has proven to be more than enough for me. I listen to it in the car, and last night we hooked it up to our stereo during the party. I’ve got to say, I’m impressed with the battery life, the shuffle algorithm used, and the ease of use of the device. It’s a wonderful little toy.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m off to finish recovering. Enjoy 2006, everybody!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2006 at 2:29 pm and is filed under News, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.