Thursday Jaeger bought an expansion set to “Settlers of Catan” called “Cities and Knights of Catan”. Saturday night Jaeger, Neal and I tried it out. It took us a while to go through the new rules and once we started I was still a bit confused. However, overall I really liked the game. It required me to completely rethink the strategy I tend to use for “Settlers of Catan”.

“Cities and Knights of Catan” is much more complex than standard Catan. Among other things, Catan now has 3 dice that get rolled on every turn. If the event die rolls a black ship the “barbarian hordes” advance on the island. Once they reach the island various cities are sacked and the barbarians go straight back to their homeland. When we first started playing the game, I figured the hordes would only attack once or twice during the game. However, this was incorrect. The hordes attacked at least 6 times, probably more throughout the 2 1/2 hr game. To defend Catan against the invaders not only do you have to have a knight (preferably more than one), you also have to have the knight “activated.” I was continually forgetting to activate my knight in time. I’d start concentrating on a different part of the game and the barbarians would sneak up unnoticed until it was too late.

I don’t know why, but I think I prefer this expansion to “Seafarers of Catan”. Maybe I just haven’t played “Knights and Cities” enough to understand how horribly I can lose In any case, I’m looking forward to the Fest where hopefully others can be recruited to try out Cities and Knights.

Ever since we brought Five home from the humane society she has been obsessively licking herself. When I took her into the vet for the first time, he said she probably just was stressed about the change in the environment and I shouldn’t be too concerned unless it continues. Well, about 2 weeks ago I discovered that she was licking herself raw. I called the vet but our schedules didn’t coincide until today.

As I suspected, the vet said she probably has anxiety is sues. So, our cat is now on Amitriptyline. I find the idea of giving our cat medication somewhat odd. I don’t know why, it just seems like animals shouldn’t need medication.

Oh well, I hope this stuff works. Now I just have to figure out how to make her take it . . .

My website has finally been resurrected from the grave. This was mainly the result of canceling our cable and runnig out of interesting books to read. Never fear, I will soon be back to dishing out the horrible neglect my site has come to expect.

This site is now divided into 3 main sections: a blog (such an awful word), a wiki and a catalog. Yes, it’s an overly complicated scheme but as my old teachers will tell you, I excel at doing everything the hardest way possible.

Mutterings
Mutterings is the blog section. I probably won’t get around to updating it very frequently but it does have an RSS Feed.

Recipes
I’ve exported all my online recipes into a wiki. I’ve never really played with wikis before. My only real experience is in using Wikipedia and I’ve always been too scared to try editing anything. However, I think a wiki may turn out to be the ideal forum for my recipes. This allows my friends to easily add their own favorites. In addition, it allows mistakes to be easily rectified when my mother-in-law notices that I have managed to leave all the salt out of the Wheat Oil Pastry recipe (yes, this still needs to be corrected). So, if you have a great recipe, please feel free to add it.

Kiesa’s Library
Currently, there are only 7 books listed in the catalog. However, I plan to import my collection soon. I added the catalog so I have a handy list of all the books I own. Hopefully this will prevent me from wondering “Do I already have this book?” when I visit The Bookworm.

Book Lists and Links
Since I already have the wiki installed for my recipes, I will probably start adding to it. I plan to start adding book lists and links to websites. After that, I’ll see how the wiki evolves.