Spring Break, Part 2 – Surprises and Traditions

So I promised you a story about a really unplanned event during break. And, boy, was this unplanned and … interesting.

My brother was sick at the beginning of break. Standard for my family. We have a tendency to get sick at the most inconvenient times – school breaks, vacations and holidays (we tend to take turns for the holidays because, you know, sharing is a good thing).

Anyways, my bro was sick. We still have a mercury thermometer because it’s more accurate. We used to have two, but one broke a year or so back. But that’s neither here nor there.

We broke another over spring break, so my mom and I got to clean it up. Good news? We didn’t get mercury poisoning. Bad news? It can take a long time to clean up.

Even though there were some surprises, my family also has some traditions for breaks. In particular, my sister and I always make some time for board games or puzzles together. This break – “Lord of the Rings” Risk.

We’ve played LotR Risk before, but it’s always interesting because my sister and I have very different (but also eerily similar) strategies. Some things are always the same when we play. I’m the black orcs. She’s the golden elves. I get Mordor. She gets Gondor.

And then we start actually playing the game. My brother gets really frustrated watching us play because our strategies are so different. My view is that it’s a game, it’s war and her little plastic elves are going down. She tends to favor the approach of loading up her territories, defend them and not really attack me. She’ll attack the neutral army but not necessarily mine.

I’d love to tell you how it ended, but we only got about halfway through the game. We were working on her strategy, so at the moment we’re pretty evenly matched. I suppose we’ll find out in May who wins unless the game gets cleaned up before then!

UPDATE 6/30: The game was cleaned up. There’s always other times to play Risk, though!