Game Review: Paris Pastries by Gamrana

Paris Pastries published by Gamrana

In Paris Pastries, players are bakers in early 1900s Paris, making delectable treats for customers. The game accommodates two to six players and plays in about half an hour.

The game comes with a rule book and four decks of cards: Tools, Ingredients, Recipes, and Customers. Each player starts with two Tool cards. These give special abilities to use either one time or throughout the game. For example, the Coal-Fired Deck Oven lets the player make two recipes on a single turn or the Brass Balance Scale doubles the points on the first pastry made (so obviously a one-time use Tool).

Some of Tool Cards

Five Recipe cards and five Customer cards are laid out between the players. These constitute the currently available recipes that players can create. Each customer craves one special ingredient, marked in the corners of their card and written on the bottom.

Recipe and Customer cards

Recipes require three to five ingredients. Some of the ingredients are more rare than others. The Ingredient deck also includes some Wild cards that can substitute for any other ingredient. Each recipe has a point value in the top left corner of the card and a bonus if any current customers match an ingredient for that recipe. 

Some of the Ingredient cards

On their turn, each player can do one of two actions:

• Collect Ingredients (The Baker's Gambit)--Draw ingredient cards one at a time. The player may stop at any time to take all the drawn cards. If a duplicate ingredient is drawn, the player busts and can only keep one of the ingredient cards (and the player cannot choose a Wild card as the one to keep).
• Bake a Recipe--Discard all the ingredients required for one of the five displayed recipes and take that card and any customers who match an ingredient for that recipe. Once this is done, the Recipe and Customer lines are replenished to their original five. The baker also draws two ingredient cards from the deck with no penalty if the two cards are the same ingredient.

Play proceeds continues clockwise until the ingredient deck runs out. The deck is reshuffled and used for a second time. Once that runs out, in a game of up to four players each player has a final turn to complete recipes. In five- or six-player games, the ingredient deck is reshuffled a second time and ends after that runs out.

At the end, players total up their scores for what they have baked using the number in the upper left and adding a bonus for any customer cards for that recipe. Include any end-game bonuses from Tool cards. If the score is a tie, the player with the most customers wins. If that is also a tie, the player with the most leftover ingredients wins. 

The game provides an interesting combination of pushing your luck and collecting sets. The Recipe cards have a variety of ingredients, making it possible for players to focus on one or two recipes as their targets. But the element of chance is very strong. A player could collect all but one ingredient and start pushing to get the last thing they need for a recipe. The harder they push, the more likely they are to bust. It's hard to see five cards go down to one. The luck factor can be frustrating, either busting early or not getting that one ingredient in a long line of cards.

The game has a couple of balance issues with the Tool cards. The cards that provide endless Puff Pastry or Pastry Cream or Butter provide a very large advantage to the player who has one or more of them. The advantages don't necessarily balance out. Also, the player with the endless Puff Pastry might collect the Puff Pastry Ingredient cards and then those cards are out of circulation for the other players in the reshuffle. We have thought about but haven't implemented any house rules on that.

The art is nice, evoking a Paris from more than a hundred years ago. The icons are clear and easy to understand. The theme is delightful. Who doesn't like French pastries? We certainly do and find the game mouth-watering, even if we don't win at the end.

Mildly recommended--this is a fun but very light game and has an issue or two.

Book Review: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 by G. Simone

The Uncanny X-Men Volume 1: Red Wave written by Gail Simone, art by David Marquez and Javier Garron

After the mutant island nation of Krakoa is wiped out, mutants are back on the run. Charles Xavier has also died, leaving no positive leadership and no group known as the X-Men. His Westchester school has fallen into the hands of a nefarious agency that turns it into a prison for mutants though the conversion is still in progress. Rogue and Gambit have married and are on a second honeymoon in Mexico when they get pulled back to the States to help out some fellow mutants in Louisiana. The call came from Jubilee who is tired of trying to hide her powers. Nightcrawler and Wolverine join up too. The informal team visits a mutant child dying in a hospital and then meets a quartet of mutants, one of whom may be the "Endling," the mutant who will see the last of the mutants die in a near future. Possibly by one of the many hunters sent by the nefarious agency that wants to put the four kids into custody.

The story shakes things up by having Rogue in charge of the team. She's okay as a leader but doesn't have presence that Professor X, Storm, or Cyclops has. She does okay but she does not do anything outstanding. Things move at a good pace but there is very little joy or excitement on display. Simone is a good writer but this is only average work. I don't think I will continue this series.

Mildly recommended.

Movie Review: Frankenstein (2025)

Frankenstein (2025) written and directed by Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro has had a life-long sympathy for monsters. Perhaps the most sympathetic monster in all of literature is Frankenstein's Monster, the creature crafted and then discarded by its creator. Long before zombie films presented humans as the real monsters, Mary Shelly gave us Doctor Frankenstein as the real monster, the modern Prometheus who is so obsessed with finding fire that he does not even think about what will happen once he has it.

The movie starts in the Arctic with a ship frozen into the ice as it tries to reach the North Pole. The crew are busy chopping away the ice when they spot an explosion off in the distance. They find a dogsled with the canines unharmed and a man with a shattered leg and other injuries. They bring him back to the boat as another being stalks out on the ice. The injured man is Doctor  Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaacs). The Creature (Jacob Elordi) attacks the ship, forcing the crew to fight back, though it is a loosing fight until they can submerge the Creature under the ice. Victor claims the Creature will just come back and relates his story to the Captain (Lars Mikkelsen), starting from his woeful youth as a medical protege to his domineering father (Charles Dance). Young Victor goes through a lot of hardships and develops a hardness and ambition that fuels the tragedy that unfolds.

The movie follows the general outline of the novel with some added background. Victor's childhood is marked with jealousy over his mother's affection and disdain for his father's excessive discipline. His obsession with creating life is admired (he has the attention to detail that del Toro himself has for filmmaking) and excessive (Victor doesn't care about the impact of his work on other people, not a trait del Toro shares). His minor successes with various body parts and partial cadavers spurs him on to the larger project of a whole person. But once he achieves his objective, he's at a loss and unsatisfied with all the other work he has to do, like caring for the Creature's needs. Victor has the Big Idea but not the Big Picture. His impatience with his creation (also with his collaborators, friends, and family) turns the situation blacker than it already is. In addition to giving the Creature life, Victor has given the Creature immortality, with healing so quick he is almost invulnerable. But the Creature has no satisfaction in life, especially with no community or companions. Victor refuses to create one, seeing it as a ploy to foster a new and horrible race. What the Creature wants is a genuine human need. But Victor does not see him (or anyone else it seems) as a genuine human. That attitude causes a lot of suffering, though there is a moment of redemption at the end that is touching. Del Toro manages to respect the source material and make his own creation.

The performances are good. Isaacs is compelling as the Doctor. Elordi captures the angst and frustration of the Creature in a very dynamic performance, the best of the movie. His immortality and super strength (at one point, he rocks the ship out of the ice!) are too over-the-top and are a bit distracting. The character of Elizabeth (Mia Goth) starts out interesting but quickly devolves into a romantic object for Victor, the Creature, and Victor's brother (Felix Kammerer). The problem is more with the script--they could have used less childhood narrative and given Elizabeth more. 

The production values are great. Del Toro always makes beautiful movies, even when they are dark or pessimistic. Everything from sets to makeup to visual effects looks wonderful.

Recommended--I still like the Karloff version best but this is probably my number two Frankenstein movie.

Strawbridge Shrine, Maryland

The Strawbridge Shrine was the home of Robert and Elizabeth Strawbridge. Robert was a Methodist preacher in his home country of Ireland. During his travels he met and eventually married Elizabeth Piper. They moved to America in the 1760s and established a Methodist following in the Colony of Maryland. 

Statues of Robert and Elizabeth, with their home in the background

They built a home and farm, but his calling was preaching and he developed an ever widening circuit, traveling as far as Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Strawbridge home

Like many colonial homes that could afford it, the Strawbridge home had a separate building for a kitchen to keep the heat out of the main house during the summertime. The kitchen also dealt with other domestic chores like ironing.

Kitchen and outbuilding

Barns

The site has a replica of a Methodist meeting house (called a "Methodist Class") and a bell from one of the historic Methodist churches.

Meeting house and bell

Robert died in 1781 of an unspecified illness and was eventually buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Baltimore. His work started the Methodist movement in what became the United States of America.

A gazebo further out on the land has statues that I assume are Robert and Elizabeth in action, riding the circuit of meeting houses and preaching a Biblical faith.

Gazebo with people in it?

The statues

When I visited, none of the buildings were open. They do have a museum and gift shop.

Book Review: American Indian Trickster Tales by R. Erdoes and A. Ortiz

American Indian Trickster Tales selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz

Most every culture has its folk tales and most every set of folk tales has at least one trickster character. Norse tales have the god Loki; West Africa has Anasi the Spider; China has the Monkey King. Native American tribes have a variety of characters who are tricksters, the most popular one being Coyote. There's also Rabbit and Raven that cause mischief, along with a few other minor characters. Often tricksters are the butts of jokes, when they are not as smart as they think they are (like Daffy Duck against Bugs Bunny). Typically they cleverly try to get out of work by taking advantage of others (like Tom Sawyer painting the fence). But sometimes the trickster helps out others. In this book, a lot of tricksters have semi-divine roles in creating or organizing the universe, aside from their usual shenanigans. 

Pop culture generally mistakes folk tales for children's tales. While a lot of these stories are appropriate for the pre-teen crowd, many of them are much more adult in nature. Tricksters, in addition to satisfying their appetites for food or power, often satisfy their appetite for sex. They are not above changing shapes or genders in order to get a beautiful person "under the buffalo blanket." The tales here have plenty of amorous comedy and drama with more detail than I would like my pre-teen to read. This volume has a lot of simple black drawings of characters and situations, some of which are PG-13. I was a bit surprised to see them but they fit with the stories being told.

The stories are charming and enjoyable. Sometimes the trickster gets away with his misbehavior, sometimes he gets caught and either embarrassed or punished (occasionally both). If you like folk tales or mythology, these are light and enchanting.

All the stories are one to four pages long, so the book can be a quick read or something to dip in and out of over a long period. They are entertaining and show the vast creativity of Native American tribes.

Mildly recommended.

Cute Kid Pix October 2025

More photos that didn't make their own post...

Our friends were out of the country for most of the month, so we wound up picking up their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) distributions from Gorman Farms in Columbia. It was quite a haul. We gave some of it away, but managed to eat or freeze the majority of it.

First haul of veg

The most creative use was finding a recipe for muffins that used the beets (not a popular vegetable in our house). The recipe called for grinding up oat flakes to make flour and adding chocolate chips to make it flavorful. The results were pretty good, though I was the only one to eat more than two (over several days, not at one sitting!).

Chocolate/beet muffins

The kids also did some cooking with the veg we got, but it might have only been the cilantro that they used in this dish.

Measuring soy sauce

Combining in the skillet

Serving from the skillet

While up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we visited Central Park and explored the Garden of Five Senses. The kids were a little bored but it was fun for the grownups. 

Sign of the garden

Sound of the garden

On the way home, I stopped off at Chickie's Rock for some geocaching and amazing views.

The Susquehanna River and me

Unobstructed river

More of the gorgeous view

Yet more view

I needed to get gas and the GPS pointed me to a nearby Turkey Hill gas station. Turkey Hill is also known for its ice cream. Low and behold! the gas station was right in front of their museum! The kids wish they had driven home with me that day.

Yeah, sure, I only bought gas here

The town had some interesting duplexes with completely separate sides!

Does Two-Face live here?

Our dance studio had their Costume Dance for Halloween. My wife and I went as galaxies!

We light up your life!

Shark and Greek god dance

My son went trick-or-treating as Iron Man and made a big haul with his friends.

What's with the dangling bits?

Book Review: Godzilla's 70th Anniversary by various artists

Godzilla's 70th Anniversary by various artists

This anthology pulls together thirteen different stories featuring the most famous kaiju of all time, Godzilla. The book was published in 2024, being the seventieth anniversary of the first Godzilla movie in 1954. The years have seen a lot of different depictions and interpretations of Godzilla. This book presents the same--a lot of different depictions and interpretations (though the stories were produced in the last decade).

As in most anthologies, the selection is hit-and-miss. In the miss category: one story tells of Godzilla in the American Old West; another of a daredevil mountain climber who takes fifteen hours (!) to scale Godzilla's back and take samples. On the hit side, a charming story shows a boy's vision of Godzilla and his enemies. And a serious story is told by a scientist who grew up a victim of Godzilla's wrath, inspiring him to study the "megafauna" in order to defeat it. His struggle to understand the monster is as much an intellectual challenge as a physical one. 

Overall, there's a lot more nonsense and brutal action than good entertainment here. I don't regret reading this but definitely won't be picking it up again.

Mildly recommended--this is really for Godzilla fans only.

Movie Review: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024)

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024) co-written and directed by Nick Park and co-directed by Merlin Crossingham

After capturing the notorious penguin criminal Feathers McGraw when he stole a diamond, Wallace and Gromit live a life of technological luxury, of a sort. Wallace invents their tech, a hobby that is a bit costly. Initially invented to help out Gromit in the garden, Wallace's new invention may get them out of debt. The invention is a robotic garden gnome who can do all sorts of gardening tasks, including ones Gromit does not want done. The gnome is voice activated, which is a problem for the speechless Gromit. A news crew comes and interviews Wallace, creating a plethora of customers who saw the gnome on TV. Also seeing the gnome on TV is the prisoner Feathers McGraw, who hatches a scheme to get revenge on the duo who put him in jail. With a little bit of hacking of the zoo's computers (where else would a penguin be incarcerated?), McGraw hacks the gnome and turns it to evil. Comic antics ensue.

The show is another round of the fun and creative whimsy viewers have come to expect from Nick Park's Aardman Animation. This movie isn't as good as Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but what could be? The movie is a lot of fun and well worth watching.

Recommended.

Pennsylvania Dancesport Challenge 2025

I went to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to participate in the Pennsylvania Dancesport Challenge. This one-day event features a lot of short heats in which participants show their skills in various American and International Ballroom dances. 

The event was at the Lancaster Convention Center, which has some amazing views of the city.

Lancaster seen from the east tower of the convention center

I competed in the standard American styles. For rhythm, that's rumba, cha cha, and swing. For smooth, that's waltz, tango, and foxtrot. I also danced some of the nightclub dances--salsa, bachata, and merengue. I danced with my lovely instructor and we had a great time.

Dancing smooth

A nice turn

Rumba turn

Swish!

We only have videos from the nightclub performances...

They gave out ribbons for participants. Some of the challenges involved dancing several different dances in a row and those had medals!

Smooth ribbons

Double medal in smooth

All the ribbons in one spot!

Seven medals!

My instructor was dancing with another student, so she was very busy throughout the day!

The other guy

The whole event was a lot of fun and made for a nice getaway.

Book Review: Love & Friendship by Allan Bloom

Love & Friendship by Allan Bloom

In a wide-ranging tome, Allan Bloom discusses the loss of the ancient concept of Eros in contemporary culture. The classical Greek concept of Eros is the love of the beautiful, a deceptively compact and enigmatic idea. It is not the love of the good or the true specifically, though it can encompass those indirectly or consequentially. Eros is a joy in the beautiful, especially the beauty of another person. This joy has an element of giving as well as of receiving. And it can be an intellectual or spiritual exchange as well as a physical one. 

The book starts with an in-depth reflection on love in Rousseau's Emile, where the concept shifts away from the intellectual basis found in the Greeks. Rousseau emphasizes feelings and emotions. The book inspires the birth of the Romantic movement and Bloom discusses the impact he has on works by Stendahl, Flaubert, Austin, and Tolstoy. Bloom's critique shows how they struggle with Rousseau's concepts with more or less satisfactory results. The whole Romantic project is the beginning of the end in Bloom's understanding, winding up in Freud's and Kinsey's more mechanical and self-focused understanding of love, which is reduced to sexuality.

Bloom then shifts to discussing love as found in Shakespeare, whom Bloom takes as having the greatest insights into human behavior and interactions in all of literature. The main focus is on five of the plays though he draws in references and examples from many of the other plays. His admiration for Shakespeare knows no bounds.

The book concludes with an analysis of Plato's Symposium, a work that describes a party where Socrates and a handful of other characters make speeches in praise of Eros/Love. Bloom dissects each individual speech in detail providing his own opinions on what Plato is presenting and his own insights on how it impacts subsequent thinkers like Nietzsche. 

The book is very intellectual and has a lot of insights. Unfortunately, Bloom's wide-ranging discussions of texts requires more than a passing familiarity with the books he discusses. Not having read Flaubert's Madame Bovary or Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, those sections had me at a loss when Bloom references characters without enough detail to follow his arguments. I found myself skipping over large portions of the text because I was getting nothing out of it. I found his discussion of Pride and Prejudice delightful and insightful but I've read it several times. The book depends in large part on the reader's familiarity with a lot of literature and philosophy, more than people typically have. It's as if he is standing on the shoulders of giants but hasn't lent a helping hand to his readers to also be on those shoulders.

Barely recommended--there's a lot of pre-requisite work needed to appreciate this.

Geocaching October 2025

The month started in "Shark Park" with a series of shark-themed caches hidden in Wheaton Regional Park. Gentle Giant, The Meg, Sharknado, and CandyGram all had their charms. Sharknado was the best, with an interesting puzzle and a great finale.

Gentle Giant

Lid of the cache

Reenacting a popular scene

The Meg!

An Historic Superstar is a cache dedicated to Benjamin Banneker, a free Black man who was a gentleman scientist and was part of the survey team that set the boundary stones for the District of Columbia. 

The other house on the Banneker property

I went to Mount Airy, Maryland, to find another of the GeoTour locations celebrating America's 250th year (next year) and found some extra caches too. 7 - Pine Grove Chapel is at the historic chapel that's still in use as a non-denominational chapel. During the Civil War, a New Jersey regiment used it as a barracks while guarding the National Road and the B&O railway. Also in town, I found Yellowrose70 Milestone 4000!!! Rock On!, Mount Airy Remembers, Odometer Math, Mount Airy P&G, When You Need a Simple Multi #5, and Carroll County Icon Challenge.

Pine Grove Chapel

I attended a community celebration, 2025 CCE -- Bowie State University, and also found Bowie - 125 Souvenir Challenge, Look Left and Right, Charlotte's Cache, and 4th Annual A5K Bonus. 

Charlotte's guardrail

On a drive up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I found 14 Catoctin Furnace- HCWHA US 250th GeoTour, 19 Smithsburg Heritage Walk - HCWHA US 250th GeoTour, and Hammonds Rock Earthcache. So it filled more of the history tour and I found an old earthcache to fill a calendar need. The drive up the hill was quiet perilous--an unpaved road with no maintenance. Driving down was even worse!

Catoctin Furnace

The rocks were nice when I got there!

The old "chip on my shoulder" shot

In Lancaster, I found some Adventure Labs to finish a souvenir and then got Time Capsule, my 2100th cache! It was just outside Saint Mary's Catholic Church.

Found at night!

The next day we went to Central Park (which is not in the center of the city) and found Garden of Five Senses and Woodsy Walk. 

Sign for the Garden

One of the Hearing features

Devil's Walking Stick--probably don't touch this thorn-grower

On the way back home I found Chickie's Rock Overlook and Chickie's Rock Overlook Virtual Challenge. I also signed the Zero to Ten Challenge (which requires caches with the words for numbers 1 through 10 in the title), which I am not qualified for yet.

On Chickie's Rock

Unobstructed view of Susquehanna River

Back home I attended the Monday Morning coffee group and a Cache In/Trash Out event. I made the kids come with me for the CITO so they could get service hours for scouts and school.

Strawbridge House in Maryland is the First Home of American Methodism, the Robert Strawbridge House. Strawbridge moved from Ireland to Maryland and established a Methodist meeting house in the outskirts of Maryland in 1761. The site has a lot of buildings recreating the original farm and church buildings. I came here mostly for 6 Strawbridge Shrine - HCWHA US 250th GeoTour and picked up the other two caches here.

Robert Strawbridge Statue

Strawbridge House

While in the area, I also found Libertytown Watershed and 8 Old Nat'l Pike Park - HCWHA US 250th GeoTour and National Road Milestone 35. 

At the watershed

Mile marker!

Another day I avenged a DNF at Prince of Peace Labyrinth where I realized my GPS must have been a little off the previous day. While in the neighborhood, I solved the mystery cache at  P.O. Box - Crofton. and found Crickets. A nearby cache had muggles around it so I will have to come back to the area in due course.

My wife and I went on a driving date, mostly to get Calvert County off my list of Maryland Counties. We found a whole slew of caches there, mostly in the (commercial) town center: Obligatory Wally World Cache, Geocaching Crossword, Greene Apple, Directionally Challenged, Park & Hide, It's Not Math, It's Just Numbers, A Break from Fortnite, Small Hands Required, I Found It Guys, Oh Wait..., and My Precious. 

A cool container

Yes green, no apple

We saw this building and wondered where the stairs to the front door went

After another Monday Coffee meetup, I found Big Pine #2 and Guardrail Goblin #31: Bugbear. 

I finished out the month with some finds on Halloween: Six Feet Under, GeoROCK402, Cache of Horrors 2020 - The Resurrection, and Rockin' the Jasmer Challenge. 

This find was rock hard!

Cache of Horrors on Halloween!

The month ends with 66 finds and a grand total of 2140.