The Littlest SATLOF of All

One of the nearest and dearest traditions my friends and I have had since college has been SATLOF.   The Saturday After Thanksgiving Left Over Feast is an excuse to use up Thanksgiving leftover, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and play games   Over the past 20+ years they have been raucous times with full houses and sometimes resulted in friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend showing up without warning.  

As we all got older, go married, had kids, and moved further away, the soirees got smaller (both in general crowd and size of certain attendees).  Since COVID, it's been more intimate affairs, with a mile-long invite list yet only a handful even making an appearance.  I missed 2020 due to actively suffering from COVID, I think we were all under the weather for 2021, and last year, I made the triumphant return with my daughters... to announce my pending divorce.  

SATLOF also is normally a full-day affair for me, as I take time to visit my Mom in Easton, before venturing out to past Allentown for Steve and Angi's house for the festivities.  This year, things were complicated by  Maja having a scrimmage forty minutes north of home in the morning, then Millie having your own practice 1-3, then wishing to stay home for the local semi-pro basketball team's game that night.  In a world where co-parenting is a thing, I grabbed Maja off the the bus, got her home to change, then flew down to Easton, to visit my mom, and my sister and brother-in-law, take care of all the leaves in the yard in a yeoman two-hour effort, then dash out to SATLOF.  Maja was intent on getting to play Chinese Checkers with people that day, so we corralled the rest of my family as I broke out the new leaf blower I bought my mother and got everything into a giant pile.   Considering my mother hasn't played any games outside of pick-up traditional card games (re: playing cards), this might have been the first time she played something in a social setting since the early 90s... maybe earlier.  Maja certainly created a SATLOF miracle.  

Worried about missing out the fun, we race to Steve and Angi's only to find... one extra person, and that was one of the other parents from the Boy Scout troop Steve runs.  The good news was she was awesome and we all ate food, told stories, and had to decide on games for four adults, one teenager and three kids under 8.  

The final verdict: Formula D with just basic wear points.  It was nice to see another adult actively guiding kids through games (and knowing Steve, I wasn't surprised).   Considering most of the adults ended up in cataclysmic crashes into the grandstands, it was a fun time.  

When the kids departed to do kid stuff, Steve cajoled us into playing Bristol  1350, a happy little game about the Black Death.  It took a little time to grasp the mechanics, but in the end it was a mad dash to the gates of town with rat-filled apple carts.  Maja and I ended up winning as another cart left the city at the same time, but their folks were already infected.  

The bad news:  The number of people who apparently RSVP'd and no-showed was disconcerting.   

The good news:  The quality of alcohol continues to improve, and our planning for building gamers continues to thrive.