We had some friends over last Friday for pizza and games. Dubbs, her husband Nate, and Ombusdsman all joined me and Mer for some friendly competition. We had homemade pepperoni pizza, ham pizza, and a ham and cheese calzone. Mer was kind and brought home that rarest of drink treats, Sprite. Nate brought over some Heathbar-esque ice cream and fudgecicles. Ombudsman brought over fun-sized candy bars. Needless to say, I ate WAY too much.

We started the evening off with a game of Outwageus, a trivia game with a twist. You get money for answering questions correctly, but your opponents bet on whether they think you will get the question right or not. You can be lousy at trivia and still be very competitive in this game. I was not competitive this game; it came down to a tight race between Dubbs, Ombudsman, and Meredith (who was sunk by a question about the name of the stream at the Augusta National Golf Course). Ombudsman finally won – not too bad for the CVCA Academic Challenge coach.

We moved on to Finish Lines, a game where you finish the famous quote or song lyric. This was mostly fought between Dubbs and Ombudsman (with a good showing by Meredith, who kept getting just one word wrong in most of her quotes). Dubbs was declared the winner when she had 9 out of 11 tiles needed to win the game, so that we could move on to playing Wii sports.

Nate crushed everyone he played at tennis. This was the first time we had played someone who actually plays tennis, and the spins and velocity that Nate got on the ball were dizzying. I thought I might have a shot at playing him well because I can get a fast serve going 50-75% of the time, but Nate had no trouble with the fast serve. I got crushed. The only way to stop the Nate-Juggernaut was for Mer and Ombudsman to play Nate and Dubbs in doubles. The extra person helped return just enough of Nate’s shots to win the match.

That moved things to the amusing part of the Wii evening. Nate and Ombudsman had it out for each other in Wiii Boxing. They went almost all three rounds. Mer quickly pointed out that while the game on the screen was interesting, the real fun was watching Nate and Ombudsman. Although I think Ombudsman was ahead in the score late into the third (and last) round, Nate managed a knockout with just seconds left.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening.