I went “back home” to visit my parents with Johanna. Games couldn’t be avoided, especially since I had given Villa Paletti to my mother as a Christmas present. It turned out to be a good gift — which was expected, since she has always enjoyed Timpuri, a Finnish variant of Jenga.

Well, we played a few games, me, Johanna, my mother and Ismo. It was fun, even though I did collapse the tower in two games out of three. Still, I enjoyed it and it’s clear to see the Spiel des Jahres award was well deserved. I was also happy to hear they had played few games by themselves, too.

On the rare video game front, we had some interesting moments with Playstation, playing Driver 2 and some version of Crash Bandicoot. Interesting, yet frustrating — starting all over after each mistake gets very boring very soon. Driver 2 was sort of silly for other reasons. I’d rather play board games, thank you. <-- Later, me and Johanna had great fun with a real classic game, Scrabble. It’s a decent game, but we added a twist that made it funnier: using words you wouldn’t use when playing with your parents gave double points. Unfortunately, most of the words were of the ordinary, nice kind. However, some bonus points were scored with obscenities. I think each of us got two or three of them. It’s a great way to spice up the old classic!