Alright, Gamers! It’s time to dust off the Monopoly, Sorry!, and Cranium boards and bring your games down to the Greenfield Presbyterian Church (3929 Coleman Street, 2 blocks off Greenfield Ave at Coleman and Alger) on Saturday, February 6th at 7:30pm for another Greenfield Game Night! If you enjoy boardgames or even just think you might enjoy boardgames, you should come to the second Game Night! Try out different and varied boardgames, bring a favorite boardgame to share, or just come and socialize with your neighbors. If you’ve been following the Connect Greenfield Blog, you know that our resident Game Master, Shawn, can and will introduce us to some crazy new games!

What: Greenfield Game Night
Where: Greenfield Presbyterian Church (3929 Coleman Street, 2 blocks off Greenfield Ave at Coleman and Alger)
When: 7:30 PM, Saturday, Feb. 6

A few Greenfielders who love LOST are interested in getting together with other neighbors to watch the show and theorize about what it all means! If you’re interested, it will start at 7:45 PM and you’re asked to bring a snack. For more details, contact Maria: ma.weimer1 [at] gmail [dot] com, replacing the words with their proper symbols.

The Penn’s Corner CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) sign up is open! Fresh fruit, vegetables, and farm products are right around the corner.  Sign up for an 8, 24, or 32 week CSA season and take advantage of the convenient Greenfield pick-up location. While many CSAs and farmer’s markets don’t begin until May or June, Penn’s Corner CSA begins the middle of April and continues into November.   Click the following link to learn more about membership: 2010 CSA Membership Sign-Up

Penn’s Corner delivers weekly boxes of farm fresh produce to neighborhoods all around Pittsburgh. With a CSA membership, you will also receive a weekly e-newsletter with recipes, cooking information, and a list of what will be in the box that coming week.  The Greenfield CSA delivery is on Tuesday afternoons starting in April.  Each box will have between 8-10+ items a week. Almost every week will include seasonal fruit and another non-vegetable items such as gourmet mushrooms, wild honey, free-range eggs, local cheese, or fresh pasta.

Penn’s Corner also holds monthly Farm Stand sales throughout the year.  These sales are open to CSA members and non-members alike.  Each month a product list is generated based on what our farms have available that month.  Customers pre-order items by email, and orders are taken on a first come, first served basis.  Orders are then picked up at the Farm Stand location in Squirrel Hill on the designated day.

Products that are likely to be included in our February Farm Stand include locally raised meats, honey, shallots, fresh pastas, apples, greens, herbs, winter squash that has been processed for baking, and fresh breads.  The product list is sent out to people on the mailing list so if you would like to get information about when Farm Stands are scheduled or what items are available each month, visit Penn’s Corner’s website and sign up to be on their general mailing list.

Visit the website at www.pennscorner.com or contact Karlin Lamberto at 412-586-7577 with any questions.

The sign is gone and the timbers deteriorating.  The Greenfield Organization and Connect Greenfield are teaming up to address the deteriorated condition of one of Greenfield’s most prominent portals -  the Welcome to Greenfield sign and landscaped median located on the Greenfield end of the Greenfield Bridge at Beechwood Boulevard and Ronald Street.

The space was professionally designed in the 1980s as part of a neighborhood-wide PR effort to raise the image and profile of Greenfield and market the neighborhood to passing commuters.  It was designed by GWSM, a Greenfield landscaping design firm.  The sign was made by neighborhood woodworkers.  The landscaping was installed by Kimicata, a Greenfield landscaping firm, and funded by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.  Since its installation, Kimicata has been maintaining the landscaping.  Twenty years later, time, weather and passing traffic have taken a toll on the sign and plantings.

In response, a core group of community volunteers have agreed to help lead and facilitate the process by which the triangular median space will be updated and reshaped as a welcoming, sustainable portal for the neighborhood.  An online community survey has been developed to solicit community input as to the proper design principles and design features to be included in the updated portal.  The survey can be accessed here.  The results will be discussed at a community meeting in late February.  Stay tuned.

If you have comments or suggestions you’d like to share outside the survey, you can e-mail them to Patrick Hassett at hassettpgh [at] aol [dot] com, replacing the words with their proper symbols.

Here’s some fun news from our neighborhood: Ten-year-old Greenfielder Joseph Vresilovic was Honorary Co-Captain for the Steelers game against the Packers last month.  He got to attend a pre-game brunch, meet several of the players, go out on the field to witness the coin toss, watch the game from great seats, and bring home a great bag of Steelers paraphernalia and even more special memories.

What a great day for Joseph! Thanks to Nancy D. for sending the news along. If you have any neighborhood news that you’d like posted on the Connect Greenfield blog, email us: info (at) connectgreenfield (dot) com, replacing the words with their proper symbols.

Check out Big Jim’s on Guy’s Diners, Drive-ins and Dives!

Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest is holding a course for any residents who are interested in becoming Tree Tenders. Currently, over 600 Pittsburghers serve as Tree Tenders who care for young city trees in a great effort to green our city.

From a FPUF email:

Become a Tree Tender in 2010!

Join over 600 Residents Greening Pittsburgh, One Tree at a Time

Friends announces the Tree Tender Course Schedule for 2010!  This year we are offering 6 courses throughout the city, including 2 day-long courses by popular demand.  Join us to learn more about tree biology, growth, planting, pruning, and care.  Tree Tenders are invited to join Friends for Pruning Parties and other workshops–several of which will be new this year.

Greenfield: Tuesdays May 11, 18, & 25 @ the CitiParks Magee Senior Center, 745 Greenfield Ave, Greenfield

You can register for the course and see other available times and locations for the course here. Happy greening!

Welcome to Part 2 of the 2 Part Holiday Game Recap!

Another awesome game I had played before but only picked up over the holiday is Bananagrams. I was first introduced to it by my cousin and his (then) fiancee. They loved it so much they gave it as gifts to all their wedding party.

A fairly new game, Bananagrams came out in 2006, and it’s usually billed as “Scrabble without the board.” That is a fairly accurate description, however there is one other large, very large, difference between Bananagrams and Scrabble. Bananagrams is real-time, where as Scrabble is turn based.

What does that mean exactly? Well, in Scrabble, you’re using letters to build a cross-word like structure on a single board, taking turns with the other players to place words. In Bananagrams, you each have your own crossword, that you can rearrange at any time and build as fast as you can.

Let’s go into more detail. All players take a number of letters when the game starts, and the remaining letters are left in the center. You all start making your crosswords at the same time. When you’ve used up all your letters, you shout “Peel!” and you take another letter from the center, and everyone else *must* also take a letter. Then, when you’ve assimilated that letter, you shout “Peel!” again, and the process continues. When there aren’t enough letters left in the middle for everyone to take one, instead of shouting “Peel!” you shout “Bananas!” and you win.

If you are ever stuck with a letter you don’t want, like a Q with no U or a Z or something, you can shout “Dump!” and exchange the troublesome letter, face down, for three new letters. The game is interesting because you’ll get someone on a roll, whose built a nice robust crossword, and then they can find easy places to put the next few peels they get, they’re on a roll. Everyone else is unhappy about the amount of letters they have to take, but then the peeler hits a J or an X or something and is stymied. Meanwhile, the extra letters actually helped someone else, and they complete their crossword and shout “Peel!” themselves.

The pacing is really good, because in the beginning, you have a whole lot of letters and you build words quickly. However, later in the game, you become hesitant to destroy what you’ve already created, so you sit there and try to work those new couple letters into the existing structure in vain. What you should really do is consider reworking or maybe even starting over, concentrating on building longer words that will support smaller quicker words later on.

An amazingly simple and versatile game, Bananagrams is quick to learn, and scales from 2 players to 8 players easily. The most I played with was 11, and that was stretching it. I feel 3-7 is the sweet spot. The “hands” tend to go pretty quickly if you have more people and the game feels very different when you play with 3 versus when you play with 7. It’s really quite enjoyable. Plus, the game comes in a fun cloth banana package, so it’s got that going for it too.

Til next time, have fun out there!

Game Info
Name: Bananagrams
Ages: 7+
Players: 1-8
Playing time: 15 minutes
Price: $15
Designer: Abe and Rena Nathanson
Publisher: Bananagrams / Kosmos
First Published: 2006

Links: Bananagrams

Also — have you just played a cool game, or heard about a neat game?
Tell me about it! Email Shawn at greenfieldgamenight AT gmail DOT com. (Replace AT and DOT with their symbols.)

Welcome to Part 1 of the 2 Part Holiday Game Recap!

Set is a compact card game that I have been playing for a couple years now, but never actually owned. This year’s office gift exchange yielded my very own copy of Set, huzzah!

Originally published in 1988, Set has stood the test of time very well. It continues to be a very fun and intriguing game. The concept is simple. Twelve cards are placed on the table and players look at them until someone finds a set, then they yell “Set!” and pick up the cards. Three more cards are dealt and play continues.

“What is a set?”, you ask. Well, therein lies the game play. You see, each card in the deck contains 1, 2, or 3 shapes. There are 3 types of shapes, 3 colors, and 3 shadings (outline only, semi-shaded, and totally filled in). Thus you have four attributes: number, shape, color, and shading. A set is a group of three cards whose attributes are either all the same or all different.

“What?!” you ask. Think of it this way: if all three cards have the same number of objects, but different shapes, shadings, and colors, then they’re a set. If two cards have a common attribute that is not shared by the third, they are not a set.

I know it sounds confusing, but the game does a really good of introducing you to the concept. It is packaged such that all the solid shaded cards are together and you can play a practice hand where you only use solid shaded cards, effectively eliminating one of the attributes. Then, when you feel ready, you can add the other shadings in and play the full game.

What ends up happening is everyone is staring at a group of cards, intently. All of a sudden someone yells “Set!” and then proves to the others playing it is, indeed a set, then they take those cards and deal three new ones. Usually there will be a flurry of activity at the beginning as people sweep up the “easy to see” sets, then things get more quiet and everyone analyzes the field. Every Set you get is worth a point. If you cry Set on a non-set, then you lose a point. I usually play so that you can’t have negative points. : )

If there is ever a field where no Set is found, and all players agree on that, then 3 more cards are dealt and play continues. When the deck is gone, people tally up their points and a winner is crowned!

Set is great because it is easy to travel with, expands from 2 to 8 or more players easily, and has a broad age range. It can be a little frustrating for the real young kids, but I find it depends a lot. I think an ages 6/8 and up rating is not out of the question. The box is comes on has all kinds of Sets depicted on the outside to help teach people what a Set is and what a Set isn’t.

It’s also very interesting at the end of the game to look at the Sets people have gotten. I tend to look for Sets with a 1, 2, 3 pattern or where all attributes are different. Some people really concentrate on Shading, and some on Color… it’s kind of fun to analyze that aspect of the game. What kind of Set player are you?

Til next time, have fun out there!

Game Info
Name: Set
Ages: 7+
Players: 1-8ish
Playing time: ~30 minutes
Price: $10
Designer: Marsha J. Falco
Publisher: Ravensburger or Set Enterprises, Inc.
First Published: 1988

Links: http://www.setgame.com

Also — have you just played a cool game, or heard about a neat game?
Tell me about it! Email Shawn at greenfieldgamenight AT gmail DOT com. (Replace AT and DOT with their symbols.)

And you’re invited!

The Goodie Truck is struggling a little and needs a new engine, so they’re throwing a holiday party/fundraiser. It will be this Saturday, December 12, in the Run at 300 Saline Street from 9 PM - 1 AM. Par-tay!

It costs $10, which buys you beer, goodies, gifts, and some awesome dancing! All proceeds go to buying the truck a new engine so they can continue roaming the streets of Pittsburgh and bringing cheer to anyone who needs a really delicious snack.

Any questions, email the Goodie Truck at thegoodietruck AT gmail DOT com.