June Grand Gaming Melee

Enjoy a hearty breakfast on the first day of June so you’ll have plenty of energy to participate in the Grand Gaming Melee! It doesn’t matter if your cereal of choice is made from marshmallows, doughnuts, bacon, or ice cream, or even if it contains enough fiber to build a rope bridge across the Potomac. In the latter case, however, you should be sure to check the location of the restrooms before you sit down to play. Maybe eggs or a nice bowl of fruit would be a better choice.

As always, we’ll have board games, card games, dice games, tile games, and just about every other kind of game that can be played on a tabletop. Bring some of your favorites, or come without games and play some that others will bring. There’ll be a wide variety available suited both to experienced players and to beginners. If you see a new one you want to try, there will be plenty of people eager to teach you.

You’ll need some nourishment to sustain you through a full day of gaming, so please bring something delicious to share. Please do not bring any of the products displayed in the image above. Yes, they’re real, with some still available on supermarket shelves, some discontinued, and some never intended for public sale but somehow escaped from the lab on their own. Instead, cookies, crackers, and pretzels are popular options, as are sodas and juices. Some people bring doughnuts, cupcakes, or other substantial sweets (but not in breakfast cereal form); these are always appreciated and disappear quickly. Healthy snacks of vegetables and fruit are welcomed by people who like to snack on vegetables and fruit, and the people who like them are often the same people who bring them.

AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT NOTE: While the library offers us open arms, it does not offer us an open refrigerator. Due to remodeling in the building, we no longer have access to a kitchen. If you bring any drinks or foods that should remain chilled, you must bring a cooler for them. Your host – as always – will bring a couple of coolers filled with freshly brewed iced tea and excellent store-bought lemonade. Undoubtedly there will be demand for more drinks than he can carry, so a few attendees should heed the call of the thirsty. You may want to coordinate such an effort with your fellow players to supply the maximum variety of beverages with a minimum of containers; feel free to post comments on this page for this purpose. Food and drink will be deployed on the stage at the front of the auditorium to separate it from the playing area.

Official start time is 10:30am, but you may arrive as early as 10:00am to help with setup. Cleanup begins around 4:00pm (or whenever you decide that you can’t squeeze in one more game before the end of the event). The librarians appreciate our vacating the auditorium by 4:30pm, and by “appreciate” they mean that our compliance determines whether we’ll be invited back for another Grand Gaming Melee.

Arlington Central cleanup instructions:

• Place all trash in the bins provided. Make sure that no scraps of paper, cardboard, or food remain on the floor.
• Leave the tables and chairs where you used them. The next group can deal with setup the same way we did.