Rob

Despite the fact that I am a 23-year-old college graduate, I can't deny the fact I still possess a boyish love of games. Throughout my undergraduate career, my friends and I tore through just about every board and card game in the book during our weekly family game night (which we lovingly abbreviated to FGN) - Monopoly, Sorry, Uno, Risk, The Game of Life, Scrabble, Blockus and Taboo among many more. We even developed our own official/unofficial FGN rulebook in order to settle the inevitable disputes that would arise among our extremely competitive group of friends.

I bring up this particular aspect of my life because I recently got together with my remaining group of college friends to breathe some new life into the old FGN. We dusted off the Monopoly board and instantly it was like a junior year Wednesday night all over again. We started snatching up properties like it was going out of style.

I have to say, even though it wasn't the exact same crew that we had back in the day, it was great to reconnect in the name of  family game night. Before long, the same semi-good natured arguments had broken out, the old jokes were being relived (like when my friend Carlo famously threw Taboo across the room and stormed out of the apartment) and the refreshments were flowing free.

In fact, one of the most memorable aspects that reappeared during our update on FGN was brewing lots and lots of coffee. Back in college, family game night often crossed the midnight mark into the wee hours of the morning, so we made sure to keep our Keurig® brewer handy at all times. This time was no different - I was prepared with several Green Mountain Coffee® K-Cup® packs of Dark Magic® Extra Bold, French Roast and Colombian Fair Trade Select so that we could all get our favorite caffeine fixes.

And wouldn't you know, the rebirth of FGN once again crossed into familiar late night territory. After all, as anyone who has ever played Monopoly knows, it's not a game that goes quickly or easily - everyone was making deals and trades that prolonged the outcome well into the evening. Pretty soon, we had completely abandoned our other drinks in favor of cup after cup of coffee. Tired, yet still wired, we kept FGN going until my girlfriend Lena had emerged victorious - at 3:30 a.m. It was just like old times.