Dragon's Weblog - DragonsHobbies.com

Thursday 9/18/2003 22:00

I had another great day playing games and visiting with friends. Rabbi and Rivkah came over. We had lunch together at Golden Corral - not my favorite place, but they have a special on the buffet sometimes and it seemed like a good deal. Rabbi gave me a present while we were at the restaurant, on top of buying lunch. It's a metal mezuzah to hang on the doorpost. After lunch we came back to our home and (after some more biblical discussions) we played a couple games.

Carcassonne was first on the list. I finished reading the rules early this morning and this was our first chance to play the game. I think El Grande is the most similar to it… at least of the games that I've played. It's still quite a bit different, but it's the way scoring is done in Carcassonne reminds me of El Grande.

Next we played Bang! It took a while to explain the rules, which were referred back to quite a bit during the game, and that pushed the amount of time spent on the game well over an hour. In addition to pauses for reading about cards, a cranky baby girl also interrupted us. It was after her bedtime and she just was not happy, no matter what. She normally goes to bed around 19:00 and she usually goes to sleep right away, but this time she wouldn't fall asleep. Beth, Grandma, and I took turns comforting her in the bedroom while the others played.

Beth was selected as the Sheriff. Around the table - I was the Renegade, Rabbi was an Outlaw, Rivkah was the Deputy, and Beth's mom was an Outlaw. Of course, all the roles were secret except Beth as the Sheriff. Rabbi got a better gun right away and started shooting Beth, but it seemed obvious what his role was. Rivkah had several duels with Beth's mom, eventually killing her. I was targeting Rabbi for most of the game, until I picked up a longer-range weapon and occasionally took a shot at Rivkah. Beth's mom mostly fought off Rivkah but eventually took a shot at Beth. After Beth's mom (the first outlaw) was killed, Rabbi (the second outlaw) was next - eliminated by me. Beth still didn't know who was the Deputy and who was the Renegade and I managed to keep the pressure off myself (at least from Beth) by appearing to help her kill the "other bad guy". Beth found out that the Deputy didn't have to survive in order for her to win, so she worked on getting both Rivkah and me down to a minimal number of bullets (life). Not wanting to blow my cover without having the power to back it up, I worked on eliminating Rivkah also. When Rivkah and I both had one bullet left, Rivkah stole an "Indians!" card from me and played it. I was dead. The Sheriff and Deputy won!

We all thanked each other for the good times. It's great to have friends that play games. I wish we had time to do this more often.

Wednesday 9/17/2003 05:50

I had a great birthday thanks to my family, friends, co-workers, and other people that just took the time out to make me feel special. I also got some neat gifts and cards.

All together I got 3 games, a Leatherman-style utility knife, a paint kit and a few other little things. Oh… and I can't forget my Sound Blaster MP3+ System (which Beth gave to me two or three weeks ago). BattleBall, Bang!, and Carcassonne are the three games that I got.

I got a chance to play Bang! with the guys at work during a break. It was pretty cool. It took a little bit to understand the rules and explain the rules; even then we messed up some during the game.

Today, after I get some sleep, I'll be installing some more of the wood tiles. I'd like to have a majority of the job done so that we can move the furniture and have the house presentable on Thursday afternoon.

Ken is finally ready to get back into StarCraft. He's been busy with school and didn't have much time before so we took a break for a couple months. I'm excited to be able to get back into the game. Thursday morning around 08:30 we should be getting into our first game back from the sabbatical.

Tuesday 9/16/2003 02:05

Today is my birthday. Am I excited? Sure... in a sense. I'm actually looking forward to Thursday more though. That the day that we're having guests over for games.

Beth gave away more clues about my birthday gifts. Note the "s" there. I know that she has at least two things to give me, and I know that one is a game of some sort because she said she wanted to play it with me first as opposed to me playing it with friends first. I'm not sure what it would be though - she's done very well this year at withholding clues.

My web design abilities are now being displayed in a professional setting. We have a small website for our Network Operations Center which I created by request of our new department manager. He's happy with what I've done so far and I've gotten praise from people outside of our department also. Maybe that's another step toward me getting paid to design pages.

Monday 9/15/2003 05:25

Only one more day until my birthday; Beth's mom has been reminding me that this is the last time that I'll be able to say I'm 26 - like that's of much importance to me. Most of the past year I couldn't remember how old I was without subtracting the year I was born from the current year. I knew roughly how old I was - "26 or 27 I think" - and that was good enough for me. I've passed all the important milestones now anyway. At least, I think 25 is the last one where anything changes. That's when the car insurance rates are supposed to go down. Hmm... That gets me thinking... I wonder when health insurance rates jump up?

Beth will be working for only two more weeks before she's taking leave for the pregnancy. She'll be able to spend time at home with our baby girl and prepare for the new baby boy. (I'm still counting on having a baby boy. Beth is too. We're both mentally prepared for having a boy.)

As the date closes in, I wonder if I will ever get my last name changed. Beth wants to have a permanent family name by the time the new baby is born, so I maybe I'll never change it. Beth is opposed to all the names that I have suggested and I'm not really interested in what she's offered in return. On top of opposition from her, it seems that I have to justify my action with everyone else in the family too. It's not going to happen. My reasons are my own. I don't feel like explaining anything. It's my name. Beth has it because she married me and in a sense, she's choosing to keep that name. I, on the other hand, was stuck with it from birth, just like most people. Well... I wasn't planning on making such a big issue of it in this journal entry so I'll move on.

Changes to my website have been slow recently. I have great plans for what I want to do, but I haven't had the time to implement them. I've actually written two game reviews to put up, but I haven't even gotten around to that. Well... maybe it was only one and a half reviews. I know I got one done for 13 Dead End Drive, but since I have to create a new page for that alone (since I don't have any other games reviewed that start with a number) I'll also have to change the indexing menu for the games at the same time. Plus, I was planning to use that opportunity to develop the new page layout at the same time. I guess if I have time between installing tile, that's what I need to get chopping on.

Sunday 9/14/2003 05:45

I just found out that all the email that I've sent out over the past two weeks has not gotten to the intended recipients because of the mail server for my website. This is supposed to be corrected now. It's strange that I was still able to receive mail but it wasn't getting sent out. I wonder if the messages that I wrote before will be sent now or if they are lost.

I started installing the Parquet Wood Flooring on Thursday. That's been quite a chore. Beth was thinking that she'd be able to do it herself, but I really have to question that considering how far along in pregnancy that she is. It's some hard work for someone who isn't used to physical labor.

Beth and I finally arrived early for our birth class on Friday. I don't think we've arrived early (or even on time) since the first class that we went to. Since we got there a few minutes early we talked with Oliver, one of our Bradley Method instructors (or maybe Jenn is the only instructor and he assists her... I'm not sure), about my website, which he had apparently visited during the week. Oliver seemed interested in the "obscure" games that I wrote about on the site and wondered if I also had an interest in RPGs. "Yes. I've played some in the past." Then we got into a discussion about our experiences with D&D (which was known as AD&D back when we started playing it). It was nice to see Oliver open up more and I was glad we had a chance to talk some more. Of course, the goal of the class is to learn about childbirth, not meeting people for game night, so our chat was brief and then we moved on to the important stuff.

I've been noticing sorrow in our little girl's eyes some days when I leave for work. I feel bad that I have to leave her at times when she obviously wants to see me. She's normally such a cheerful baby, except of course when she's hungry, or not feeling well. I'll be happy when Beth is home and able to spend time with her.

I got Pathfinder in the mail yesterday. It's an old Milton Bradley game from the 1970's - something that I played with as a child. The basic idea of the game is that each player (Pathfinder being a 2-player game) builds a hidden maze for his or her opponent to go through. A pawn marking the end point is placed on that hidden maze and then the game play proceeds much like Battleship, except instead of launching torpedoes, you're maneuvering through your opponents maze trying to avoid the hitting walls. The rules aren't very difficult to understand, and the game play is pretty quick. After setting up our initial grids, Beth and I faced off. Despite my previous experience with the game I lost, but maybe that's because I haven't played in about 20 years.