This is How I Roll

If you've been keeping up with my game playing you'll know that I've gone solo recently with Robin busy writing articles, crafting, and ignoring me (I'm just kidding!).  To ease the pain of withdrawal, I decided I'd better start playing games that were meant to be played by only one person and then went about trying to locate a few of those games.

So, if you're keeping a tally, you'll know that I first started with the programmed adventures in the Legends of the Ancient World (LAW) series, a quick and simple fanatsy RPG.  Great little system, and a lot of fun which allows me an RPG fix that has been missing for quite some time.

Last night, in about 90 minutes, I played a game of B-17: Queen of the Skies.  This game allows you to fly a B-17, known as a Flying Fortress, on bombing missions in Europe during World War II.  You get to man the plane with a crew, give it a name, and then--as with everything in the game--a die roll determines your target.  My target was St. Omer, France, and an airfield used by the Germans.

Going out to your target there is a probability that waves of German fighters will attack.  You may or may not have Allied fighter cover.  You might get shot at, take damage, have crew members get wounded or even die.  Then, when you reach your target, you face anti-aircraft fire (or flak), and if your plane survives you get to drop your payload of bombs.  Once you drop your bombs you then have to turn around and head back to England, facing the same kinds of attacks you met on your way to the target.

I survived my first mission, plane and crew intact, though we did take some flak over St. Omer.  My fighter support chased off any would-be German air attacks.  My bombing percentage was 30%, which is consdiered "good" by all accounts.  You can play a campaign game where you attempt 25 missions.  I guess I've started one.

I named my plane "Hell's Angel" (though I did not know at the time that the 303rd Bomb Group was nicknamed "Hell's Angels" during the war), and after looking around on the web I found a piece of "nose art" for my plane.  Each plane had a drawing on the side of its nose which represented the name of the plane or its crew or something familiar from home.  Mine represents the plane's name:


(The picture is actually part of a much bigger image designed by Flightline Fabrications.  If Interested, click here to see the bigger picture.)

I'll keep you posted as to missions and the like.
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Still working on my programmed adventure for LAW.  I have the basic plot/quest outlined in my head.  I have to get it to paper!
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Matt is over tonight and we get to play 4th edition D&D!  Yay!  Tomorrow, Jessie will be here and a little game we call Descent will hit the table.

I was at mom and dad's yesterday.  I need to finish a painting job I started two summers ago in the storage room in the basement.  Stuff certainly piled up in the ensuing years!  Did a lot of rearranging.  Took eight hours to move stuff, reorganize.

Brought a few things home, too.  A few paperbacks, some of my old Army fatigues, my old backpack.  I even found a stash of my old, old girlie magazines from the late 1980s!  Buried beneath a ton of stuff under the stairwell was a bag that ripped open as I moved a few boxes.  Out spills what looks to be a Playboy magazine?  Sure enough.  From 1988.  The latest one was from 1991.  I did not bring those home, haha.  I trashed them.

I only wish I could find the box, the Holy Grail box, which has my old game stuff inside.  Gone to time, I think.
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No work on the programmed adventure.  I have been playing the system, though, logging in four games in the last week.

Someone recently told me I should chronicle my experiences as I try and create my programmed adventure for Dark City Games.  At the very least, I should tell the story of the characters or expand upon the world.

This morning, I took that advice.  I created a Wikispace for my projects, which will include any and all future game/fantasy projects as well.  Now, the provided link will take you only to the Wikispace homepage and not my created wiki.  I'm not quite ready to unveil it, yet.  In fact, it's quite bare and embarassingly devoid of anything except a title...which I shall also reveal at a later date.
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The same person who suggested my creative online presence was discussing self-pubishing.  I can vouch for the folks at Lulu.  I have received an item or two from them.  You'd never know that it was a print-to-order publishing house.
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Finally, we got a new neighbor yesterday:



There goes the neighborhood!

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to "playtest" a ruleset and programmed adventure from Dark City Games.

Using their Legends of the Ancient World ruleset (which can be downloaded for free from their website), I created two characters: Meldor, your average warrior-type, and Renaldo the Mage.  I then took the pair through "The Sorcerer's Manor" which is a free PDF module, also located on their website.  If you're even vaguely familiar with RPGs from the 1970s and early 1980s you may have heard of two games, Melee and Wizard, which were designed by Steve Jackson when he worked for Metagames.  Dark City Games has reimagined those systems with their Legends rules.

So, why the term "playtested" by me?  I own the original Steve Jackson games and are familiar with their gameplay, but it had been years since playing them.  So, I took Legends for a test drive last night because I am currently in the process of creating a "programmed adventure" for Dark City Games!  I have been asked to focus on a fantasy-themed adventure for the time being, though DCG does publish both sci-fi and American West programmed adventures, too.  I hope to write one for the latter genre, but wouldn't really mind writing for all of the rulesets they publish.
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My "userpic" is a Frank Frazetta painting of John Carter, the hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian books.  The beautiful lady leaning up against John is Deejah Thoris, a princess of Mars.  While she may appear topless in the above picture, if enlarged you'd find Deejah is actually wearing bronze armor.

Please, don't go all Puritan on me.  :)
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Here's a picture from our game night the other evening:

Awesome.  Who would of thought?  We would have hung out, back in the day.

Last time I was discussing the movies we've seen I forgot about Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  It was quite funny, and Jason Segal is starting to become one of my all-time favorite actors.  He was great as Peter Bretter, the poor guy trying desperately to forget about Sarah Marshall.  Likewise, Russell Brand was outrageous, too, as British rocker Aldous Snow, Sarah's new boyfriend.  The movie walks a delicate line between funny and raunchy comedy, but it was nothing that would cause you to, say, walk out of the theater or turn off the DVD.
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Played a few games recently!  Our old favorite, Runebound, and a game of four player Chess.  Talk about exciting, the latter was a real exercise in strategy and tactics, with a little bit of mental exercise thrown in for good measure.
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A game company will be sending me submission guidelines in the next few days.  They have several games which fall into the "programmed adventures" genre (like the old-school Melee/Wizard games from Metagames).  I am considering writing an adventure or so for them.  Could be quite fun!

I weighed myself this morning and came in at 158 lbs.  If you remember, my goal was 175 lbs.  I think I've done pretty well, eh?  I've lost about 72 lbs., so far, and would like to see myself hit 150 lbs. before the end of the summer.  New goal!

Ever since our return from the Outer Banks the weather in Wilmore has been crap.  It's either raining or not, and when it's not pouring rain and spitting lightning it's God-awful hot and humid.  Yeah.  It sucks.
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We've watched a fair share of movies in the recent weeks:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button--I really enjoyed it and the very Twilight Zone-ish story.  It's the first movie in a very long time that made me all weepy at the end.  Brad Pitt rules.

Valkyrie--Nazis wanting to kill Hitler.  Awesome.  Tom Cruise was good as the chief conspirator, and I thought the movie was tense and exciting.

Gran Torino--Clint Eastwood directed and starred in this film about racism, stereotypes, and American cultural differences.  What a powerful film!

Up--Pixar strikes gold, again, in what is now my favorite film by them.  What theme!  And the characterization was spectacular.  It was great hearing Ed Asner's voice as Carl Fredrickson.  Chalk me up with the group that remembers him as Lou Grant.

We've also been watching our share of TV, too.  We're blazing through Star Trek-The Animated Series (which I got a month early for Father's Day), M*A*S*H season six, Star Trek season two, and Combat! season one via NetFlix.
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I've started Twittering.  Yay.
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Our game play has sunk to an all-time low, especially for it being the summer.  Usually at this time of the year we're struggling trying to decide which game(s) to play almost every night.  Now it seems to be a struggle just to get a game to the table.  Yet, we go through these stages, so it may very well be awhile before we're gaming at least twice a week, again.

Speaking of gaming, I recently discovered Noble Knight Games.  I can trade my games in for other new/used games, and I've already done so by getting rid of most of my RPG stuff--except for my original 1970s AD&D books!  Tomorrow I'm sending off a box that contains about 12 board/wargames that we no longer play.  The owner, Aaron Leeder, has given me an estimate of their worth which he'll verify upon receipt of the games and then give me the amount in store credit.  It's a sweet deal, actually.
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Father's Day has been a blast.  The boys made me picture frames out of popsicle sticks and game components.  Awesome!
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I miss the beach.

Robin and I went to an afternoon matinee yesterday to see the new Star Trek movie.

In one word the movie was: awesome!  While I am uncertain where to place it among the pantheon of Trek movies (e.g., is it really the best one of the ones featuring the "original crew"?), it is the best darned movie I have seen in a very, very long time.

So good, in fact, that Robin and I are still talking about the nuances of the story and what it could mean for future movies.  While Paramount has green-lit a sequel (Robin is extremely psyched about another go around with this crew on some new adventure), I'm almost of the mind that Star Trek should end here and now.  Why mess up a good thing?

Yet, I really, really enjoyed the story, the interaction among the crew, the personalities of the crew as portrayed in this version, and the universe that has been created in this new launch of an old favorite.

I have to say that I really, really do like the new universe over the old one, actually, and would love to see where novelists take the new/old crew.  I would love to RPG in this universe that has been created, too.

I could go into much more detail, but suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  Now, if I could just wade through the forty-plus pages of Star Fleet Battles rules...

Last evening Robin and I played Squad Leader for about three hours.  We ran through the first scenario"The Guards Counterattack" which had German and Soviet forces facing off in Stalingrad in October of 1942.  Ever see the movie Enemy at the Gates with Jude Law?  If so, then you've pretty much seen the game we played portrayed on the big screen.  Urban warfare, pure and simple.

I was the Soviet side and my goal was to try and retake, at minimum, two of the buildings being held by German forces at the start of the game.  Meanwhile, I had to try and keep the four or five buildings I started with under my forces' control, too.  Robin's goal was to simply not allow my goals to happen, and while I was successful in getting control of two of the buildings she started with as the Germans, I ended up losing two of my own buildings.  So, according to the scenario victory conditions, Robin was the victor.

Time flew right by as we played, and I now know, with a great deal of certainty, that Squad Leader is far and above my favorite World War II tactical wargame.
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A game I'm quickly realizing may become another all-time favorite is Manoeuvre.  We've played twice in the last week.  Who would've thought that you could combine Chess with both wargame and card-driven game mechanics, dressed up in nineteenth century warfare?  It works!  And it's fun, and a real brain-burner to boot.
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Finally, the Geek in me is drawn towards a little game called Star Fleet Battles (and the Captain's Edition Basic Set).  I've started slowly reading the rules and find that although the game appears very technical, and very much a kind of paperwork nightmare which I've only really encountered in RPGs, I really dig the detail in the rules.

I don't think I'd really want to play a game based on the Star Trek universe of the Original Series which covers ship-to-ship and fleet-to-fleet combat that wasn't as detailed.  The rules are a massive 234 pages; my old Dungeon Master's Guide from 1st edition AD&D clocks in at 240 pages.  Regardless of their size (Does size matter in games?  I think so!), the rules for SFB are broken into "Cadet" sections which allow the player to learn part of them and then play a basic scenario using what was just learned.  Squad Leader does the same thing and it works well.
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Robin and I are going to see Star Trek tomorrow.  Yay!
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Robin has anecdotes she likes to call Jakobisms.  I get to do the Baileyisms, so here goes:

On our return home from McDonald's yesterday after church, I asked Bailey if he enjoyed his Happy Meal.  As he was in a grumpy mood, Bailey, arms crossed over his chest, shook his head and replied, "No.  Not a happy meal.  A sad meal."

Watching him in the rearview mirror, I could tell he was upset about something, so I asked him, "You didn't like your Happy Meal?"  Are you mad?"

With a very serious look on his face, he eyed me back in the mirror and said, "Not a happy meal.  An angry meal!"

I'm still not sure what he was bothering him, but if I ate enough food from McDonald's I'd probably be both sad and angry, too.  Poor little guy!

Last night mom and dad invited us to the Mellow Mushroom.  Talk about great food and a place with exotic atmosphere!  The Shroom is it, baby.

The Lexington location for the Shroom is down near the UK campus.  In a snug corner lot, the pizzeria looks pretty tame from the outside (okay, except for the picnic tables painted in a mosaic of colors), but once you enter the place its psychedelicness permeates your senses.  The music being ported in from unseen speakers is classic rock, and the decor is just this side of some hippie pad as the walls are painted in scenery mostly found on posters from the black light era.  Framed images of Hendrix and the Beatles, among others, hung on the walls.  In fact, the flat-screen TV set which hung near us seemed completely out of place.

The place was packed with people of all shapes and sizes, the crowd a real mix of older adults, college kids, and families.  The chatter was lively, and the place hummed with an undercurrent of expectation.  Or maybe that was just me, as my mom, dad, brother, and a whole host of others has bragged about this place for years.

We let the folks order for us, and they certainly went all out.  A small Greek salad which actually fed three of us (with leftovers), freshly baked pretzels, a small 10" veggie pizza, and a larger 14" pepperoni.  Holy mackrel!  The salad was good, and though I didn't eat any of the pretzels everyone else gorged themselves.  The veggie pizza had a little of everything and I thoroughly enjoyed two slices of it, while Robin, the boys, and mom and dad ate most of the pepperoni.

I have to admit that the pizza at the Shroom is now my new favorite, besting that of Bizzaro's Famous New York Pizza in Indialantic, Florida which is the best pizza joint in all of Brevard county, and maybe in all of Florida, as far as I'm concerned.

Dad picked up the check, but I did notice that six of us ate, and ate very well, mind you, for $40.  That, friends, is getting your money's worth.
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Speaking of which, one reason I think I like wargames so much is because you get more bang for your buck when you buy one of them as opposed to what is commonly called a Eurogame.  Wargames come packed with usually dense rulebooks, hundreds if not thousands of playing pieces, dozens of scenarios, maps, and charts.  Zing!
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We played The Pillars of the Earth and had a great time.  Yes, before you ask, Robin won.  I think dad would love the game, especially seeing as he's read the book on which the game is based.
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Jakob was accepted into his preschool program!  Yay!  We're excited for him, but he's even moreso than us.  He said he can't wait to go to school so he can learn stuff.  His words.  Funny thing about him: he's pretty smart and already knows more than most kids his age.
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If you're interested, I'm reading a great book about a man who grew up with Asperger's, Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison.  I certainly see a lot of Bailey in the man's life, and it's awesome to see how someone with Asperger's overcame the odds and has had a very successful life, of sorts.  If you give it a read you'll see what I mean.

I've read the book and it was one of the most haunting tales I've ever laid my eyes upon. The movie looks outstanding, though the director seems to have taken some liberties with his telling.

Trailer is here.  It kind of freaks me out.  I guess because I already know what's happening in most of the key scenes shown in the preview.

(For some reason the video wouldn't embed onto my blog.  Technology.  Bah!)

Howdy do, folks.  Been awhile, I know.

See, I had some business I had to take care of, some things needed put in order.  Now that I've taken care of business and ordered life rightly I can come back around these parts and chat with you a bit.

Hopefully I'll maintain a more active presence herein and we can get down to some not-so-serious discussions.

As always, I'm game!
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So, as I said above, Squad Leader is back in the house.  I gave away our other copy to a good friend and found that we had really missed playing it, so I traded away a Columbia block wargame and got our favorite wargame in return.  Not a bad trade, at all, especially if one considers that of all our World War II-era wargames Squad Leader was played more often than any of the others.

I look forward to matching strategy and tactics with Robin, soon!
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Speaking of games, we also recently acquired The Pillars of the Earth in a trade with our friends, Matt and Kathleen.  Neither Robin or I have read the Ken Follett book on which the game is based, but Robin has had her eye on this boardgame for quite some time now.  We're gonna take it on a test run very soon!
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Last night, after dinner but before our Star Trek and M*A*S*H marathons, we played The Settlers of the Stone Age.  Ho-hum.  The game moved pathetically slow and, though I led Robin through-out the game, she won the game by one point.  Grrr.  Last time we played spoiled us: Jessie was visiting and the three player version moved much, much quicker.

Robin, for some reason, likes games set during the "Stone Age."  I was going to get her Stone Age a while back, but had heard that it bares a striking resemblance to Agricola, and since we own the latter...

(I suppose one could argue, "Dude, just how many similar wargames based on World War II do you own?")

We own a micro wargame titled Sticks and Stones which is a "warfare between competing/rival stone aged tribes" kind of game, but it has never been played.
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This game looks freakin' cool.  I can't wait!
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I've been researching Christmas traditions and customs of the United States, specifically the period before the American Civil War with a keen eye on the differences in customs across the Mason-Dixon line, with an even sharper focus on the Christmas tree and its place in US traditions.  Some fascinating discoveries all around.  In case you're wondering, I'm working on an article I hope to see published.
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Otherwise, all else is well on the homefront.

Yay!  It finally stopped snowing a few days ago.  Now, the sun is out and the ice, snow, and frozen sludge is melting away.  Tomorrow is supposed to be about 60 degrees.  Two days ago the low was -4 degrees.  So, yeah, happiness is all around.
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Tomorrow I am going to help my dad clean up the debris from the storm littering the backyard.  The trees right outside the backdoor of my parents' house snapped off at the top, littering the deck with large branches.  Some fairly large pieces are hanging on by strips of bark or are splintered and precariously hanging.  Time to break out the chainsaw.

*Cue "Lumberjack" by Jackyl*
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Robin and I have been playing quite a few games of Citadels lately.  We also played the "simple" game of Through the Ages. It was awesome.
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I am down to 180 pounds.  Only five pounds left to I hit my goal!

Jakob is still getting sick.  He's gone great stretches (almost 36 hours at one point) without urping, and then will suddenly urp without any indication that he's going to do so.  Last night he started coughing and I went to check on him and he urped.  This morning, after breakfast, urp.  So, he's been urping, off and on, almost seven days.  Without any real pattern.  Right now, this very moment, he seems like his normal self.

Did I mention I'm tired of seeing urp?  You develop a strong stomach, as a parent, without any doubt.
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Last night's season premiere of Lost was rather boring, I thought, especially the second hour.  *Yawn*  I'm almost to the point of not caring about the fate of our cast of characters.
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I am really digging King of the Hill.  Hank Hill is my new hero.  Here's a few quotes:

To his son, Bobby, who thinks he's a disappointment.  "Disappointment? No! You make me proud! I've been disappointed by just about everything else in this town, but you? Not once. Damn it, you're my boy!"

His friend, Dale, proclaims that Global Warming is a government conspiracy, to which Hank replies, "Dale, you giblet-head! This is Texas! It's 110 degrees in the shade, and if it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass!"

So far, I've really enjoyed the first two seasons.
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We've played every one of the games on our shelf, except for Through the Ages and In the Shadow of the Emperor.  Very cool.
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I am really digging Robin's new craft ideas.  And I get to help her with them.
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Robin and I will be starting Swords & Wizardry soon.  Yay!
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I'm down to 185 lbs.

I recently submitted a poll on Board Game Geek about which of our five un-played games Robin and I should get to the gaming table.  Those games were: In the Shadow of the Emperor, Through the Ages, Titan, Power Grid, and Railroad Tycoon. I left the poll open for 48 hours, which ended at Midnight Tuesday.  Wednesday morning I awoke to find that Power Grid had won with the highest votes (Through the Ages came in second place).  So, we sat sat down on Wednesday night and spent a few hours trying to maximize our energy output and power the most cities.

I have to be honest: it was our second play of Power Grid, but the first play with our copy.  Therefore, we knew ahead of time how the game is played and a quick read of the rules solidified the intricacies of phases and steps.  Within moments of setting up, Robin and I were playing.

The game feels incredibly different with just two players (instead of four players, like our first play).  Sure, one misstep or two allows for one person to pull ahead, but there's always the chance of catching up.  During our game, Robin and I stayed neck and neck for most of the game, acquiring near-identical power plants (power production-wise), and the number of cities in each of our networks stayed on par, too.

In fact, it wasn't until step three where she pulled ahead.  While Robin ended up with 21 cities, she could power only 17 of them, while I was powering 15.  So, it was a close game, overall, but not nearly as tense as our previous game with Matt and Kathleen.

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I am in the middle of playing a season of NFL football on Madden, and with Chad Pennington QBing the Dolphins I am now at 4-0.  Woot!

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We finished watching the fourth season of Reba last night, and the fourth season of Lost.  We're still working our way through season one of The X-Files, and are about to start in on the seasons of King of the Hill loaned to us from Jessie.  Thanks again!

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The cold yesterday (it was 12 degrees at 7 AM) caused bad things to happen to my Saturn VUE.  Somehow, when I went to start it yesterday morning, the ignition switch and coil blew out causing a chain reaction which took out a spark plug, too.  Boo!

Robin and I played Agricola last night for our first time.  It's hard to imagine that it's been sitting on our game shelf, unplayed, for many, many months.  Too many, really.  I suppose I was daunted by the sheer volume of goodies in the box.

Regardless, we had a great time, though at the outset I was unsure if we were going to like it, simply because I had to teach the game by simply going through the rules several times with Robin (who makes an excellent teacher in real life, but grumbles a lot when she is a student, haha.  I'm the same way, trust me.).

Final score: Robin 27, me 10.  We'll be playing again, very soon.

So, I'm finally able to wear a pair of jeans I bought when Robin and I were married five years ago.  They're a size 38, and a little snug when I sit down, but otherwise they feel great and Robin comments that I have a "nice butt" more often than not.  I'd like to drop down another size before all is said and done in Stage Two of the South Beach Diet.  I am at 186 lbs., only 11 lbs. away from my target weight of 175 lbs.  However, if I can keep losing the weight I may get to 175 lbs. and decide to go to 165 lbs. which would be 3 lbs. over my "ideal" weight.

Want to know what your ideal weight would be?  Click this link and find out.  There are many Body Mass Index calculators available on the Internet, but this one really seems to fit everything onto one page in a nice style.

Heh.  The Christmas tree isn't coming down until the celebration of the Epiphany, and while the church worship calendar indicated that was yesterday, the liturgical calendar has that day as tomorrow, January 6.  Therefore, the tree and decorations are still up, yay!

Last night our neighbors, Nikki and Todd, invited us over for dinner.  We had a great time!  Todd made spaghetti and meatballs, with the sauce and meatballs being his own creation/recipe.  It was to die for, really.  He had also baked some biscotti which we had with hot tea, after the meal.  Afterwards, our boys played with their oldest child, Sam, and we all had a chance to hang-out--though we did split up child watching duty between the men and women.  Todd is a classical guitarist, so I was thrilled to hear him play for a very short time between our turn at watching the boys play together.  He's really quite good, and I look forward to hearing him again in the future.  Robin, the boys, and I, had a great time and look forward to hanging out with them again, soon.

Yesterday at church I volunteered for the Communion team, and I am quite excited about helping out when they need me.  Next week is the church ministry fair, so I will be volunteering for a few other worship-related teams, as well.  I am already a member of the administrative board, too.  I am excited at helping my church minister to its congregation and the greater community of Lexington.

Today is the day when the decorations come down.

It's always a little saddening, really, but then it also indicates--to me, anyway--a willingness to acknowledge the start of the new year.  Still, there's something to be said for a brightly lit tree loaded with ornaments, the seemingly dozens of Christmas themed stuffed bears which come out of hibernation, the stockings and banners, and wreath to hang on the front door.

Perhaps if I tried more diligently to keep the spirit of Christmas alive in my heart year-round the appearance and then removal of the decorations wouldn't be so jolting.  Hmmm...