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I haven’t had very many (read: any) blog updates lately. I am terribly sorry for that.

The reason for this is that, quite frankly there hasn’t been all thatmuch going on with me lately.

Our family has kinda settled into a rhythm right now that I don’t believe that we want to upset for the time being. So all our lives have been pretty routine lately.

Valerie and her team are working very hard to make it back to the NCAA Championships this year, so that has taken over her focus, while I’ve got some personal goals that I’m working towards and have not thought about much else beyond that.

Of course with the running, it’s going alright. I’m still a little bit ahead of schedule right now for getting ready for my half. But circumstances of Valerie’s situation are hurdles for my own motivation sometimes.

Since the second half of Valerie’s season has started back up. Her 6 am workouts force my workouts to be moved to about 5 am for the time being, and to even earlier than that as my weekday runs get longer. In order to achieve this, I’ve needed to get to bed at decent times of course. So far it has managed to be alright, I only hope that I can continue to persevere.

Gaming is currently the part of my life that has suffered the most at this time. I try to make certain times for it. But when I must ensure that I go to bed at certain times on certain days, it becomes harder to squeeze in a 4 hour session even once every two weeks if things don’t work out exactly right.

I did finally get confirmation of a shipment on an order I placed in November. I am pleased that I will soon be adding 7 Wonders, Survive: Escape from Atlantis, and The Resistance to my collection. I just am not sure when I’ll get to play any of them. Nevertheless, I’m sure that will be remedied soon enough.

Of course, there are a few upcoming events I might try to make. Of course, Midsouthcon is a given, as I’m working for some of it, but others hopefully will come into the fold as well. I don’t know which ones and when just yet, but as other events unfold that will soon become more clear.

Because I’ve had to do more things at different times, I am pleased with a few developments. I am reading a ton more these days. Which I am pleased with. I finally read a couple of Neal Stephenson books that I’ve been wanting to read forever. With my new found hobby, I’ve been more interested in running books. I read ‘Born to Run’ which was interesting, if a little crazy. Oh and I just started a promising book called ‘Moneyball’ which has been pretty interesting so far.

I’ll have more upcoming in the next month or so, an update on my training for anyone that cares, possibly my con plans for the upcoming year.

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, Books, Game Collection, Moneyball, Neal Stephenson, Reading, Running

Just a quick update to let people know I made it back from my visit to Mom this weekend. She called me while I was on the way there to make sure I was bringing the Kids. I’m sure if I didn’t have the kids with me, she wouldn’t have allowed me to come!!!

Anyway, and a nice visit. On Saturday I did get to use my coupon to go see the Watchmen for free. Now I don’t feel so bad shelling out 20 bucks for the Motion Comic, seeing as how I saved $7 on the movie ticket.

I liked it. I think I like it just as much as I liked the book. Of course, they had to make some sacrifices, but the key elements are there. Which is really all you can hope for in a movie.

The kids had a good time too, they always enjoy visiting Mom, but the visits are always so short, they lead such busy lives.

Yayy!! This coming weekend is MidsouthCon. I’m sure I’ll say more on that later. But for now it should be enough to know I am starting to get a little excited.

written by Chris \\ tags: Books, Kids, MidsouthCon, Mom, Movies, Watchmen

I did not like the book at all. It felt like jumping in to a movie when it’s about halfway through. I have to admit, I only read about half of the first book, but the fact that I did not in all that time find a character that I liked and wanted to follow throughout the story, instead, found little snippets of introduction of several dozen characters, no one of which got more than 10 pages or so of text about them, left me very luke warm on wanting to read further.

That being said. The board game is really fun. Granted, a lot of the theme is lost on me. I don’t mind, it’s still a good game that melds strategy, diplomacy, and interesting powers and tactics of your leaders to create a dynamic game. Dune also does this as well, and I actually like that book, but everyone else likes A Game of Thrones more, so that’s the one we play

Unfortunately, it takes a long time to play. So we don’t play it that often, which is also probably good, because sometimes people want to kill each other at the end of it. But this past Sunday was OSBG gameday, and we happened to have five, so we went to the house to play a game. We played the base game with no expansions except for the Westeros cards from Storm of Swords, and Ports from A Clash of Kings.

This past game I drew Grayjoy and played most of the game quite honestly. KF played Stark and asked me to attack the one castle south of Winterfell, after which he would act mad. This also brought me to four castles. So the next turn, I had decided to go one further and attack the castle to the east of Winterfell as well. Of course, this made KF actually mad, because he had not agreed to concede that castle to me. On top of that, I was going to take Winterfell as well, and try to take River run. Unfortunately, Riverrun, which was weakly defended did manage to gather a LOT of support. So my bid to win the game fell short. I retreated back across the river and into my home territories and bid my time a little longer.

I was set up quite well toward the late game. About mid game I had spent a lot on the bid and gotten first in the sword and raven, and I was third on the iron throne. Plus, another bid did not come up, and the one chance they had of making the bid come up, I got to pick that no bid would happen.

I stayed at three castles and watched as some other happenings occurred in the south. Eventually on Turn Nine, I took the Moat back from Stark, which brought me to four castles. Lannister had asked if I would support his attack on Tyrell’s castle in the Rhine, and I had agreed. Since I had a nice force on the Searoad Marshes, with a support token on my bid to take Tyrell’s capital.

I reneged on my support when I found Lannister was going to take two castles on Turn 10 giving him six. So I supported Tyrell, and instead of Tyrell’s capital, ended up taking the castle east of Winterfell, which gave me five.

Unfortunately, I never counted Tyrell’s castles, and it turned out he had five as well, and 18 power tokens. I only had 17 tokens, and Lannister had 18 Tokens. Which means I finished in third…

If I had supported Lannister’s attack on the Rhine. Baratheon would have given stark support in Crackclaw point, which would have put me in a tie for first, with one less power token. At least, I think that would have happened. Also, I still should have taken Green’s castle. I had a lot of combat cards left.

Bah, I don’t know. Anyway. I really like that game. Which it was quicker sometimes though.

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, Books, negotiation, Stories

I picked this book up about a month or so ago from Amazon.com for $13. I’d heard about it on a few podcasts over the last few months or so and it sounded interesting enough. It’s also the kind of thing you can jump and skip around in when you read it. Which fits my lifestyle pretty well.

Anyway, I read through all the essays in the book that I was interested in so I thought I’d go ahead and get rid of it. It’s not the kind of thing that I feel I’ve got to have on the shelf forever or anything.

So instead of trying to pawn the thing off on EBay, or waiting for the next Yard Sale scheduled by Valerie or a member of her family and the book going to someone who might not appreciate it. I decided to put it up for a Geek Gold Auction at BGG. I figured I’d get a couple of microbadges out of it maybe. But the thing sold for 106GG (About US$15 at the accepted Geek Gold Exchange Rate). Not to mention the fact that it might actually go to the correct audience when I sell it on BGG, as oppoosed to some yokel from Oxford buying it and asking why Monopoly isn’t in the book about the 100 best games. I hope that DB enjoys it. He should have it by now.

Awesome. I figure I might throw a few more things on there this year. Especially considering my current mission to purge my collection to some more basic essentials that get played more often rather than having many games on the shelf that get played once or even never getting played do to a better or more appropriate game on the shelf that gives me the same feelings.

written by Chris \\ tags: Amazon, BGG, Books, Purge