As I have a bit more time on my hands for the first time in over eight years, I have decided to spend a bit more of it outside.  Otherwise we have all been spending too much of our time either watching TV or playing computer games (especially now that Connor has caught the video game addiction).  And so for the past few days, my boys and I have been taking walks around our neighborhood and finishing with a few shots with the basketball.  

Connor is riding his new, but already too small, bike.  He's still getting the hang of the pedals, and today was the first day that he made it up the first hill by himself (I still had to push him up the second hill).  The training wheels are still on, but he needs a bit more practice with the steering and pedaling before they should come off.  Rowen, meanwhile, is learning to stay to the side of the road and is able to run for quite a while.  It is cute to see him bend a bit and rest his hands on his knees when he gets a bit winded.  Trevor still likes to prove that he can beat all of us home.

My basketball skills have certainly atrophied, but my boys make me look like a pro star.  Connor can nearly get the ball up to the basket, Rowen just throws the ball randomly, and Trevor thinks hitting the post makes his shot a "close one."  Today, a neighbor child came over with his football as well, and so I found myself juggling a football and basketball as I seemed to be the boys' favorite target.

I have also liked our walks and time outside as I've been seeing more of my neighbors these past few days than I have almost the entire time that we have lived here.  I truly did not realize how much my extra work was isolating me from ... well ... everything.  It is clear that I need to get us all out even more often.

I'm not much for sports.  I like playing them and enjoy watching them is someone I know is playing, but I'm not much for watching professional teams.  I don't dislike watching them, I just prefer to spend my limited time doing other things.  Yet when I head the news that Jackson might be building a stadium for a minor league time, my interest was piqued.

There is something that I like about baseball.  The deliberateness, the pacing, the way every pitch can have so many variable outcomes despite the relatively small strike zone, the fans, the sounds, even the food all give me a feeling unique to this type of event.  Unfortunately, the major leagues have become an exorbitant luxury.  Even with free tickets, the costs of the food alone make the game less enjoyable.  Add this the fact that the only seats that I can afford are so high above the action that I would be better off watching the game on television, if I cared enough about the teams to watch it ... which I don't. 

But a home team ... that's a different story.  My family once got tickets to the box seats for a minor league game and immensely enjoyed the experience (I was not able to attend).  With a team in Jackson (which I hope would be called the Jailbirds), I would be sorely tempted to get season tickets.  To give me an excuse to get out, let life slow down, and enjoy time watching a game with my family.

Who knows if or when this idea might come to fruition, but I like the idea.  And if I, a person who is "not much for sports," am excited about the idea, I can only guess how many other people would be interested.

Yesterday, I got home later than I expected from work.  I was getting school stuff done (more than I expected, but not as much as I wanted) while my carpool partner was sitting on an interview team.  I arrived home a little before 6pm, ate dinner, and then had company over until 10pm (we played Carcassonne with two expansions).  I turned on my computer to write a post (for which I had an idea that I have since lost), saw that my brother was online and then played Starcraft and worked on logic puzzles until about midnight.

In short, it was a good day.

One of the biggest problems that I've encountered with playing Dungeons and Dragons as an adult is scheduling.  Especially when including more than one household, trying to find time to get together is quite a challenge.  Some of my ongoing adventures meet only a couple of times a year (usually during summer break) with gaps between sessions of several months (sometimes nine).  This makes keeping track of what the party has done and plans on doing a bit difficult.

When Google Docs became available, one of my friends created a shared spreadsheet where he could input the experience points and treasure that we earned.  Since it was a spreadsheet, he also made it so it calculated an even share for each character.  He later added in a place for notes on the adventure and even a tab for players to put down something about their character's description.

These "adventure journals" have been a tremendous help as we have gamed through the years.  Recently, we have even used them to share maps, images, notes, etc. rather than have the DM provide copies to everyone.  While it still means passing around computers (or tablets) to those who don't have one, it also makes it so players can access the images from home if they want to give them a closer look.

I have a shared the adventure journal that I created based on my friend's original design.  While I have included a link here, I have also put one on the Home-brewed Rules page of this website.  I hope you find it helpful.

We had Connor's birthday party today even though his birthday is actually next week.  There were balloons, party games, cupcakes, presents, and other standard birthday elements.  He had a number of his relatives and several of his friends (one whose birthday party followed shortly after Connor's) attend.  It was a good day and a fun party full of pizza, play, and laughter.

I realized that Connor is at the age that he will remember, albeit vaguely, these events.  I remember my birthday party during my kindergarten year, and I am sure that he will remember his.  We are at the point that he will be actively remembering the events that shape who he will become.

This is one of the reasons that I support birthday parties.  They serve as a sort of anchor for our memories, which are otherwise such skittish things.  While I don't perfectly remember one birthday to the next, major occurrences between the birthdays and at the birthdays themselves have helped keep a relatively accurate timeline of my past.

I hope that Connor's party was memorable enough to serve as that anchor.  Hopefully, he will remember the Batman/silly-string obstacle course, the new bike, the table of bubbles, and other elements to remember what it was like to be six turning seven.  Too many people forget their own past and the events that helped shape who they are.  They forget what they were like as a child.  May this birthday party help Connor avoid such a fate.

I love playing Skyrim, to the point that I am rather addicted to playing it.  Aside from StarCraft II which I frequently play with my brother, I have logged more hours into Skyrim than any other game ... by far.  I like the sense of exploration and fantasy that the game brings.  I feel a level of immersion when I play that I don't feel with most other games.

Still, one of my original complaints about the game stands even after all of this time: so many of the quests are either evil or nearly hopeless.  If I am tasked with looking into the disappearance of a person (or a family, or even a civilization), it is an easy bet that whatever I am looking for came to a bad end.  Too often, the choices I am given in the game do not include a choice that I would make.  Many times, the only options are ones that only have bad endings themselves.

While I certainly appreciate the freedom that Skyrim (and games that attempt to be like it) give, it saddens me that I have to make "evil" choices to complete large portions of the content.  Actually, this often means that I miss out on large portions of the content because I refuse to make those choices.  Worse, there's no reward for being faithful or good in most cases.

However, those complaints obviously don't stop me from continuing to play, and enjoy, the game.

While The Settlers of Catan still holds its place as my favorite board game of all time, Carcassonne has definitely made some gains on my list.  Honestly, a major reason that I like it is the way the board looks as you build it.  It's a pretty easy game to learn, but it takes a while to master it.  While several expansions that change the nature of the game in subtle but interesting ways, this game has the capacity to hold a family's attention for quite a while.

And there's another thing I like about the game: my family likes playing it.  Each game is relatively short, so we can get in a couple of games at sitting (the expansions usually make the game a bit longer).  While I know that this sounds like an advertisement, it's not meant as such.  This game has become a part of what my family and I do, so I wanted to share it.