Munchkin!

Yesterday we got a new board game called Munckin and played it with the boys.  We started about 9 pm and didn’t actually finish the game (one game!) until about 1 AM!  We really are late night gamers now!  ;-D

Go down in the dungeon. Kill everything you meet. Backstab your friends and steal their stuff. Grab the treasure and run.

Here are the rules.  Basically, it’s a card game, with each card playing off of each other.  And it’s FUN!

3 to 6 players… I would say the more the merrier.  There are also several expansion packs (which we have a strong urge to buy ALL of) which will make the game more interesting… imagine combining the main decks (basic adventuring) with a super-spy theme or a Cthulu theme!

This morning when I woke up, the boys were quietly playing it on the living room floor. 

Meanwhile, here are some links I’ve collected recently…

• A floorplan of Sherlock Holmes’ house
• A picture of Nagasaki, before and after the bomb
• Table with built-in double-secret box
• 10 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

Some interesting words…

• cingulomania - n. a desire to hold another in one’s arms
• basorexia - n. a craving to kiss

The Wonder Blog, and some links

Not much to report for today.  The boys had a field trip to a Honey Bee Farm, in which they learned about honey bees and brought home some honey and honey candy.  Boy #2 was inspired by this enough to begin a blog, called The Wonder Blog.

Tomorrow the boys have another field trip to a recycling center.  They have some crushed cans they have collected up to submit for cash.

Also, Grandma and Grandpa M. brought home some plain looking rocks from their trip to New Mexico, and the boys discovered that the rocks were actually geodes when they cracked them open with hammers.

Some links of interest…

• 25 Things That Are Not What They Seem
• Space Bubble Real Estate
• Books as home decor items
• Seasonal Ingredient Map

Memorial day post

Quick update… been off line pretty much since Wednesday…

Thursday night we went to see INDY!  It was awesome, and I highly recommend it to all.

Saturday night my brother came over for movie night.  We watched SuperBad, which we have seen before but he had not.  It’s quite hilarious, though extremely vulgar (for those of you who don’t dig that sort of thing).

We threw a little barbecue on Sunday and had some folks over for brats, hot dogs, and burgers.  It was a success.  Today we spent the day with a friend, playing Scrabble and chatting, and lit up our new fire pit for the first time.  Again, a success.  Tomorrow… laundry day and then back to work on Wednesday.

And here are a couple of links of interest, dear readers…

• 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
• Floral Patterns on Bare Concrete Floors
• When Bodybuilding and Steroids Go Too Far
• Staircase Bookshelf

Apples to Apples; Monkey Pony Monster

First off, here are a couple of pictures of the cats:

That would be Raisins.

And Peanut.

Most of the rest of this post will be about a new game we played, called  Apples to Apples.

You can read through the rules here, but basically, it is about comparisons, and matching descriptive words with nouns.  A good vocabulary and knowledge building game, without the kids knowing they are learning.

Does this boy look like he is learning?

Or this one?

Here’s an example comparison (we only had 3 players, so the boys put down cards and I judged)…

What’s more scenic - an oil spill or a trailer park?

Are Flying Monkeys normal?

And lastly, there was the Genetic Engineering card:

The original subtext on the card was “What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a potato?” but I scratched that out and replaced it with What DO you get when you cross a monkey with a PONY?” in honor of the Jonathan Coulton song, SkullCrusher Mountain…

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

Back, and drumming

I’m back, as of Friday night, but this is my first chance (urge) to post.  Flight was fine, etc.  Happily received back home, took it easy Friday night.

Saturday night we did something new.  The whole family went to the Fox Valley Drum Circle meetup, which was held at someone’s home in Aurora.  I was slightly skeptical, especially of my drumming ability, but it turned out to be an awesome night.  We gathered in the living room with bongo drums and other assorted drums and instruments of percussion, and simply spent the evening banging on the drums.

A pool table was in the next room over, and Boy #1 started off there, playing pool, while Boy #2 hid behind a couch, quietly drumming.  By the end of the evening, both kids were enthusiastically playing.  It was a rather amazing, dare I say spiritual, experience.  My Buddhist husband says the “trance” you go into while playing is much like meditation, something I’ve never been good at.  We met some great people and plan on going to the monthly meetups.

On a different note, here are a couple of pictures for you…

That’s Boy #2, who caught this snake in the backyard today.

And that’s how much I paid a gallon for gas yesterday.  $55 in total.

Lastly, a few links for you…

• Micropreemie dolls - some may find these creepy, but I think they are adorable
• Sofa/bookcase

And how about a hypothetical question from Galactic Questions…

“You are walking through the town of Bethlehem, birthplace of Jesus. You see a light in the sky, and hear God’s voice thundering down. “Which do you choose,” He asks, “sunshine could cure cancer, or the shadows of humans can do half of humanity’s work? For example, the shadow of a gas station attendant can pump gas while the attendant works on another car.”

And ending with a card from PostSecret:

Thursday afternoon

Well, I’m pretty tired of Calgary now, or at least of being away, so it’s good that I am coming back tomorrow.  Not much exciting to report.  The actual work I came up to do here didn’t go so well, lots of technical stuff that I prefer not to bore you with.  A few late nights.  Well, not late so much as long.  But all that is behind me now and I have left the office now.

Last night, I had dinner with my boss (CFO) at a fancy place called the Seven Restolounge, where I enjoyed a wonderful steak and mushroom soup.  Mmmm soup.  Tonight I’ll probably hit the hotel restaurant, the Keg.  This time I think I’ll have a steak.  Here’s their cooking levels to choose from:

BLUE RARE Cool, blue, all the way through.
RARE Cool centre, bright red throughout.
MEDIUM RARE Warm centre, red throughout.
MEDIUM Warm, pink centre.
MEDIUM WELL Hot, small trace of pink in the centre.
WELL DONE Hot, fully cooked throughout.
CHICAGO Charred outside, cooked to order inside.

I’ll probably go with the CHICAGO, well done in the middle.  I didn’t realize the way I like my steak was actually a Chicago thing.  Is it, fellow Chicagoans?

Wednesday morning

Not much to report since last post. Had a quiet dinner at an Irish pub last night - a delicious meat pie. I ordered iced tea and it came sweetened (@#%$!), and it also had the rim salted a bit like a dacquiri, which was interesting. Slowly made it in to the office, had a lunch meeting with some co-workers, and here I am now waiting for the real work to begin this evening.

A few links of interest:

• 10 Books that Screwed Up The World
• 100 essential jazz albums
• a book on sex for adolescents from 1948
• NNDB mapper lets conspiracy theorists connect the dots between powerful people
• 100 Must-Read Books for Manly Men

Altruism

On my walk back to the hotel this afternoon, I stopped outside the hotel for a smoke.  While I was there, I was approached by a woman.  She told me that her and her alcoholic boyfriend (husband?) had gotten into a fight and he had left her stranded in the city.  She needed to get home to her two kids in Chesterton or some such suburb.  She already had $15 and the bus ticket would be about $30.  I gave her the money.  Am I a sucker?

As synchronicity would have it, I ran across an article from Freakonomics when I returned to the hotel entitled How Pure Is Your Altruism?

Mostly it talks about donating to disaster victims, but also:

We’ve had a lot of conversations on this blog about charitable contributions. For instance: where people like to give, and why; how a young philanthropist should disburse $70 million; whether to give to a street beggar, a hot dog vendor, or neither.

And from the Economics of Street Charity, I relate to this part:

Although I’m atheist, I defer to Jesus on beggar-related matters. He said, if a man asks for your coat, give him your cloak too. (Actually, he said if a man “sue thee at the law” for the coat, but most beggars skip the legal process.) Jesus did not say: First, administer a breathalyzer test to the supplicant, or, first, sit him down for a pep talk on “focus” and “goal-setting.” He said: Give him the damn coat.

What would you do, confronted by the hot dog vendor and the beggar situation?  What would you do in the situation I just found myself in?

Continuing with the ethical theme of this post, here’s a cute video about doing the right thing.  It’s a little long (10 minutes), but worth it.

1939 marital rating scale for wives

Um…. I’m a negative 7.  Is that bad?

via BoingBoing

Is it only Tuesday morning?

Last night I ended up working til about 8 (a 12 hour day).  I can’t complain too much because after all my job is easy and generally involves a lot of free time (read: internet surfing).  In fact, I’m not really complaining at all.

Ordered some room service (burger, fries, cheesecake, iced tea!), and went to bed.  Now it’s 7am and I should probably be heading back to the office here shortly.