Insert Post Title #42

Been a while. Kept meaning to jot some things down closer to Thanksgiving and just ended up ... not. Thanksgiving itself went fine. Food was good. Company was fine. Gratitude was expressed.

It was the first year in quite a few that I didn't have the whole week off. It will probably be another couple before I can attempt to do it again. Silly new job and resetting my vacation time... Oh well. Friday was pretty quiet, so that was nice.

Listened to a couple 5 Browns CDs to see what all the fuss over at sisters' blogs was about. Nice piano music. They're probably more fun to see live. It's ok to listen to, but mostly it's just nice piano music.

Read through the Old Boy graphic novels. Mostly as I'd heard Spielberg was going to do the movie based more on them as opposed to the extremely trippy and US unfriendly Korean film. The graphic novels were decent and certainly less disturbing than the film, so that's something I guess.

Snagged a couple DS games for my birthday (thanks Dad). They've been pretty fun so far. Avoided Black Friday due to working and real lack of anything worth fighting for. Although a couple of the HDTV's sounded nice. Sounds like Dad and Jen had a decent showing.

Other than that, not too much earth shattering stuff to comment on. Star Wars themed Robot Chicken episodes were hilarious.

Steampunk and other odds and ends

Finished up Starcross and it's genre-riffic subtitle the other day. It's the second in a series (Larklight was the first and I believe Mothstorm just came out) of Steampunk novels in which our heroes have adventures and save the world. All while extolling the virtues of the good ol' Victorian era. Huzzah! Not sure why I've been on such a YA reading kick lately. But there you go. It was a fun read and is another one that won't take much time to read through. Lots of twists and turns and yarn.

I must take a moment to point out that the book I'm currently reading (Death from the Skies: These are the Ways the World Will End) is truly awesome. It's written by an astronomer and details what would really happen if all of those sci-fi, astronomical, world-ending scenarios came to be. Truly brilliant. And funny. Go give it a look. There's plenty of humor and the science is aimed firmly at the lay audience, so there's very little pesky math to be muddled through.

Fall is coming to an end and I suppose and that's a good thing. Tired of leaves on the ground. Ready for some snow and some cold weather. It's been cold enough in the mornings, but strangely warm in the afternoons. Or at least it seems that way.

Sock animals have taken over the house. Pigs, cats, totoro. (Totorii?) I am amused by that. Most of them fall in the disturbingly cute camp, but you'll find a mutant here or there.

Speaking of mutants, the world can finally shut up about Twilight after this weekend. It will have its one big box office weekend and then we can all go about ignoring it and living our lives again. It will be nice, he thought giddily, while typing furiously and glittering in the afternoon sunlight. See I've read the book... Well, ok enough to know that Meyer should be brought up on abuse of adverbs. Early reviews are coming in and they're mostly positive (if you ignore the "vampire" content and see it for what it really is - tween romance chick flick) while knocking Edward. And really after seeing that trailer, who thought he was a good idea?

Guess I'll need a new passtime.

Books and sock animals

piggy,
originally uploaded by dkun.

Finished The Magic Thief the other day. Great book. Young adult story about, wait for it, a thief who learns to be a magician. Clever eh? It's a fun little story that I look forward to seeing followed up. Easily read in a day or so. Give it a try if you like YA adventure stories.

One of the other books we got from the Library was on sock animals. You can see McK's pig here. Lovely wife is currently working on a Totoro for moi. (Note to favorite niece, that means "me" in French. That's the language of France. It's a place where French people live. Also, French can be a salad dressing. (Although not a very good one.) At any rate. Relatives may discover sock animals under the tree at Christmas. For they are cute.

Snagged Mega Man III on the Virtual console the other day. And Secret of Mana. Mega Man III is an exercise in old school platform torture. Oddly enough I'm finding that strangely compelling. And G thinks it's great. Weird. Secret of Mana is a 1-3 player RPG from Yore (the time period, not a company. Squaresoft made the game). Should be good. Look forward to torturing lovely wife and kids with it. (Strangely Super Mario Galaxy has come back into vogue as well. I've actually gotten quite a few stars with Luigi. It's a pretty great game.)

Spaced is an humorous British comedy. Lots of geeky pop culture references. And Simon Pegg.

Ladron Que Roba a Ladron was a fun Spanish heist comedy. Also recommended if you run across it. I enjoy a good caper flick and this one didn't disappoint. Favorite niece should watch it. In Spanish. With subtitles. And then send me a report on the effects of Infommercials on Immigrants and other subsistence communities.

Well. I think that's enough of a catch up for now. Go watch the new Harry Potter trailer. It's far more interesting.

Cinema Paradiso

Have watched several movies in the last few days and several more in the wings.

Constantine is good. I can't really explain why, but I enjoy it thoroughly. Nice little action/horror type movie. Catch it on FX they show it a lot.

21 was really good for the first 2/3rds or so and then devolved into horribly predictable boring-ness. Which is a shame. I wonder if the book is any better? Or the actual story it's based on. It would be interesting to see if the guy's life actually followed tired Hollywood plotline #31.

Dan in Real Life, however, was amazing. Truly great movie. It made lovely wife cry for somewhat unrelated reasons, but I can understand where she's coming from. Steve Carrel did a great job and I suspect he's in some ways similar to Jim Carrey in that he's a better actor when the comedy is understated and the role is more serious. The best part of this movie is that the characters were all real people, they captured the family dynamic perfectly. I spent the first 10 minutes wondering if I'd actually be able to watch the show as the conflict between the father and his daughters was a little too close to home. I think I'll take a nice 10 year vacation while the girls go through their teenage years. Yikes... See this movie.

Twilight mocking is still in full force here. My favorite piece of news is that the books are badly written versions of whatever Bella happens to be reading in High School that year. Seriously? How some people get published boggles the mind. I don't mind retellings, I'm reading one right now - The Graveyard Book is Neil Gaiman's take on The Jungle Book, but it has good writing and an original twist on the source material. Twilight offers, well, sparkles I guess. Although if you're going to have a vampire story, you might want to actually have some vampires in it... Just sayin'. Oh and this and that. I'd link to the Twilight drinking game, but you can only shoot so many fish in the barrel...

So on to more random movie viewings. A Spanish heist/caper film, another horror movie, British sitcom featuring Simon Pegg. Typical goodness.

Jumbled thoughts

Finished reading Ring by Koji Suzuki (note to sister, translated from the Japanese), the book the movie was based on. I think the book came first. Heck even with the vast power of the internet a click away I don't care that much. Anyway, good book. It's interesting to see the slight differences. The movie follows the book pretty well and I don't think they made any significant changes. Well, ok I suppose there's one big change (no creepy Japanese ghost girl climbing out of TV sets in the book, shocking I know!) but other than that things were pretty close. Couple gender switches, some age changes, that sort of thing.

Honestly this is probably one instance where it is a slightly more effective movie than book. The visual images of the videotape are better actually, you know, viewed as opposed to read about. Although there was a nice little twist with the nature of the tape that was only sort of touched on in the movie. So if you liked the movie, I'd say give the book a shot. I'm going to have to track down the sequels now. I saw one of them just the other day on one of the trucks.

Watched 3:10 to Yuma again. Still enjoy that movie. Although the beginning was a little slower than I remembered. Ending is still pretty good though.

Election happened. That's really about all I have to say about that. There were no surprises at the outcome, and no really joy/dismay. Yay, we elected a politician. I really can't muster much enthusiasm about that.

Seems like there have been other happenings going on, but I really can't recall. We had some snow that made the commute a living nightmare. Driving downtown in stop and go traffic is an exercise in sheer physical pain. At least I have my iPod and an automatic now. Otherwise I'd be reaching for a slightly different automatic...

I want some more Chocolate Monkey Bread...

And some fries. And maybe a steak... Oddly, yes there is an article about the best steaks in Vegas nearby... Mmm steak.

RIP Michael Crichton

Huh, that was unexpected. While not as big a fan of his most recent stuff, his earlier stuff was brilliant. He will be missed.

November

October has been vanquished in a series of trick or treaters and sugar highs. Kids had fun dressing up and now we move on.

G had a pretty good birthday. Lots of dinosaurs, some fish, popup castles, and a couple Mariokart R/C cars. That finally work. And are admittedly pretty fun, if not the best construction.

Made some Chocolate Monkey Bread for breakfast. It was very yummy. I highly recommend it. It's worth the effort to make. Mmmm monkey bread...

So. There are (for the purposes of this post) 2 kinds of Westerns. The action-y kind (think classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti) and the sprawling, slow paced kind. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (and a title that's too long) is the second kind. It's a beautiful piece of work, no doubt. But exciting gun-slinging Western it is not. Which is fine. There's room for both, but if you want the first, look elsewhere. I'd really like to know how much of this story was true. It's apparently based on a book. It is an interesting show in some ways, and the cinematography really is gorgeous.

Currently devouring the second Library Edition Hellboy volume. It's wonderful.

The Host was on G4 last night. Taped it. If you've not seen it, it's a decent Giant Monster movie. Still have a few more Horror movies to make our way through. Silly patrons checking out the movies I want to see.

OMG1!11!!! Teh Sexxxy Vamp1res!!!111!

So. I watched the Twilight trailer. Not only am I not the demographic for this movie, I'm sad there is a demographic for this movie. If that dialogue were any more stilted they'd need circus performers for actors. The Pain! Make it go away. And who cast these people? And then attempted to do hair and makeup? I'd think it was the aforementioned circus troop, except they'd probably do a better job. Just wow...

Finished reading Blindness. Didn't really care for it. There were some interesting ideas that were pretty much invalidated by some bizarre who are these people choices. I don't think real people would react in those ways and it really derailed a lot of the story. Which is too bad as it was a pretty interesting idea. The writing style was mostly ok, although it did make things a little hard to follow. So yeah, move along, nothing to see. Heh.

Flipping through a book on Coin Tricks at the moment. Think I'll try and learn some. I miss magic. It's fun to have a couple tricks to show off on occasion. I still remember a card trick or two from when I was younger. They come in handy once in a while.

Also going to try and tackle Ring by Koji Suzuki. Book they based the movies on. I liked the movies. Both versions actually. They work a little differently, but are both effective. Halloween is far too soon...

Defending Food

Finished reading In Defense of Food the other day. It's the sequel to Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Another worthwhile read, and in some ways a slightly better one. This time round he focuses on what we should eat and in some cases how. The most useful section is probably the last third, but the entire book is fascinating.

Here are a couple eating rules to live by:

Don't eat anything with more than five ingredients.
Don't eat anything with ingredients you can't pronounce.
Don't eat anything with an ingredient you don't recognize.
Shop around the periphery of the supermarket.
Don't eat anything that doesn't spoil (i.e. Twinkies).

Like I said, it's an interesting book.

The horror movie viewing has been continuing. We took in The Last Winter the other day. Probably the first Eco horror movie I've seen. The planet is angry. This one was fun in that it's another case where they build up the psychological tension as opposed to going for the gore or the cheap thrill. Those really are the best kinds of horror movies. The plot is a little all over the place and the ending is rather abrupt, but it was an interesting movie.

Honestly it's hard to tell what we've seen and done recently. The one drawback to working at the Library is that they have a pretty impressive collection. And I've had a lot of things show up that I'd put on hold lately. So we're a little swamped. A couple Westerns, some Horror, a WWII flick, I can't even remember what else. And that doesn't take into account the TV show, or actual broadcast TV. (Just a note, I really prefer TV on DVD. No commercials and your own viewing schedule FTW.)

Wil Wheaton's blog has been pretty interesting of late.

Hmm, what else. Birthday alley is in full swing. A couple of in-law birthdays over the course of this week and a couple weeks out. G's birthday is soon. Christmas. Ah the expensive time of year.

Well, this has been a decent catch up post. Maybe I'll do this over the weekend... And maybe next time I can find something interesting to talk about... Probably not.

Trying to gather my thoughts

And failing miserably.

First, The Orphanage is great. It's a nice horror film that uses atmosphere and characterization to really great effect. If you're looking for a good scary movie for Halloween, don't let the subtitles scare you. Watch this one.

Second, this makes me hungry.

Third, this is an interesting political diversion. See which candidate matches your priorities. Needs more questions, but it's interesting to play with.

We've managed to catch up some on horror movie viewing. Season 2 of Dexter is fun so far.

I'm still reading Blindness. It's a rather disturbing little civilization falls apart story.

Again with the one sentence paragraphs. Oh well, my brain really isn't capable of stringing together complex thoughts at the moment.

I ended up giving the Girl Scouts the Library tour this morning. There was a mixup in the Children's Department and I guess they had them scheduled earlier. Since I had stopped by to say hi to the girls, I ended up giving them the tour. McK and M seemed to enjoy themselves.

Sounds like we might be getting a piano from lovely wife's Mom. She can't use it any more and she's wanting to make some space in her apartment, so we may snag it. That will be nice. I like pianos. Although I've completely forgotten how to play...

Celebrated lovely wife's birthday this past week. Party went fine. Games were played, brownies were eaten, Republicans were mocked. All in all a success I'd say.

So yeah. That's about all I've got.

Around the net

Stealing a title from G4 and a concept from every other blog on the planet. Have some links:

For my sisters: Shannon Hale's blog. Recently she's been talking about an author's responsibility for the moral a reader gets from their work. I disagree with a couple of her points, possibly on technicalities, but qualifies as interesting.

Engineer humor. This one's for you Dad. Heh. I need me one of them.

Sci-fi. Death scenes. Countdown list. You know you want to click.

Fake Twitter feeds anyone? I'ma gonna check out Bad Horse for sure.

100 skills you should know. If you're a guy. Or something. I dunno, I stopped reading.

Need to put the kids to bed. Clean up when you're done with the internet. It's a mess. Links everywhere. Kids these days...

Some thoughts on writing and other fish in the sea

I've started reading Blindness by José Saramago (it's currently a film starring Julianne Moore and some other people). This has caused me to think a little bit about writing styles, partially as the book has been translated from Portuguese (I believe) and partially as there are some interesting stylistic choices. The book is, in a lot of ways, mostly dialogue but it uses its own method to convey the conversations. There are no quotation marks, no paragraphs breaks, no he said/she saids. Changes in speaker/thought are separated by commas within the same sentence.

This produces, for me, a strange - almost noisy - quick-paced rhythm in my reading. It's very different. Coupled with either an artifact of the translation process or a strange word style, reading Blindness is a cross between an interesting experience and a somewhat painful one. It's like there's a hum in the background due to the way the words flow and the effort required to keep track of what's going on.

Writers have been playing with style forever. Joyce and stream of consciousness narrative, ee cummings and the birth of texting, Danielewski and games with narrators and footnotes. Things that either make English teachers jump for joy or cry bitter, bitter tears. Personally I find it interesting if occasionally eye-rolling worthy. Not every experiment is a grand success. It will be interesting to see if I stick with Blindness. I certainly find the story interesting, it's just a question of whether the style gets in the way of that or really does help. And ultimately, again for me, that's what makes any of these experiments successes or failures. Does the style choice help the story or get in the way of it. Terribly conclusive I know.

Have caught a couple horror movies to usher in October. Part of something truly awful (and thus great) called Madman. A nice 80's slasher called The Burning (featuring a young Jason Alexander of all things). I think we may have to throw April Fool's Day into the mix for nostalgia's sake. And I might just have to venture forth into The Shining territory again. Here be dragons.

Paprika proves that Satoshi Kon is an Artist. (And yes, please to note the capital A) I liked the film for a few reasons, but boy is it out there. Apparently it's based on a novel. See previous commentary on writing styles. It was like a cross between Dreamscape and an artsy foreign flick. Oh wait. It was a cross between Dreamscape and an artsy foreign flick. Convenient.

Saw a bit of Drunken Master as well. It was funny. I miss good Jackie Chan movies.

Oh and here's the Geek Alphabet. Just sayin'.

October

I'm strangely drawn to this site. Mostly as I can build a playlist of just about anything. The Pillows! Jonathan Coulton! Weird Al! Go nuts internet. And seriously, listen to The Pillows. Don't let the Japanese scare you. Serious rock.

Speaking of serious rock, AC/DC track pack coming up for Rock Band 2. Thunderstruck. The only real problem is that nobody sounds like the lead singer of AC/DC. But the drums and guitar...

Fringe is slowly growing on me. It does scratch that X Files itch.

Run Fatboy Run was Simon Pegg goodness. And sweet. And funny. I should really say something else so my paragraphs are longer than a sentence. Simon Pegg is my Hollywood best friend. We would hang out if we knew each other. Totally. And much hilarity would ensue.

I may have to go watch The Graveyard Book as my copy is probably sitting in a box at the Library. I wants it.

Oh right, October. While not my favorite month this does mark the beginning of my favorite time of year. September just pretends. October typically delivers. Plus I can force my horror movie tastes on poor wife as, hey, October. And scary games and scary books and scary candy. Really. Have you seen how much HFCS is in that stuff? And you want to know what they say about it you stupid corn industry commercials? How about you can't eat it in moderation because it's in EVERYTHING?! How about it's so evil it convinces your body that you're not full. It's totally ok to eat more. How about there's no way it's a "natural" substance considering the amount of technical wizardry needed to produce it (which I'm pretty sure you don't allow anyone to see...) Sorry. Soapbox put away.

But yes, October is nice. Cooler temperatures start to be the norm and there's a nice shift to fall sensibility.

Mmmm burger

Tonight's How I Met Your Mother was pure distilled truth. And funny. Alas, I don't know that I can claim to have such a burger place in my memory banks, but burgers are serious business and there is nothing more vital than the best burger. One day, it will be my cheeseburger. One day.

RIP Paul Newman

Wow. I have nothing to say. Sad news. Hope Mom gets to meet him.

Killing time

The lovely wife is trying to kill a few brain cells watching Smallville. I suspect she'll kill more than a few. So in my own attempt to kill a few brain cells I've turn to the intarwebs and you lot. I'm pretty sure the wife will lose more brain cells, but it will be close.

Alas, the series of tubes isn't really humming today. I suppose there are a few distractions. I'm listening the ambient music mix from Magnatune and I poked around over at Whatever. Both of moderate interest.

Grilled up some brats for dinner. Have recently run across a few different interesting recipes. One of my coworkers pointed me to a deep chocolate pound cake recipe in the latest issue of Bon Appetit (I think). It sounds delightful. I'm not sure why I've run across a couple different chocolate cake recipes lately, but yum. And then there was the Hellfire Steak recipe in some grilling book or other. I forget the title. How to Grill or something like that.

Caught the last 10 minutes of The Wedding Singer. Billy Idol makes that movie. I want to listen to the soundtracks now...

Sounds like favorite niece is recovering from Appendicide. Have I mentioned lately that I love favorite niece? I'm pretty sure that the AMA will soon adopt the term Appendicide. And if they don't they should. (And on a slightly related note, apparently you have to have your head shaved for Appendicide. At least according to slightly evil little sister to aforementioned niece. Heh.)

Well, that's all I've got for now. Oh so thrilling. I shall go poke around the wilds of the internets and maybe something will strike my interest.

Inspired by true events

Ran across this on the internets today and thought that it was only so so. So I feel compelled to try and come up with my own list of geek wife trials. I am sure this will fail horribly.

1. Realizing that there are too many days celebrated in Geek Culture. (Talk like a Pirate Day? Pi day? Who makes these things up?)

2. That sinking feeling that comes from the knowledge that the tech gadget he just came home with will be replaced by a shinier version we just have to have exactly 2 seconds after he left the store with the now horribly out of date item.

3. Comic book movies. Except for Spiderman. He can wrap me in his web any day.

4. Why are there dice with more than 6 sides? And why do we have so many of them? And why do I know that there are 4 Editions of Dungeons and Dragons?

5. Why am I sacrificing valuable closet space to board games? I could have shoes. Or storage space.

6. Children that wander around clamoring for Braaaains. Ok, that's pretty funny. But the fact that my 4 year old knows more about zombies than your average human being is stretching things a little bit.

7. Plastic instruments. I don't care if the game is fun and I have a good time playing it. I want my house back and I'm not running a plastic garage band. And don't get me started on the bongos.

8. Why does my favorite t-shirt have a robot dressed as a green dog on it? And why do I suddenly crave tacos? Or cheese?

9. What do Tina Fey and Felicia Day have that I don't? And why do I know what the Evil League of Evil is?

10. Why are the kids reading books that did not originate in this country? And watching TV shows also not from this country? Any future therapy bills are so coming out of his toy budget. And I don't want to talk about the toy budget.

Eh. Needs a little work. And some wasabi. But it's a start. Celebrated the letter r's birthday a little early the other day and gave him Yestisburg. You know, Gettysburg with Yetis. In a card game. It was fun. And the instruction booklet was hilarious. I may also have to try my hand at letters sent from Yetisburg.

And how about that Eureka season finale? That was a bit of a downer for a cliffhanger. I'm a little on the glad side that Psych, Burn Notice and Eureka are taking breaks, but I am certainly interested in picking them back up again. I kind of like this short season twice thing. And I like the PI on House (and Felicia Day was on as well...).

Couple of books

Finished Soon I will be Invincible and it was great. Fun superhero story that hits all the right notes. It touches on most of the clichés found in superhero stories and tweaks them just enough that it's a fresh read. Plus it leaves you wanting to know what happens next time. It is a little frustrating in that it's so much easier to make compelling villains. You always find yourself rooting for the bad guy that never wins. There are a couple decent good guys in the story, but it also touches on just how boring they can be or how they're really not that different from the bad guys. That's actually one of the more fascinating aspects to superhero stories - how the heroes and villains are really two sides of the same coin and all it really takes is a shift in lighting to make them switch sides.

Also finished Only Revolutions (Only Revolutions? Only Revolutions? Maybe Only Revolutions? Ok enough Danielewski nods for now.) The fact that I finished it about a week or so ago and haven't said anything is its own sort of commentary. Whether it's about my blogging or the story I leave to you. It was certainly interesting. And it grew on me, but it was no House of Leaves. I did find it a truly mindbending piece of fiction. Danielewski is either brilliant or someone with far too much time on their hands. Quite possibly both. Rest assured you don't really need to check this one out.

I'm looking forward to Neil Gaiman's new one, The Graveyard Book. Soon...

Well, must go, kids are clamoring to go play Rock Band at the neighbors. I will not comment on where I fit in that spectrum.

Notes about nothing

I've been meaning to jot some random stuff down for a couple days now, but not really had time. So go play with Wordle. It will probably be more interesting.

We've been watching the HBO series John Adams that was based on the book by McCullough. It's been pretty interesting. The Revolutionary War has been somewhat fascinating to me of late. I read 1776 a while back and this has been another interesting look at that time period. It's definitely pretty amazing that this country ever got started when you look at how things were. The Civil War is also pretty interesting. I may have to watch Gettysburg. I read the book that one was based on and remember finding it compelling as well.

We watched most of the first season of Case Closed, but ran out of time to finish the last handful of episodes. Need to check it out again. Fun little anime series involving mysteries. It makes me want to read more of the Kindaichi Case Files. Fortunately the Library has a bunch of those as well, so once I finish Death Note that's probably next. Speaking of which, I'm almost through that series. It's definitely been interesting. Strange little series that it is.

Played some Lost Cities (it'll pop up on the right there at some point) with McK the other day. She still needs some work as a gamer. We'll get her whipped into shape. Hone those tactical skills.

Just as a note, G's favorite color is T Rex.

And apparently M is going to be a writer. They were evaluating reading skills the other day and she felt compelled to tell her teacher what should happen in the sequel to the book they were using for the test. Her teacher apparently has never had that happen before.

Caught the new trailer for Quantum of Solace, the new Bond flick. Daniel Craig is still the man. Looks really good. I really like the reboot of that series. It's better a little more grounded in reality. The characters are a little grittier, not quite so cartoonish. Good stuff.

We get a lot of cooking magazines at the Library. I have snagged a few recipes of late. Will let you know if there are any good ones. There's a really yummy sounding chili recipe. And a curry recipe and one for asparagus and another for mushroom soup and... mmm recipes. Oh and Bake or Break has a delightful looking chocolate cake recipe up at the moment.

In which I talk a little bit about gaming

I still have memories of receiving the original Basic Dungeons and Dragons set when I was younger. My Uncle had gotten it for me for Christmas. He was in the Navy at the time and would stop by every so often when he had leave. I was so excited about the prospect of battling a Dragon that I made him insert one into the adventure we were playing. Never mind that I was a lowly level 1 magic user that could barely cast magic missile. I wanted to battle a dragon. So he humored me and then mercilessly killed my character. It was great. I spent a few years with that game, definitely good times.

You may have noticed that I mentioned recently that the new 4th Edition was out. It has been years since I've rolled the old polyhedral dice and I felt like checking it out. I enjoyed the initial adventure they put out for the launch. I convinced the letter 'r' (there really wasn't much convincing involved) that we should give it a go here. So we set up shop, dragged the wife and McK into the room and handed them some of the pre-made characters and then proceeded to run through the adventure. We finished it up the other day. A good time was had by all (with a decent amount of skepticism from my wife). I doubt we'll roll up characters any time soon, but it was an interesting experience. And who knows, I suspect another dip in the role-playing pool is a possibility.

Gaming is one of those things that I spend a fair amount of time doing, but not a lot of time thinking about. Well, not the behind the scenes, nitty gritty aspects anyway. There are a lots of types of gaming: role-playing (D&D, Rock Band, lots of things fit), board (Blue Moon City, Catan), video (Boom Blox, Mariokart), card (Gang of Four, Canasta), the list goes on (and already that's a pretty bad set of examples, it doesn't really take into account genres or how any of those can fit in multiple places). I enjoy aspects of role-playing games but it's probably not my favorite. Honestly it's a toss up between board and video games. My current favorite board game is probably Blue Moon City. It ostensibly has a story (you're rebuilding the city you destroyed in Blue Moon), but the main draw is the mechanic. Using the cards in various combinations to earn the pieces you need to win the game.

As my family and friends can attest, I typically don't like losing. Bad habit, yeah yeah, blah blah. I don't like losing even more when it's a factor of random luck. If I understand why I'm losing, I'll grouse about it, but hopefully next time a new strategy will prove more effective. When it comes to Blue Moon City, for some reason I don't mind losing as much. Typically games are pretty close and that might have something to do with it. It might just be that it's a more fun game. There are a couple other games that we own that I suspect I'd like as well, but it's difficult to tell. Arkham Horror is the best example. It's co-operative, got an HP Lovecraft theme, and possibly a lot of fun. Can't find anyone willing to give it a go.

For one thing it's very long. Also very fiddly (this is a technical term, if you play games you get it, if not, go hang around BGG). The fiddly-ness could probably be overlooked (or gotten used to or what not), but the time factor is a bit of a problem. How often can we seriously get a 3-4 hour block to run through a game. Yeah, it's long. But HP Lovecraft. And bits!

As for video games, again, for a not so strange reason if you know me, I tend to lean towards the survival horror games. Or puzzle games. Both are good. Games that make you think a bit. And possibly want the lights on. I'm rambling a bit now, so I probably ought to wrap this up. I think the point I set out to make is that it's interesting to see the kids start to develop these interests. As mentioned I got my start pretty early and the kids are no different. It was fun to see McK stretch her brain a bit as a wizard trying to rescue a couple kids. She came up with some interesting solutions to some of the problems the group faced. G is rapidly becoming a platformer fiend. M is pretty fascinated by card games and a couple board games.

There are certainly a lot of benefits that come from all sorts of gaming. Problem solving, social skills, a desire to crush your opponents and leave them silently weeping in the corner, err sportsmanship. It's fun to watch the kids pick up those skills. And soon the family can take on the Old Ones and save the poor town of Arkham...