There is a small petting zoo. Some goats to feed. A lemur. A llama.
We finished the day by watching a local training school, Clever K-9s, demonstrate an agility course while we snacked on cinnamon baked nuts.
2 weeks ago
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Pet Expo
Last Saturday Tabby and I went to the Green Bay Pet Expo. It happens about this time every year, and we've gone for the past several. Vendors have booths selling all sorts of products, mostly pet related. There are outreach booths for animal rescue projects. And, of course, almost every booth has animals. Mostly dogs. A few cats. The exotic animal rescue booth had a boa constrictor and some turtles.
There is a small petting zoo. Some goats to feed. A lemur. A llama.
We finished the day by watching a local training school, Clever K-9s, demonstrate an agility course while we snacked on cinnamon baked nuts.
There is a small petting zoo. Some goats to feed. A lemur. A llama.
We finished the day by watching a local training school, Clever K-9s, demonstrate an agility course while we snacked on cinnamon baked nuts.
Monday, March 23, 2015
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
So many good things last week.
First, Ben spent a few days in New York.
He was there with the Ashwaubenon High School Band to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. He did so much more than that, though. Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the 9/11 Memorial, Radio Center Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, the UN Building, both Wicked and Alladin on Broadway. I had my green for St Patrick's day, man. Green with envy.
Next, Jack came back from the Army.
Apparently Basic Training made college look real good. I mean, he was having a rough time of it to begin with. Which, well, Basic, you know? That's how it's supposed to be. Then he injured his wrist in some PT exercises and spent several weeks unable to participate. It got to the point that in order to complete Basic he'd have to recycle to the next training group. He didn't want it that bad.
So when you go home, they don't actually give you a date to leave. You get put in waiting mode until they hand you a plane ticket. So last Thursday morning, like 3:00 AM Thursday morning, we get a phone call from Jack, "I got my ticket. I'm arriving in Milwaukee at 5:30". Fortunately, he meant 5:30 PM.
Saturday morning I participated in a Magic: the Gathering, Dragons of Tarkir prerelease weekend breakfast event at Gnome Games. Saw some good friends. Got some fun Magic cards. Played for a few hours. I decided on the Green/White pack and also pulled a decent amount of good green and white cards in my non-seeded packs to make that a good deck building choice. I had a bunch of flyers, a bunch of bolster cards, a few efficient megamorphs and, of course, a couple of dragons that if they happened to stay in play were just stupid good.
I curved up pretty well to 5 mana so I could usually hold a moderate early ground rush to stabalize and then just fly over for a huge beatings and a relatively quick win thereafter. If my opponent had no early game, it went even worse for him. The games I lost were to decks that came out with several cheap early creatures and removal back up to clear my early drops. I went 3-1. The match I lost was to just such a creature rush deck that totally steamrolled me with 2-3 cc 2/2 & 3/2 beatings and an insane amount of removal. 2nd game I almost managed to recover. I actually cleared the board with decent blocks & combat tricks, he had blown his removal, I had more mana on the table he had 0 cards in hand, I had a card to kill flyers. But he was at 18 life to my 2, he drew a morph creature and I drew a land. It's like a really didn't have a chance ... the life difference was just too much, but man, it sure felt like I might be able to get lucky.
Ah well, still a lot of fun.
Finally, Sunday a good friend of mine from Sheboygan, Randall, invited me down to play Eclipse with a bunch of the gaming group I played with when I lived there. Dan, Pat, Steve, Josh and Randall's son Christian all played. You know, it's not like I'd forgotten how much I liked that group of guys. However, I had kind of forgotten just how much fun it was to hang out with them. More than just the game, although the game was a ton of fun itself, but the comeraderie, the banter, the conversation. I felt like, "This is my people. If I can spend time with anyone, it is them."
Every year at Fire & Ice I see them and talk to them a bit and one of us will bring up that I really have to get back to Sheboygan some weekend to play a game with them. But for over four years I just didn't get around to it. I never set a date that I would go down and so I'd think, "I'll call Randall to find out when they're gaming next month" ... and then "next month" ... and then, well, so on. Never again, man. We've already decided, the Saturday before Father's Day. Locked on my calendar. Don't plan anything else, I'm going to be in Sheboygan that day.
The game was tight. Close, swings in leads, well developed fleets both in size & tech. One of the great aspects of the game is the imparative to act. Several times in the game I had to move my fleets into systems before I was comfortable with their strength to take and hold it ... but if didn't act, someone else was going to get to the system first and that would be points in their corner. So sometimes you just have to take risks, or trade resources for points competetively, aggressively. Makes for an exciting game.
It came right down to the last turn. Like, five of us ended up within 5 points of each other. I held the center tile, each of us still held his own home system. Dan bought a 5 point tech upgrade that had to be placed on a tile, making that tile worth a total of 8 points. I had a strong fleet and moved to take that tile, which Dan had defended well. And it's not like he shouldn't have taken the tech ... if he hadn't I was going to. Randall acquired the wormhole drive tech and jumped into my home system (the first and only broken alliance in the game, netting him the -2 pt traitor card) and the central tile which I had largely vacated to take Dan's 8 point system. Steve moved back to take 4 points worth of systems I had taken from him the previous turn. Christian jumped through a wormhole into systems controlled by both Pat & I. Josh took advantage of Dan bolstering his 8 point system to attack him behind his front line.
When the dust settled, Steve took back his 4 points worth of systems from me. Dan held all of his systems except for the 8 point system that I took. I held onto both the central disk and my home system to win by one point. Exciting, man. Even had I lost though, it would have been an afternoon well spent.
First, Ben spent a few days in New York.
He was there with the Ashwaubenon High School Band to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. He did so much more than that, though. Times Square, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the 9/11 Memorial, Radio Center Music Hall, Rockefeller Center, the UN Building, both Wicked and Alladin on Broadway. I had my green for St Patrick's day, man. Green with envy.
Next, Jack came back from the Army.
Apparently Basic Training made college look real good. I mean, he was having a rough time of it to begin with. Which, well, Basic, you know? That's how it's supposed to be. Then he injured his wrist in some PT exercises and spent several weeks unable to participate. It got to the point that in order to complete Basic he'd have to recycle to the next training group. He didn't want it that bad.
So when you go home, they don't actually give you a date to leave. You get put in waiting mode until they hand you a plane ticket. So last Thursday morning, like 3:00 AM Thursday morning, we get a phone call from Jack, "I got my ticket. I'm arriving in Milwaukee at 5:30". Fortunately, he meant 5:30 PM.
Saturday morning I participated in a Magic: the Gathering, Dragons of Tarkir prerelease weekend breakfast event at Gnome Games. Saw some good friends. Got some fun Magic cards. Played for a few hours. I decided on the Green/White pack and also pulled a decent amount of good green and white cards in my non-seeded packs to make that a good deck building choice. I had a bunch of flyers, a bunch of bolster cards, a few efficient megamorphs and, of course, a couple of dragons that if they happened to stay in play were just stupid good.
I curved up pretty well to 5 mana so I could usually hold a moderate early ground rush to stabalize and then just fly over for a huge beatings and a relatively quick win thereafter. If my opponent had no early game, it went even worse for him. The games I lost were to decks that came out with several cheap early creatures and removal back up to clear my early drops. I went 3-1. The match I lost was to just such a creature rush deck that totally steamrolled me with 2-3 cc 2/2 & 3/2 beatings and an insane amount of removal. 2nd game I almost managed to recover. I actually cleared the board with decent blocks & combat tricks, he had blown his removal, I had more mana on the table he had 0 cards in hand, I had a card to kill flyers. But he was at 18 life to my 2, he drew a morph creature and I drew a land. It's like a really didn't have a chance ... the life difference was just too much, but man, it sure felt like I might be able to get lucky.
Ah well, still a lot of fun.
Finally, Sunday a good friend of mine from Sheboygan, Randall, invited me down to play Eclipse with a bunch of the gaming group I played with when I lived there. Dan, Pat, Steve, Josh and Randall's son Christian all played. You know, it's not like I'd forgotten how much I liked that group of guys. However, I had kind of forgotten just how much fun it was to hang out with them. More than just the game, although the game was a ton of fun itself, but the comeraderie, the banter, the conversation. I felt like, "This is my people. If I can spend time with anyone, it is them."
Every year at Fire & Ice I see them and talk to them a bit and one of us will bring up that I really have to get back to Sheboygan some weekend to play a game with them. But for over four years I just didn't get around to it. I never set a date that I would go down and so I'd think, "I'll call Randall to find out when they're gaming next month" ... and then "next month" ... and then, well, so on. Never again, man. We've already decided, the Saturday before Father's Day. Locked on my calendar. Don't plan anything else, I'm going to be in Sheboygan that day.
The game was tight. Close, swings in leads, well developed fleets both in size & tech. One of the great aspects of the game is the imparative to act. Several times in the game I had to move my fleets into systems before I was comfortable with their strength to take and hold it ... but if didn't act, someone else was going to get to the system first and that would be points in their corner. So sometimes you just have to take risks, or trade resources for points competetively, aggressively. Makes for an exciting game.
It came right down to the last turn. Like, five of us ended up within 5 points of each other. I held the center tile, each of us still held his own home system. Dan bought a 5 point tech upgrade that had to be placed on a tile, making that tile worth a total of 8 points. I had a strong fleet and moved to take that tile, which Dan had defended well. And it's not like he shouldn't have taken the tech ... if he hadn't I was going to. Randall acquired the wormhole drive tech and jumped into my home system (the first and only broken alliance in the game, netting him the -2 pt traitor card) and the central tile which I had largely vacated to take Dan's 8 point system. Steve moved back to take 4 points worth of systems I had taken from him the previous turn. Christian jumped through a wormhole into systems controlled by both Pat & I. Josh took advantage of Dan bolstering his 8 point system to attack him behind his front line.
When the dust settled, Steve took back his 4 points worth of systems from me. Dan held all of his systems except for the 8 point system that I took. I held onto both the central disk and my home system to win by one point. Exciting, man. Even had I lost though, it would have been an afternoon well spent.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Weekends Spent Gaming
The last couple weekends have been pretty awesome.
February 28th was the annual Fire & Ice convention in Manitowoc, WI. Ben went with me and we played a bunch of games together.
We crushed everyone else in a game of 7 Wonders. Especially impressive since it was Ben's first time playing. I went for a technology win and he just went the simple route of grabbing points whenever he could. At one point it was kind of funny as the other players in the game were all debating how well they were doing progressing on military points or accumulating different kinds of cards and how many points that would get them in the end and Ben just looked down at the table and commented, do you guys even notice all the point cards I have in front of me? I'm not sure they heard him. In any case the debate continued ... it's as if with all the different ways to get points, simply grabbing a card that says "X points" seems too simple to be a viable way to win.
Though to be fair, maybe it is. I mean, Ben didn't actually win. I beat him by one point. A girl named Daria passed me a tech card that got me another 7 points for the win. The dude next to hear couldn't believe she'd done that. I'm not sure why ... he was nowhere near within 7 points of me and he had passed Daria a card that got her 13 points to jump from nearly last place into 3rd.
So how badly did we beat them all? Ben & I had, like 71 and 72, respectively. Daria was in the mid 60s. Everyone else in the 50s.
We had some time to kill, so we played a game of Stone Age with a couple of the 7 Wonders players. I've played it once before and decided that this time I'd copy what the winner of the game had done last time. Population, Wood, and cards. As the cards got you the resources needed, pick up some huts. It worked for me. I pretty aggressively went after collecting the full set of card symbols, ended up with a bunch of miscellaneous resources and scored points on the generic resource huts. I don't remember the final score, but it wasn't close.
We played a game of Dominant Species that I really liked. It had a similar theme to Evo (evolving a species by competing with others in a changing environment), but with mechanics to encourage symbiotic relations. I didn't catch on to how I could score by moving with other players instead of isolating myself in my own niche until about 1/2 way through the game.
Finally, we played a game of Eclipse. Fun. I got to be the Planta and was able to generate a nice bottleneck into my own little corner of the universe. I held out there, keeping my one system full of spacedocks, dreadnoughts and cruisers just teched out enough to discourage the military powerhouses from spending time coming my way ... and as opportunity allowed building a couple monoliths.
I wasn't involved in any combat until the last turn of the game. One of the players had gone the missile route and created some very intimidating missile boats. He was getting, like, 36 shots at +4, each doing two hits of damage before even the first round of combat. Two of us had focused on tech to avoid missiles. Me through heavy defenses: -3 computers and hulls 4 to 6 deep. The other guy with point defenses and Anti-matter cannons to try and blow the missiles out of the sky. Missile guy took the center hex towards the end of the game and both point defense guy and I moved in the last turn. Honestly, I thought I would have to get lucky to take the center ... but it was the last turn. I was willing to try my luck. I didn't expect point defense guy to move in, too.
Turns out having about 24 anti matter cannons will wipe out more than missiles. He had the initiative and I didn't even get a shot off. Doesn't hurt that he hit with 23 of his 24 shots. Consider how lucky that is ... a 1 is an auto miss. On 24 dice he only rolled one. And it's not like he hit on a two! I mean, he did (yes, even with my -3 computers) on about 2/3 of the shots, but the rest needed, like 4s or better. But I got my 2 point chit for combat. Then point defense guy wiped out missile boat dude to take the center tile.
In the end, I won by ... 2 points. Yay throwing the dice.
Ben, unfortunately, got in a really tough spot early in the game with only, like, 4 tiles to develop into. He would have had to expand by fighting his neighbors and they both had enough resources to keep bigger fleets than Ben had. He said he still liked it though.
Fire and Ice was a ton of fun. Good games. I saw a bunch of friends from when I lived in Sheboygan. Ted Bingham and his son Craig, Randall, Dan, Steve. Ben got a t-shirt and a book. I got a winged fox stuffed animal for Tabby. I'm glad we went.
Then last week Tabby and I started playing in something called the Pauper Swap League at Gnome Games. They give us a semi-random deck of 60 cards, we play others in the league for ante (2 cards each) which is used to improve our decks. We also get points for playing (1 per game, +1 more if you win) that can be spent to get cards from the bank. They're just commons, and they're donated to us by the store, so the ante is never a big deal. Officially, all the cards belong to Gnome Games anyway and if we ever accumulate more than 60 (like by winning the ante) we have to return the excess to the bank. But it's fun to improve the decks from game to game. Fun to go play Magic for a couple hours on Saturday, especially with Tabby coming along.
I think she's actually more excited about her kitty themed deck box & sleeves than she is about Magic. She seems to enjoy the games though. She crushed me one game and came from behind to eek out a win in a second against me. She also played two other guys in the league and lost both, though putting up a good show. I played a third game against a guy in the league and just had a sweet lucky draw of cards while he got stuck with a bad start on mana and couldn't play much.
Good times.
February 28th was the annual Fire & Ice convention in Manitowoc, WI. Ben went with me and we played a bunch of games together.
We crushed everyone else in a game of 7 Wonders. Especially impressive since it was Ben's first time playing. I went for a technology win and he just went the simple route of grabbing points whenever he could. At one point it was kind of funny as the other players in the game were all debating how well they were doing progressing on military points or accumulating different kinds of cards and how many points that would get them in the end and Ben just looked down at the table and commented, do you guys even notice all the point cards I have in front of me? I'm not sure they heard him. In any case the debate continued ... it's as if with all the different ways to get points, simply grabbing a card that says "X points" seems too simple to be a viable way to win.
Though to be fair, maybe it is. I mean, Ben didn't actually win. I beat him by one point. A girl named Daria passed me a tech card that got me another 7 points for the win. The dude next to hear couldn't believe she'd done that. I'm not sure why ... he was nowhere near within 7 points of me and he had passed Daria a card that got her 13 points to jump from nearly last place into 3rd.
So how badly did we beat them all? Ben & I had, like 71 and 72, respectively. Daria was in the mid 60s. Everyone else in the 50s.
We had some time to kill, so we played a game of Stone Age with a couple of the 7 Wonders players. I've played it once before and decided that this time I'd copy what the winner of the game had done last time. Population, Wood, and cards. As the cards got you the resources needed, pick up some huts. It worked for me. I pretty aggressively went after collecting the full set of card symbols, ended up with a bunch of miscellaneous resources and scored points on the generic resource huts. I don't remember the final score, but it wasn't close.
We played a game of Dominant Species that I really liked. It had a similar theme to Evo (evolving a species by competing with others in a changing environment), but with mechanics to encourage symbiotic relations. I didn't catch on to how I could score by moving with other players instead of isolating myself in my own niche until about 1/2 way through the game.
Finally, we played a game of Eclipse. Fun. I got to be the Planta and was able to generate a nice bottleneck into my own little corner of the universe. I held out there, keeping my one system full of spacedocks, dreadnoughts and cruisers just teched out enough to discourage the military powerhouses from spending time coming my way ... and as opportunity allowed building a couple monoliths.
I wasn't involved in any combat until the last turn of the game. One of the players had gone the missile route and created some very intimidating missile boats. He was getting, like, 36 shots at +4, each doing two hits of damage before even the first round of combat. Two of us had focused on tech to avoid missiles. Me through heavy defenses: -3 computers and hulls 4 to 6 deep. The other guy with point defenses and Anti-matter cannons to try and blow the missiles out of the sky. Missile guy took the center hex towards the end of the game and both point defense guy and I moved in the last turn. Honestly, I thought I would have to get lucky to take the center ... but it was the last turn. I was willing to try my luck. I didn't expect point defense guy to move in, too.
Turns out having about 24 anti matter cannons will wipe out more than missiles. He had the initiative and I didn't even get a shot off. Doesn't hurt that he hit with 23 of his 24 shots. Consider how lucky that is ... a 1 is an auto miss. On 24 dice he only rolled one. And it's not like he hit on a two! I mean, he did (yes, even with my -3 computers) on about 2/3 of the shots, but the rest needed, like 4s or better. But I got my 2 point chit for combat. Then point defense guy wiped out missile boat dude to take the center tile.
In the end, I won by ... 2 points. Yay throwing the dice.
Ben, unfortunately, got in a really tough spot early in the game with only, like, 4 tiles to develop into. He would have had to expand by fighting his neighbors and they both had enough resources to keep bigger fleets than Ben had. He said he still liked it though.
Fire and Ice was a ton of fun. Good games. I saw a bunch of friends from when I lived in Sheboygan. Ted Bingham and his son Craig, Randall, Dan, Steve. Ben got a t-shirt and a book. I got a winged fox stuffed animal for Tabby. I'm glad we went.
Then last week Tabby and I started playing in something called the Pauper Swap League at Gnome Games. They give us a semi-random deck of 60 cards, we play others in the league for ante (2 cards each) which is used to improve our decks. We also get points for playing (1 per game, +1 more if you win) that can be spent to get cards from the bank. They're just commons, and they're donated to us by the store, so the ante is never a big deal. Officially, all the cards belong to Gnome Games anyway and if we ever accumulate more than 60 (like by winning the ante) we have to return the excess to the bank. But it's fun to improve the decks from game to game. Fun to go play Magic for a couple hours on Saturday, especially with Tabby coming along.
I think she's actually more excited about her kitty themed deck box & sleeves than she is about Magic. She seems to enjoy the games though. She crushed me one game and came from behind to eek out a win in a second against me. She also played two other guys in the league and lost both, though putting up a good show. I played a third game against a guy in the league and just had a sweet lucky draw of cards while he got stuck with a bad start on mana and couldn't play much.
Good times.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Father Daughter Dance
Last Friday at church they threw a Father Daughter dance. Man was it fun! The little girls were soooooo excited. I'm talking, like, bouncing and giggling with uncontainable glee excited. Even the older girls who seemed to be there just to humor Dad were having a good time.
Becky took pictures there. She put up a small photo set with a ton of fun props. Like more than one group of girls walked past the set and squeeeeed! in delight at the fans, boas, umbrellas et al that she brought. The props were constantly being borrowed to wear on the dance floor. And Becky really enjoyed doing the photography. She got some great shots. I think you can find some samples at Magical Moments photography by Becky on Facebook.
Tabby is such a choreography taskmaster. Lift! Spin! Dip! Again! It was a work out. And it was a blast.
Becky took pictures there. She put up a small photo set with a ton of fun props. Like more than one group of girls walked past the set and squeeeeed! in delight at the fans, boas, umbrellas et al that she brought. The props were constantly being borrowed to wear on the dance floor. And Becky really enjoyed doing the photography. She got some great shots. I think you can find some samples at Magical Moments photography by Becky on Facebook.
Tabby is such a choreography taskmaster. Lift! Spin! Dip! Again! It was a work out. And it was a blast.
King v. Burwell
I gotta' get this one out of the way before posting the fun one I intended to. This is just what I've got on my mind after listening to the news this morning, and I've got to say it to get it off my mind.
I try to be fair about politics. I try to recognize that people are not generally stupid. They make what they believe to be the best available choices given the information and circumstances they have to work with.
Even today's absurd Supreme Court case over Obamacare. We all know that subsidies were intended to be given to anyone in the US who needed them to afford health insurance. That was one of the basic assumptions of the whole individual mandate debate. We can (and should, IMO) continue to debate the specific parameters of "need" and "afford" ... but to try and argue that the law intentionally shut out people in states that opted to use the Federal exchange is absolutely absurd. Republicans are totally grasping at straws.
Even still, I recognize that the parties on the Republican side of the case are simply representing their constituents. They have a responsibility to try whatever they can, even just dumb procedural moves, to achieve what their constituents want to have done. I would expect Democrats to do the same were the roles reversed and a law I found offensive was championed and passed by Republicans.
Having said that. At some point don't you just have to admit that you lost this one, man? Obamacare isn't going away. I think we can all agree it's not perfect. We live in an imperfect world, run by imperfect human beings just trying to do their best. We're not going to get a perfect law. Couldn't your time be better spent working with your fellow Congressmen (maybe even find common ground with someone across the aisle, crazy as that sounds) to improve Obamacare rather than trying, and failing, time after time after time after time after ... you get the idea ... to repeal or somehow ruin the law wholesale?
I try to be fair about politics. I try to recognize that people are not generally stupid. They make what they believe to be the best available choices given the information and circumstances they have to work with.
Even today's absurd Supreme Court case over Obamacare. We all know that subsidies were intended to be given to anyone in the US who needed them to afford health insurance. That was one of the basic assumptions of the whole individual mandate debate. We can (and should, IMO) continue to debate the specific parameters of "need" and "afford" ... but to try and argue that the law intentionally shut out people in states that opted to use the Federal exchange is absolutely absurd. Republicans are totally grasping at straws.
Even still, I recognize that the parties on the Republican side of the case are simply representing their constituents. They have a responsibility to try whatever they can, even just dumb procedural moves, to achieve what their constituents want to have done. I would expect Democrats to do the same were the roles reversed and a law I found offensive was championed and passed by Republicans.
Having said that. At some point don't you just have to admit that you lost this one, man? Obamacare isn't going away. I think we can all agree it's not perfect. We live in an imperfect world, run by imperfect human beings just trying to do their best. We're not going to get a perfect law. Couldn't your time be better spent working with your fellow Congressmen (maybe even find common ground with someone across the aisle, crazy as that sounds) to improve Obamacare rather than trying, and failing, time after time after time after time after ... you get the idea ... to repeal or somehow ruin the law wholesale?
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