Snow!

Ben needed to be picked up from work about 9:30ish tonight.  It's been snowing pretty fiercely all afternoon, so I figured I'd give myself a few extra minutes to drive slowly and left about 9:10.

I promptly got stuck at the top of our driveway.  And by "at the top", I mean 2 feet out of the garage.  But you know, especially on pristine new snow, it's deceptive how much drifting happens at the top of the driveway.  I cleared that away and sure enough, it was at least 12 inches deep there and less deep as you went further down the driveway.

So I got the car backing down the driveway ... and got stuck at the bottom of the drive.  I mean good and stuck.  Hit the snow on the road and slid right  into the curb in front of our mailbox.

As I was digging that out, Ben called from Tundra Lodge to let us know the hotel was putting up employees for the night because the roads are unfit to drive on.

Queue one of our neighbors getting stuck in the snow driving up the street.  Her brothers came out to help her get her car in the drive, then they came over and helped me.  By now Becky had come out to help clear our drive and dig our car out.  With the neighbors help we got the car half way up the drive.  I only stopped at 1/2 way up because snow had piled up on the rear window and, as I was backing in, I couldn't see where I was going.  Cleared things off, got back in the car, slid back to the bottom of the drive.

Ugh.  More clearing, got the car turned around, drove it forward this time and got it back in.  One hour in our driveway.  Ugh.

I'm really glad Tundra Lodge is putting Ben up overnight. I don't think I could have gotten across town to pick him up.

Band Concert

I sometimes play Magic with a group of folks.  We officially get together every other Wednesday night for a few hours.  It's a lot of fun.  Not everyone makes it every time, but somewhere around 6-10 usually do.  I'd like to make it every time, but realistically I shoot for about once a month.  Today was going to be that day for me ... but Ben had his Christmas band concert tonight.

The concert was good.  I mean, it was a high school band so it sounded like a high school band.  On the final number, a piece called Winter Storm, or something like that, Ben got to play timpani and he sounded fantastic.

The concert was really short.  In past years, each of the school's bands played about 15-20 minutes or so.  It would last a total of about an hour.  There's just not room in the auditorium to accomodate all the attendees, though. So this year they split it up.  The auditorium was a little over half full for the one band and they got to play for a full 1/2 hour.

Last year Ashwaubenon approved a school funding referendum to build a new auditorium.  It should be done by next year and will have the capacity to support a concert with all the bands again.  It'll be nice.

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.

Happy Birthday Ben!

Kind of a late post, but this guy just recently turned 12!