New Game: Carcassonne

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Meeples clowning around before our first game of Carcassonne

 

We love games at our house. I’ve always been more of a Rummy or Yahtzee kind of guy. I enjoy simple rules and easy game play where your turn comes around fast. Although I have been known to promote a rousing game of Schafskopf or Russian Bank in my time. 

My oldest son loves involved, intricate and complicated board and card games. Thankfully, his latest game is more of a compromise in my favor. Carcassonne is a cool little game of placing tiles and building cities and roadways. The rules and play are simple but there’s a surprising amount of strategy in where to place the tiles and whether to put meeples on them after they’re placed.

I love games that can bring the whole family together. In this case, my wife even agreed to play with us. And with a whole bunch of expansions to buy, the game will hopefully stay fresh for a while.

 

A meeples after party

Evil Breakfast

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I felt a strange, villainous thrill this morning while making breakfast for my two kids. I was making them bowls of creamy buckwheat cereal. After it’s cooked I usually add raisins, banana, raspberries and cinnamon. It was the cutting of the banana that inspired my inner dark side on this otherwise bright Saturday morning.

To explain this, I have to tell you what I ate for breakfast. My typical breakfast (which this morning’s was) consisted of half of a jumbo avocado, a heap of ground golden flax seed, ground turkey, fresh lemon juice, rosemary, pepper salt and olive oil, all mixed together. When I cut the avocado in half, it inevitably leaves a thick smear of dark green on the blade.

This morning there was a good amount of avocado left on the knife. When I went to cut the banana, the avocado mash transferred to the white fruit, making a ghoulish design.

I knew that if either of my kids saw this or even heard about it, they would revolt and refuse its inclusion in their food. I’ll never know what made me cut the banana without first wiping the knife blade. But once the deed was done, I knew I would get away with it. With all of the colored ingredients I put together in the bowl that little bit of green would just blend right in.

So I mixed it up and gave it to them. I smiled a crooked smile as I watched them shovel in the very thing they would have rejected if they had been aware of it. I felt somehow empowered by my secret activity. And I knew, right then, that I would do it again.

It’s Always Possible to be Positive

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I found myself in an oncology waiting room with my wife yesterday. Thankfully we were only there for her to see a hematologist about a much less serious situation than cancer.

We were told to arrive 30 minutes before our scheduled appointment to allow time for filling out paperwork. Then the appointment time came and went. We ended up waiting for a total of one hour before seeing the doctor.

But the entire time we were waiting I couldn’t bring myself to get frustrated or annoyed. The patients that kept coming in stopped me by their attitudes when they were checking in and being taken back for appointments.

When the check-in staff or nurses asked how they were doing, all but a few responded with phrases like “I’m doing great, how about you?” or “I’m keeping positive” or “I’m better than yesterday”.

The relatively short amount of time I spent sitting reading a magazine is nothing compared to the time most of these people spend in doctor’s offices waiting and getting treated. When you see others who keep a positive attitude in the face of serious illness, it puts your own discomforts in perspective.

Too often I find myself complaining either inwardly or outwardly about minor inconveniences. But the patients I was overhearing taught, through their attitudes, that whatever the situation it’s always possible to be positive.

The Secret Life of Dandelions

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It’s unfortunate that so many people see dandelions as nothing more than weeds. Yes, they’re incredibly invasive and don’t make for an attractive lawn most of the year. But they do have redeeming qualities.

First of all, when they flower they add a nice pop of yellow color to the landscape. It’s easy to see them and ignore them because of how common they are. But if you get really close, they reveal a tiny, intricate and unique landscape of their own.

Dandelion Closeup
Dandelion Closeup
Dandelion Closeup

Besides visual enjoyment, dandelions are a great food source too. The leaves make for a slightly bitter but tasty salad component. They pack a lot of nutrition like vitamin A and C, fiber and a whole host of other nutrients.

My favorite part of the dandelion is the root. I regularly drink roasted dandelion root tea. It has a great flavor and there might be some evidence that it has anti-cancer properties.

So this spring and summer, when you see those white seed heads popping up all over the place, pick a handful and blow the seeds all over your neighborhood. That guy screaming at you with the Roundup bottle in his hand won’t like it. But what does he know anyway.

Categorically Uncategorized

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Ideally, a blog like this one should have every post neatly organized into a succinct set of categories. This kind of organization makes it easier for readers to find the posts that interest them according to topic. But there are always those pieces that just don’t fit neatly into any of the blog’s established categories.

By default, most blogs contain the catch all category called uncategorized. Uncategorized is where one off blog posts go to die. It’s the anti-category that, when come upon by an unsuspecting reader, screams of an uncaring or ignorant author.

In the case of this site there really are posts that don’t belong in any of the already too many categories I have. But those posts still make up an important part of what this site is. While I do have a carousel of topics I enjoy writing on, sometimes I want to hop off the ride and see what else the carnival has to offer.

I wasn’t going to try sticking every oddball post into an ill-fitted category. Instead, I decided to change “Uncategorized” into a real category that gives some indication of the atopical nature of the posts it contains.

After thinking on it for some time, I came up with the play-on-words Composts. I like it because like a bit of this and bit of that goes into a garden compost to make a fertile soil amendment, so these posts, when taken together, create a fertile environment for this blog to grow. Time will tell if it stays the default category name. But for now, I’m going with it.

Unnecessary and Inefficient

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Sometimes I just don’t understand why some people make the decisions they do. They jump out of perfectly good airplanes, put toxic substances into their bodies and run red lights. But today I encountered the result of a past decision even more heinous than any of those.

When we moved into our current house a few months ago we discovered the previous owners had removed the dining room light. My wife has been gently prodding me to put it back up ever since. She usually does this through subtle hints like “could you do it for my Christmas present?” Or “how about for New Years?” Or “maybe Valentine’s Day?”   Thinking back I probably could have saved a lot of money on presents and flowers by just being a little proactive.

One of the reasons I put it off so long was because of the previous owner’s method of removing it in the first place. They didn’t disconnect it at the ceiling and take it down in one piece. Instead they unscrewed the bottom of the fixture, cut the wires that went to all five lights and pulled the wire out through the body and stem. Then, without even disconnecting it from the supply wires they shoved five feet of lamp wire into the junction box in the ceiling and covered it up.

I ended up having to rewire the entire thing. This wasn’t complicated but it felt so unnecessary and inefficient, like jumping out of a plane. I’m not sure why I decided to randomly tackle the project tonight. But at least now I can see what I’m typing. And my wife’s happy.

The Symbol of Easter

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A lot of people consider the cross to be the ultimate symbol of Easter. That, or a tie-died hard-boiled egg which I still don’t entirely understand. But by itself, the cross is just a symbol of death and the despair of hope lost. The symbol that really represents what Easter means is the grave stone that was rolled away to reveal an empty tomb.

Death couldn’t contain Jesus. In fact, death couldn’t do anything at all. Jesus submitted to death willfully as a sacrifice for the sins of man. But it was only for a time. And by rejecting death and rising after three days, Jesus showed his deity and allowed all of us to share in an eternal life apart from death.

That’s why we can truly say Happy Easter!

Time Keeps on Slipping

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I still can’t seem to get used to daylight savings time. Everything just feels late. Every time I look at the clock it seems like it should an hour earlier than it is, which of course, it should. The upshot of this is that I always feel behind with my work and everything else.

I started working on a few drawings today and then all of a sudden it was dinner time and the day’s almost over. To compound things, I woke up late this morning. No one else seems to think 7:00 am is late but what do they know?

I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about what little time I have. Instead, I really should just be making sure I fill my limited time with the right things. Now the trick is figuring out what the right things are.

A Pen in the Hand is Worth Two You Can’t Find

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Pens and pencils are constantly going missing in my house. The cry of “where did my pen/pencil go?” followed by a drawer opening and a new one being taken out of the package is common.

Sometimes the old ones show up again but more often than not they’re just gone. We’ve all come to accept this phenomenon. And rather than try to be responsible and keep track of our writing implements, our solution is simply to buy more pens and pencils – a lot more.

A few weeks ago my wife found a spectacular deal on Amazon for Uni Ball 207 pens. We bought enough multi packs to last a lifetime. I like to do a lot of my writing lying down so I also sprung for a pack of Uni Power Tank pens which are pressurized. So now we have an assortment of Bold 207, 207 and Micro 207 pens.

While we bought them for writing, I’ve found that the three sizes work really well for pen sketching. The different thicknesses lend themselves well to weighting a sketch appropriately or producing different shading effects.

While they’re not the most high-end pens and they aren’t perfect for drawing or writing, they’re great for casual sketches and notes. Besides, the cheap pen you have is better than the nice one you can’t find.

How to Make WAV Sound Clips for your Computer

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Making sound clips to replace your computer’s system sounds is really easy. All you need is an audio file that you want to extract the clip from and the free Audacity software.

Step 1. Download and install Audacity.

Step 2.  Launch Audacity. Click File -> Open and browse to your audio file.

Step 3.  Select the portion of the track that you want to make into a clip.

Step 4. Click File -> Export -> Export Selected Audio…

Step 5. Save your audio to your preferred location.

That’s all there is to it! Now you can make .wav files to use for adding custom Windows system sounds or anything else.