Seven Quick Takes-- In Which Our Geekiness Becomes Apparent

I'm joining the "Seven Quick Takes" posts over at This Ain't the Lycium by Kelly Mantoan. Check out her blog, she's been writing a lot longer than I have, and her writing is awesome. :)


1.) We Just Spent a LOT of Money on Games

For our anniversary gift to each other, we proved once and for all our nerdiness and spent $65 and bought the core rule book for Deadlands, (an RPG, or Role Playing Game. Think Dungeons and Dragons, but in the Old West). We'll have to find a group of people willing to play with us, but I think once we do it'll be a lot of fun.

For Father's Day, Chris requested a game called Magical Maze for about $45 (we're weird. When we buy gifts for each other, there's a whole conversation that happens and it's a joint decision and process). So we've got that one coming too.

We've been playing games more often lately, and I think the development is a welcome one. We're actually sitting down and talking to each other--never really a bad thing. We even got a more simplified RPG called Roll for Shoes that we play with our pre-school son (he's in it mainly because he gets to roll dice and not for the story telling aspects...that's ok, got to start somewhere).

We also just got a bunch of classic kid's board games for our son's fourth birthday (Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders). Got to raise the kid up right.

2.) I Painted My Front Porch! 

I added these pretty little circle shapes to the inside of the top rail on our front porch.

I like the overall effect, I think it makes it look a little more whimsical. And I've been itching to paint stuff on this house ever since we moved in a couple years ago, so it's exciting to finally get to do that.

3.) Bookworms Shall Rule the World

I now have two library cards, to two different libraries.

We've been going to the county library, about a quarter hour's drive from our house, for the past couple of years. I love this library, because it's not really just a library, but also a sort of community center. There's toys in the children's section (there's actually also a separate toy room just for toddlers and their parents), story times, classes and clubs (including nutrition, child development, computer printing, and robotics classes, and a Dungeons and Dragons club led by one of the librarians), and events during the summer like movies, toddler dance parties, and craft sessions for kids. For a (honestly kind of poverty-stricken) community like ours, it's a HUGE resource and a real benefit to the people here.

The downside is that it's only about ten years old, so the book selection is...ok, but not great. It's getting better all the time, but there's really no inter-library loan, so what you see on the shelves is what you get.

Enter joining the Corpus Christi Library system. For the very reasonable price of $12.50, I get six months of being able to request any book in any library in the system, and check up to 20 of them out at a time. The city network of libraries has way more books than the county library. I decided it was worth the gamble to pay for half a year and give it a shot.

So far I've requested three books and had to tear myself away from just browsing the online book catalog for hours, so yeah..pretty sure I'll be carrying two cards from now on.

4.) Summer Adjustments


Chris is off work and home for the summer, which is great!! I'm really happy he's home all day, and I like having him around.

It's also hard, because our normal routine is having to be tweaked to add in another adult who's also responsible for making decisions, and who wants to do and prioritize things different ways than I would do and prioritize them. So we're having to learn how to work as a team and not step on each other's toes and all that marriage /relationship/ parenting stuff.

It also makes practicing NFP harder, because, you know, we're around each other ALL DAY now...that can be either a good or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

5.) I Made Tomato Sauce 

We got a $3 flat box full of ripe tomatoes from our local produce salvage store. We sliced and ate as many fresh as we could (well...Chris and the kids did. I actually can't eat raw tomatoes for some reason), but we still had some starting to go bad, so I cooked all of them up into sauce. First time I've ever made it not from a can, so that was kind of neat. We got this jar and a smaller mason jar full.



6.) Lord of The Rings RPG

For those of you not familiar with RPGs, the best way to describe them are as group story telling sessions where one guy is the narrator and the rest of the players are characters in the story. You have dice that determine how powerful or successful your actions are (swinging a sword, casting a spell, etc)  and character sheets that keep you honest as to what your particular character is capable of (for example, whether your character is a healer or a warrior, etc-- each type has unique skill sets) so that you actually have to work as a team and problem solve in order to advance the story. Contrary to popular (Chick tract misinformed) belief, the narrator (commonly called the Game Master) does not control the actions of the players, but rather, controls the people, environments, and objects that the players interact with.  It's actually a ton of fun.

Chris has started a Lord of the Rings themed RPG with my younger (teenage) brothers to play together over the summer. Hopefully I'll get to sit in on a couple sessions and listen in. I won't be playing this time around, but the games can still be a ton of fun to listen to, even if you're not playing yourself.


7.) She Got Up Here By Herself...Pray for Me. 

We've evidently reached the 'death defying climb' stage.

Gulp.



That's All, Folks!! Be sure to check out the rest of this week's Quick Takes.