February 10-16
by Scott Hardie on February 17, 2013
I don't really blog much about my day-to-day existence because it feels too mundane. But life is made up of those little days, and we don't get an accurate picture of each other's lives if we only discuss the big events. Here's a snapshot of my life last week.
Sunday: Chores and errands. I spent a couple of hours making five tournament goos for the week, but apparently I didn't spend long enough, because they turned out too hard. Bummer.
Monday: Prep time for a new chapter of Gothic Earth. In need of an idea that I could flesh out in a hurry, I returned to a room-by-room house-exploration adventure model that I had used in the past, with room tiles from the game Betrayal at House on the Hill. The good thing about that model is that each room writes itself: I look at the card, come up with a little challenge or dilemma for the players, come up with a riddle maybe, and call it done. The bad thing about that model is that I don't know which door each player is going to go through next, so I have to plan out all 44 rooms in advance. I was up until 3am writing the game, and I still wound up cutting off the basement because I just didn't have time to plan that part.
Tuesday: Playing Gothic Earth. No time to eat dinner. Running the game is generally such a creative adrenaline rush that I don't notice how sleepy or hungry I am, which really helps on nights like this.
Wednesday: Hard day at work. I have a 425-hour website build to finish by the end of March, except there's only 303 hours left in the project budget thanks to overruns during the planning phase, so I'm going to have to get very creative with how I pull off what was promised. That problem is further complicated by there being only 197 working hours left during those weeks. I'm going to have to put in a ton of overtime for the next six weeks (I'll be mostly quiet around here), and Wednesday was my first taste of the project's intensity.
Thursday: Valentines Day. It felt good to treat Kelly to expensive dinner out at an Italian place that she's been asking to revisit. But my mood dropped when it sank in that she didn't get me anything.
Friday: Already depressed from being forgotten on Valentines Day, I was left behind by the guys I had made lunch plans with. Awesome. Kelly went out of her way to cheer me up with a great Chinese dinner out, and I'm so grateful to have her. On a tip from friends, we also found a local farm market with tons of fresh produce and delicious Amish meats and cheeses in the deli.
Saturday: Our group put aside a day to play the ridiculously elaborate game Arkham Horror that I recently got my own copy of. Two hours of setup, followed by nearly nine hours of play. So much fun! We won in the end, and I hope we were doing it right because I remember the game being harder than that. We have a new friend who wants to join us for board games, but this game would be like jumping into the deep end of the pool, so we'll make other plans to include her soon.
I have today and tomorrow to rest, then it's deep into work projects for a month and a half. Busy, busy...
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Weight-Loss Wednesday: The Stress Test
Two weeks ago, I wound up in the hospital for what I worried was a heart attack, but turned out to be back spasms caused by too much weight on my frame. Either way, the lesson was ominous: Lose weight, or spend a lot more time in the hospital in the future. I would like to document my progress here on Wednesdays as I undertake this long journey. Go »Head & Shoulders, Knees & Toes
You can look at this as a parody if you wish (I'm no fan of U2), but mostly it's just silly: (link) Go »Grousing About the Mouse
Kelly and I still have our annual passes to Disney World, but we've had more trouble going recently because of disabilities that slow us down. A friend suggested joining a busy Facebook group for Disney World fans like us who struggle with disabilities and share advice with each other. I clicked the button to join, and up popped a 4-question form asking questions that are required for membership. Go »Blood Lines
A few weeks ago, I dropped a glass bottle of salad dressing on the kitchen floor, making the house smell like vinaigrette for a day. Today, I stepped on the last errant bit of glass hiding in a crack of tile by the corner. Better my foot than the cat's paw, I guess; I don't lick between my toes. Go »So Long, NCSA Primer
Someone asked me for help learning HTML today. I turned to my trusted traditional source, the good old primer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, but alas, it has finally been removed after all these years. This was one of the major how-to guides in the early years of the web, and it's the very guide that I used to teach myself HTML one weekend in 1996, from which this very site you're reading has since evolved. Go »
