February 10-16 | Tragic Comedy

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 »

Newer Neighbors Upstairs

"That's the fucking truth!" "You're a fucking idiot!" "Shut the fuck up before I slap your ugly head!" Go »

Game Over

On paper, Game Over doesn't look promising: A vulgar, video-game-themed cartoon series on UPN that only lasted five episodes. But I rented it anyway, and somehow it managed to be entertaining and smarter than it needed to be, but maybe that was just the low expectations kicking in. I think the key to the show is that it actually respected its characters and cared for them as a family unit, instead of using them as empty vessels for punchlines (latter-year The SImpsons) or treating them with unmistakable contempt (Family Guy). Go »

Happiness, That's My Livelihood

Somehow I've agreed to teach HTML & PHP classes on Friday mornings. Two down, at least two to go. I enjoy teaching, and you know I enjoy making websites, but the getting-up-before-dawn-at-the-end-of-a-long-week part is agony. Go »

Windbag

I don't know what Polaroids he has of whom, but somehow Tom Skilling has elevated himself to some kind of all-important weather-broadcasting god. When I grew up in Chicago, I watched him gradually get a bigger and bigger budget for his animated graphics, and gradually get a larger and larger timeframe to deliver his dull reports. By the time I left town, he had a whole 20 minutes of the hour-long midday newscast for the fucking weather, and boy did he find trivia to fill it: Average dew points across Cook County on this day in 1854, theta-e temperature predictions for every Cubs home game next season, you name it. Go »

Cheesed

If life is about simple pleasures, does the return of Taco Bell's chili cheese burrito qualify? I don't know if it's nationwide, but they've returned on a wave of marketing around here. It was my favorite menu item a decade ago, until lack of counter space in the kitchen eliminated chili from a supposedly "Mexican" restaurant. Go »