Geh. . . I hate trying to come up with a title for these things. . . “In-House gaming”? WTF?

Anyway. . .

Back when we lived on Rule Street, we had this great multi-use game table that we kept in the upstairs den. We bought it for the kids for Christmas 2004, but we never really had a great place to put it until we made room for it. The game table was magic — We went from a family of computer and video game junkies to a group of interacting, family folks. Many evenings were spent playing fooz-ball, pool, ping-pong, and air hockey. This simple, silly little thing really brought our family together.

When we moved, we put everything, including the game table into storage, and we had to live in a motel for 2 months while we waited for our new house to be completed. Living in the motel was great, though. We were living practically on top of each other (2 parents, a 15 year old girl, and a 13 year-old boy), but the lack of privacy was made up for by the closeness of the family. We watched TV together, went for walks together, and played games together. Everything was packed away, so we had to rely on each other for entertainment.

We finally moved into our new home in November of last year. It was an exciting time, and we enjoyed unpacking and finding places for everything.

Well. . . almost everything.

Anyway, once we got settled in, we had the holidays to contend with, which is always a stressful, but fun time. Afterwards, we started settling in to our old routine. I mean, our old routine — the one where Aaron would go into his room to play his playstation, Amber would watch TV, Cindy would play computer and watch TV, and I would play on the computer. In other words, we drifted apart once again.

So, the wife and I decided to bring the magic back into our home. We didn’t really have a place for the game table, and I had even considered selling it or giving it away. Cindy reminded me that we didn’t have a place for it in the old house either until we made a place for it. She was right, so we made a place for our magic game table.

Now we are breaking out of the old, bad, habits once again. The game table is irresistable. More irresistable than the TV. More irresistable than the computer or the playstation. We have started playing together as a family once again.

Its such a simple thing, but if it brings us closer together, then who am I to argue against the illogic of it. Now excuse me, I need to practice. Amber is the fooz-ball queen, and I need to beat her.

Thanks to Kathleen over at Unsettled for the link!

I’m as happy as a mollusc!

There is a little Newsstand in the center of town on Main Street. I was talking to the proprietor last week after wandering in there looking for some decent pipe tobacco. Currently, there is no place within 75 miles of town to get any decent tobacco, pipes, or anything pipe-smoking related. Even this little shop, which has the best selection around, is very limited in its inventory.

However, the guy who owns the newsstand said that he was transforming his little store into a smoke shop. He told me he was going to slowly start getting in a greater variety of cigars (which I don’t care about) and pipe tobaccos.

That was last week. Today, I wandered into the shop after work, and . . . Behold!. . . a new selection of Dunhill tobaccos. They had Elizabethan Mixture, Early Morning Smoke, Apertif, Nightcap, and Three Year Matured Virginia.

As you can see from the picture, I purchased a tin of Three Year Matured. I was in my truck at the time, and, since it was after work, I was about a quarter of the way through a nice pipeful of tobacco. I was so excited about the new tobacco, though, that I did a pipe-smoking-no-no. . . I emptied out my partially smoked pipe, and loaded it with the new stuff.

The taste was subtle and earthy. It had that rich virginia tobacco taste, well-mellowed with age Someone who was used to smoking aromatics (vanilla, cherry, etc) may have found the flavor bland, but I found it delightful and clean. Overall, a fine, subtly-complex tobacco treat.

I’ve added some new pictures to my photo album. You can view them on my Photo Album Site.

Fog hugs a river in Winchester, NH

Aaron (left) and his friend, Brady, goofing off in the bleachers

We met JoAnne and Eric almost 2 years ago when my daughter, Amber, who was then 14, answered an ad in the paper for babysitting. JoAnne and Eric have a 3 year old austitistic son, and they were very impressed with how mature and responsible Amber was. When school started again, JoAnne asked my wife, Cindy, if she would babysit for her, and she agreed. Friendship blossomed, yada yada, and then followed dinner parties and couples’ nights with the four of us.

Yesterday, we threw JoAnne, who we call “Jo-Jo” — and sometimes “Mojo Jo-Jo” — a birthday party at our house. It was nicer than any party we would throw for ourselves, because JoAnne and Eric don’t have a lot of money, and Eric is. . . well, I never thought I would meet a guy who was less romantic than me, but Eric is it. So Jo-Jo had never gotten a really nice birthday party. Cindy cooked a chicken dinner and baked a cake. After dinner, Jo-Jo got to go on a birthday “scavenger hunt”, where she got a clue, and then she had to find a present. Attached to a present was a clue that would lead her to her next present. There were a total of 10 presents (most of them inexpensive, fun, presents – candybars and assorted knick-knacks, and such).

The climax came when she reached the last present. We bought her a locket that said “mom” and had a pink rose on it. Inside we had put a small picture of her son. When Jo-Jo started crying after opening this gift, we knew we had done well.

Joanne getting choked up over her present

Afterwards, we had cake and ice cream. It was a lot of fun, and a good time was had by all.

My 13 year old son, Aaron, needed my help with a science project. The project was simple — It wasn’t like we had to build a volcano or anything.

In this experiment, which he selected himself, he was to determine whether cats prefered the color red or the color green. The setup was also simple. We took a length of red yarn and a length of green yarn and dangled it in front of one of our cats. Whichever piece of yarn they pawed first was to be the “preference” for that experiment. Aaron was to run the experiment 10 times and record the results.

We started with our black cat, Sierra. Sierra was the youngest cat and she would attack anything that moves. . . or so we thought. Sierra, the cat who wakes me up at night when she attacks my feet that are moving under my bedsheets, would have nothing to do with a piece of yarn that was dangled in front of her. Regardless of the color. She made a half-hearted swing at the green yarn twice, which we took as a positive read for green, but she wouldn’t even look at the yarn after that.

Next, we tried one of the twin tiger cats, Yin (can guess what her twin’s name is?). Yin was slightly less bored with the task and actually managed to swat at the yarn through 4 different runs of the experiment (she attacked 2 reds and 2 greens) before giving it up for a bad career.

We spotted Yang, the other twin tiger cat, but she ran for cover as soon as she saw us coming at her. We went back to Sierra and tried to trick her. We layed the strings across the bedroom doorway and closed the door, with her on the other side. Aaron stayed on the other side to observe while I pulled on the strings through the door (so Sierra could see the strings moving, but couldn’t see me). She swatted at them a couple more times and then gave up.

For the next half-hour we tried to get the cats to play with yarn — a task that you wouldn’t think would take much effort, but you would be wrong. In frustration, Aaron gave up and said he would just “fudge” the last two data points. Being a man of science who understands the importance of accurate data. . . I told him that if he did that, I didn’t want to hear about it (okay, I’m a bad dad, but I was awefully frustrated too. .. stupid cats!).

And so, scientific progress goes on.