For the longest time, I’ve published blog posts on a Monday – Friday schedule.  I’ve found some drawbacks, however.  There are days when I struggle on what to write about.  Other days, I’ll be up until well past midnight working on blog posts.  It’s gotten to the point that I don’t have much time for anything else.

I definitely don’t want to stop blogging, but I just can’t keep up this every weekday post schedule.  Plenty of bloggers post on weekly schedules or even less.  After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve decided to cut my schedule back for awhile.  I’m going to only post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

This should give me some extra time to work on other projects and avoid bloggy burnout.

How often do you think someone should post to their blog?

Last Saturday, NHL and I played a game of Nuclear War with each other.  He launched missiles at me, I retaliated, millions were killed.  A fun time was had by all.  Of course, I’m not referring to actual war, but to the card game by Flying Buffalo named Nuclear War.

I was introduced to Nuclear War by a co-worker years ago.  We played a few games together and she even gave me a few cards (since she had so many).  I purchased some more and played a bit.  However, I didn’t have too many people that shared my interest and so the game wound up packed away.

Recently, I realized that NHL might be old enough to play the game with me.  Moreover, he’s shown himself to be just the kind of geek-in-training to enjoy this kind of card game.  So, after some obsessive searching to find just where I put the cards so long ago, I found some time to play with NHL.

The basic concept of the game is that each player represents a country.  Each player gets a series of cards representing their population and another series of cards representing their weaponry (along with propaganda and other cards with special abilities).  As players put their cards down and play them, they might convince members of the opposing country to defect to their country.  They might wreck havoc with the opposing country’s defense/offense.  Or, they might just drop a big missile on the other country and wipe out some of the population.

Each time a missile is dropped, dice are rolled to determine just how much carnage resulted.  Was the missile a dud?  Did it kill the number of people that the card says it killed?  (Missiles and warheads come with differing megaton ratings which means differing numbers of people killed.)  Or did the attacking player get lucky and double the damage?  Once the dice are rolled, a special six-sided die can be rolled.  This can either nullify the damage, worsen it, or even make the damage happen to the attacking country instead.  It’s a risk that makes the game more entertaining.  Do you stay with 3 million killed or roll the die and try for more?

To be perfectly fair, we didn’t play the game "properly."  I couldn’t remember all of the rules, the printed materials I had online didn’t have key points, and I was offline for Shabbat so I couldn’t just look them up online.  So we made the best of it and altered our play as I remembered items or made mental notes to play any second game with the remembered rules.  (I’ve since found the rules online and plan on printing them out to keep with the game.)  We also played with cards face up instead of face down so I could help NHL in his first game.  I made sure to play as if I couldn’t see his cards, though.

In the end, NHL beat me.  He obtained a bomber which dropped bomb after bomb on me.  Meanwhile, my bombs kept going dud or, worse, wound up hitting my own population.  After he launched a stealth bomber with a 100 megaton warhead at me, it was all but over.  One final missile finished me off.

This is usually where Nuclear War players can have "final retaliation."  They can put all of the missiles in their hand into play in one last chance for revenge.  It can kill off players who then launch their own final retaliations leading to no winners.  In my case, though, I only had 2 missiles at my disposal and they were weak ones.  Not nearly enough to eliminate NHL’s people.

This might seem like a violent game, but the carnage is very abstracted.  You "make change" of population cards the way one might make change of Monopoly money.  The game also teaches valuable skills such as planning (do I use my propaganda cards before anyone launches a missile – since they’re useless after – or do I launch missiles first to stop others from using propaganda on me?) and risk taking (do I roll the "extra damage die" to get more casualties even though I’m risking the ones I already have?).  It can even teach how nuclear conflict might not quite be the best way to resolve real life conflicts (see Final Retaliation).  It’s definitely a fun game and I can’t wait to play more games with him.  Maybe I’ll even beat him this time.

What card/board games do you play with your kids?

Part of the fun of being a geek is seeing the various toys that tap into your interests.  Recently, I saw a few toys that tapped into my inner geek.

First, was a Lego set.  I’ve seen sets like these before.  You get the pieces and instructions to build three different items with the same bricks.  In this case, you can build a hawk, then turn it into a beaver, and then turn it into a scorpion.  The geek in me loves the idea of building so many things and the frugal shopper in me sees a 3-in-1 set as a bargain.

Next up was a pair of Doctor Who items.  A 50th Anniversary game of Doctor Who and a set of Doctor figurines.  The latter came in a "TARDIS" box with information on each doctor and with one figure for each doctor.

Lastly, there was one toy I didn’t want.  I love superheroes, but this toy just struck me as wrong.

Superman on a plane?  Superman can fly.  Why would he need a plane?  This is almost as bad as the Superman Motorcycle that I saw recently as well.  ("I could fly to the crime in progress faster than a speeding bullet, but I think I’ll take my motorcycle instead and drive there at 45mph!")  This just strikes me as falling into the "needlessly commercialized toy" category and not the "cool geek toy" category.

Today would have been JSL’s birthday, but we cancelled it.  You see, he’s growing up too quickly.  We decided we liked 5-year-old JSL too much to give him up.  So we’re hitting the pause button and he’s staying 5 forever.

Rats, I seem to have misplaced the pause button. I know I had it here a second ago.

Well, it looks like JSL’s having his birthday after all.

This past year has been a big one for JSL.  He started it off in pre-K and not knowing many of his letters.  He is ending it a Kindergartener (but soon to be first grader) who not only knows all of his letters, but knows how to read and write stories as well! He’s also become adept at simple addition as well.

JSL has shown that he’s got a huge imagination.  He can entertain himself for a long time playing with toys on the floor or magnets on the refrigerator.  He makes up storylines and characters and acts out what they do.

He’s also turning into quite the little geekling.  He loves Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all things Disney, Transformers, playing on the computer/iPad, or reading books.  He also loves riding his bike around the block with me.  (I walk currently, but I’d love to get a bike to ride.)

I’m so proud of my not-so-little-anymore kid.  Happy birthday, JSL!

Yesterday, was Mother’s Day.  Of course, mothers deserve more than one day so I’m making my post today.

OK, it’s also because I don’t post on Sundays, but mother’s do deserve more than one day.

B, in particular, deserves at least 6 months. I’m not sure how the family would function without her. She drops the kids off at school, does the laundry, remembers which medications each child is taking and when their next dose is, picks the kids up from school, takes them to doctor’s appointments, runs errands, and more. Somehow, she also fits being a fantastic blogger/freelance writer/social media maven in there as well.

I’m in awe of all that she does for our boys and for me.  She’s the most amazing woman I know and every day  I find myself loving her more and more.

Unfortunately, with the hectic stresses of day-to-day life, "thank you’s" are often forgotten.  So I’m going to pause here and say Happy Mother’s Day, B, and thank you for all that you do.

To all the other mothers out there, I hope your Mother’s Day was a fantastic one!