As we golfed, we marveled at the glowing courses and tried our best to get the balls in the hole.  NHL even got a hole in one.  At one point, though, I realized that the people in front of us were pausing after every hole to write down their scores.  It occurred to me that I never even considered doing this.

I think of mini-golf as a fun activity.  The competition is with myself – seeing how few shots I can make a particular hole in – not with my fellow players.  Keeping score might also make NHL anxious if he doesn’t do well on a particular hole.  Besides, both NHL and I have a tendency for getting the ball near the hole and then making many, many failed putts.  In the end, I find mini-golf a lot more fun without the score keeping.

When you play mini-golf, do you keep score?

When it comes to conversing with people, I have very little patience.  This has nothing to do with the people I’m talking to, mind you.  It’s just that talking to people makes me nervous.  I have to remember their name, past conversations we might have had, talk about topics I may or may not have an interest in, and keep in mind all of the social rules that come naturally to those who don’t lie on the autistic spectrum.  I might be sitting there talking, but mentally I’ve bolted for the door and am halfway down the stairs.

(Side note: I’m constantly amazed how B can recall conversations months or years later.  In general, I have a very short conversation-memory. Who I talk to about what tends to fade quickly most times.)

However, crowds don’t seem to present much of a problem to me.  This is actually quite odd as people with Asperger’s can find crowds an overwhelming sensory experience.  However, while there might be chaos all around me, I can usually filter it out and hyper-focus in on what I’m doing at the moment.  I just regard people as moving obstacles to avoid when walking or to wait behind if on line.  Social expectations are low.  So long as I don’t cut in front of anybody or knock anyone over, I’m fine.  I don’t need to know the name or interests of the person in front of me.  It’s perfectly fine for me to retreat into my own head and ignore everyone walking around me.

All my "crowd patience" goes out the window if the crowd is a party, however. Parties aren’t about impersonally navigating past people to get to a destination. They are social events and all of those conversational social rules apply. Furthermore, I can’t just treat the people around me as if they were faceless obstacles. Anyone near me is a potential conversation. The entire situation quickly moves from uncomfortable to overwhelming.

This doesn’t mean I *WANT* to leave, mind you.  In fact, I often *WANT* to join in but the more I join in, the more uncomfortable I feel until I *NEED* to leave.

The give-and-take between my social anxiety and crowd patience can make outings quite "interesting."  Will the activity tend towards the impersonal crowds enough that I will be able to put up with it?  Or will it be social enough that I’ll begin to get nervous?  Add in NHL’s social/sensory concerns and anxiety and it’s no wonder why our social calendar can be tough to manage.

NOTE: The crowd image above is by ainlondon and is available via MorgueFile.com.

Luckily, while browsing the supermarket shelves, I stumbled upon Pacific Foods’ mushroom broth.  Now pho isn’t usually made with a mushroom broth, but the vegetarian pho recipes I read mentioned cooking the broth with mushrooms before straining them (and some of the other ingredients) out.

I decided to come up with a quick and easy pho recipe.  Now, I know this isn’t traditional pho.  That’s why I like calling it Faux Pho.  (That and I’m a big fan of alliteration thanks to years of watching Good Eats with Alton Brown.)

First, we start with our ingredients:

For the record, that’s 1 package of broccoli florets (around 12 oz), 2 packages of mushroom broth (64 fluid oz total), rice noodles (16oz), snow peas (about a big handful), and onions.  (In my case, I selected 2 small Vidalia onions thinking they’re sweeter and my kids might be more likely to eat them.)

First, I cooked the rice noodles according to the package directions (boil water, toss in noodles, cook for 4-5 minutes, drain and rinse),

Next, I trimmed the snow peas, sliced the onions into rings, and then sliced those rings in half.  Quick tip: to avoid the "onion cry", freeze your onions for a bit before slicing.  Not so much that you’re trying to cut into a frozen-solid onion, mind you, but just enough that the enzymes that make you cry don’t get released as much.

After that, I sautéed the onions in a little olive oil.  (I remade this yesterday and added some garlic too just because everything tastes better when cooked with garlic.)

When the onions began to caramelize, I tossed in the broth and increased the heat.

After the broth began to boil, I turned the heat down and tossed in the broccoli.

Two minutes later, I tossed in the snow peas.

A minute later, I removed the soup from the heat entirely and pho was ready to be served.

To assemble the pho, first put some rice noodles in a bowl.

Next, add some veggies from the soup pot.

Finally, top off with broth.

Serve with hoisin sauce and/or Sriracha sauce or neither if you prefer.  You could also toss some bean sprouts and/or jalapenos in just before serving depending on how you like your pho.

So how does it taste?  Well, it won’t ever replace real pho, that’s for sure.  Don’t make this and expect that you’re going to get the same pho that you’d get in a good Vietnamese restaurant.  (If they made pho this way, they wouldn’t be a good Vietnamese restaurant.)  Still, it’s a decent facsimile especially if you only have a short time to prepare dinner, are craving some pho, and can’t go to a Vietnamese restaurant to get some.

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?

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?

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.

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!

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!

The next day, the throat pain had minimized, but in it’s place was a bad cough.  (Yes, just like NHL’s.)  The coughing was so bad, that I began to feel nauseous.  The day after that, the coughing remained, along with congestion and some trouble with my balance.

I believe I know the problem behind all of these symptoms:  Allergies.  The flowers are in bloom and with them pollen levels are rising.  We’re in the midst of what I like to call "spring snow."  Big white bundles of pollen drift through the air like a snowstorm.  It might look pretty if it didn’t wreck such havoc with my sinuses.

Do you suffer from allergies?  How do you handle it when the pollen attacks?

NHL recently had a band and chorus concert.  As we approached the school, we could tell he was nervous.  He kept insisting that we were going to be late and got angry when we wouldn’t let him storm into the building and instead insisted he remain calm.  (For the record, we were about fifteen minutes early and it was going to take us only one minute to get in the building.)

As B went to drop NHL off in the area that he’d wait until it was his turn, JSL and I procured some seats.  B took a long time coming back because, apparently, NHL’s anxiety was getting worse, not better.  I definitely sympathized with him.  I clearly remember the anxiety I felt before my grade school orchestra and chorus concerts.

As NHL’s group’s turn neared, we could see him by the door with the rest of the kids who were ready to perform.  He was having trouble standing still and we could tell he was talking non-stop.  Two classic signs of NHL-anxiety-overload.

The doors opened and NHL came in.  He was in the back and the band performed their songs.  NHL seemed to do well (though, to be honest, I couldn’t see him that well from where we were.)  Then they left.  NHL wasn’t finished, though.  It was chorus time.

This time, NHL was situated right in front.  The first two songs went well, but then NHL ran into a roadblock.  He began to cough.  His allergies have been bothering him and although he’s taking medicine, he’s still prone to coughing fits.  We could see his face go red as he struggled to breathe, stay calm, and keep from coughing enough to sing.  At times, it looked like he might lose it entirely and begin to cry.

He didn’t, though.  He powered through and sang louder.  He even began to dance a little while he rocked out to the songs.  Yes, his coughing fits came back every so often, but he didn’t let them slow him down.  He just coughed into his arm and then returned to his singing.

I was in the stands videoing the whole thing with a big smile on my face.  THAT is why I’m proud of NHL.  He’s a talented kid and when he doesn’t give up he’s able to rise above what holds him back.