Guys Game Night #2

Thursday was my second attempt at getting together a guys game night with my friends Pat & Alex. Though the first one was fun too, it was brought down by the main game of the night being incredibly boring. It's called Britannia and the gameplay follows the 1000 year struggle for control of Britain by several different warring factions. The big problem was it felt like the game was being played out in real time. Alex fell asleep, poor decisions were made and the game had to be called out of mercy.



This time was much better. I picked up a brand new game for the occasion, Puerto Rico. It is a fast paced, easy to learn but highly strategic game that I've been wanting to play for a while. Despite appearing otherwise, Alex came out with the surprise win in the end as he made some smart choice that neither Pat or I did anything to stop.

The most intense game of the night was Red November. This is a cooperative game about a bunch of gnomes working together to save their sub when it is constantly on the verge of collapse. The game finally beat us in a spectacular scene when my gnome got super drunk and fixed the engine at the very last second before it was going to blow only then for us all to be drowned in the next moment when the room we were all standing in flooded with high water, sealing our watery doom.

jwotd: gensen = nuclear submarine

Stop Motion Robot

I was looking for something to do last night and decided to do a stop motion video with some of my toys. It was really fun and I have some ideas to try for some new ones. Since it was my first try I just wanted to dive right in and not worry too much about making sure everything was perfect. I think it turned out pretty sweet.



jwotd: robotto = robot

Shiba Pic of the Week

I just noticed that I'm not posting nearly as much as I thought I was. If you look at the dates of the past three posts they have all been exactly ten days apart. To help get me more in the swing of posting I am implementing the Shiba pic of the week. I find our shiba inu Daku is very photogenic so I'm certain he will be a never ending resource for cute pictures.

Shiba Pic of the Week #1: Pillow Shiba!


jwotd: shitone = pillow

Holden Arboretum

Last Tuesday, we went to check out Holden Arboretum. Neither Crystal or I had ever heard of it before. I found out about it because Cleveland has one of those city passes for tourists and it was linked to from there. Now I feel I've been missing out on something for the past six years because I really enjoyed this place.

The best part of the arboretum was the butterfly garden. Even though there was not nearly as many butterflies as I would have hoped for, there were tons of beautiful flowers.






The arboretum was brimming with wildlife. Chipmunks, squirrels, frogs, dragonflies, and a family of geese and their goslings. I thought we gave the geese a fair amount of distance but as we were walking away from them there was definitely a goose sound that could only be interpreted as "you better walk away, you don't want a piece of me".


The ponds were teeming with frogs of every stage. Schools of the recently hatched, big tadpoles with and without limbs, and mature frogs.


It was a great day and it makes me think I've probably been missing out on some other cool things to do around Cleveland.

As a bonus, here is a cute picture of our friends' son, Owen.


jwotd: hiko = boy

Arkon Art Museum & Kendall Lake

Recently Crystal and I decided to try to make sure we have at least one day a week set aside for going out and doing something. It is just too easy to get caught up in other stuff and then the week is past and we've done nothing of note. So this is my solution to that, I like to call them Culture Days.
Our first Culture Day involved going to the Kent Fashion Museum, but no pictures were allowed and the building was ugly so there was nothing to post. Today turned out a bit better.

We started our day off by going to the Akron Art Museum.

It was nice but small and a bit overpriced. That seems to be the theme for Akron. We had previously went to the Akron Zoo and it too was small and a bit overprice.

On the way back we decided to check out Peninsula. The town didn't really seem to have anything to interest us so we drove around until we happened upon Kendall Lake.

Apparently, it is a man-made lake and currently under construction so it was not so much of a lake as a big muddy pit.

It was still a very lovely spot. We explored the area a bit and took some becoming shots of each other. It could not have been a better day to be out having fun.




jwotd: tanko = freshwater lake

S'more Cookies Please!

I made a new kind of cookie last night. I saw the recipe on my friend Kim's blog and I thought it looked so good I had to give them a try.


Don't they look good?

I think they turned out really good but I would definitely make some changes the next time. There is a lot going on with cookies already and 2 cups of chocolate chips make them awfully rich. A graham cracker cookie with a couple marshmallows on top sound like they would be tasty too.

jwotd: yaku = to bake