Enough of that.  Can’t really get into the bowls this year anyway.

clay

He really likes The Miller and his Sons, which is odd since the song is sort of mean and is sung by an elderly man with no accompaniment.  Found that one on If You Ain’t Got The Do-Re-Mi another folkways disc.  Hopefully he won’t hate this music later since he likes it now, but I still like Jim Croce and that was one of my favorites at his age.

Jacene also got me NCAA Football 2009 for the PS3 which we got a month ago.  I got it yesterday and have played it a little.  It is much better then the Wii All-Play version it is pretty weak by comparison.  But that is expected.  I thought I had an issue with the game at first.  I downloaded the demo and while playing it anytime I was running plays I got a beeping noise in the background.  When the real game arrived, I got the same sound.  After a little testing of HDMI cables and such I found the UPS was to blame the PS3 was plugged into a battery backup outlet and the pull from the polygon maddness that happens when you are running plays was too much and causing the UPS to beep.  I only felt a little stupid.  Switching to a surge only outlet cleared that up.

clay

Oh, as for the post title…I am feeling especially old for this year’s birthday.  I am just crazy…or maybe it is the early onset of senility.  O…L…D

The picture below is one I took of John on the last day of school before the break.  He looks sweet in the mornings…sometimes.

Jacene

Jacene

Jacene

So John did a good job, with his part of the program (shown above). Most people have just been impressed he memorized the song. I was most impressed he opened his mouth and sang. His make-up made the next couple of songs a little strange with Jack Skellington running around during more traditional Christmas songs. Over all the show turned out well.

My camera work was the worst part.

clay

I decided to teach John how to play chess.  He got interested when I began reading Through the Looking Glass to him. It is based around chess where Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is based on a pack of cards.  After Alice goes through the looking glass she begins moving as a pawn.  While reading this I found out John did not know what a pawn was or how it moved.  So that was the spark that started this.  I spent a couple of afternoons teaching him how the pieces moved.  He kept asking when we could play a game.  The only snag we hit while moving the pieces was with the knight.  This was expected but after talking with a co-worker, I placed the knight in the middle of the board and placed the opposing pawns in the spaces where the knight could move.  Then I removed the pawns and had John tell me where the knight could move.  After two times through that he had it.

We played our first game on Friday afternoon, it did not take long for the game to be over.  And yes I won, and he got upset for a time.  We talked about it and he was ok with it and even laid his king down on his own.  Now I have been playing GNU Chess since my chess skills peaked when I was 10.  This also got me thinking about learning Go.  I am horrible at Go but hopefully I can pick it up enough to teach John. GNU Go wipes the wall with me.  I also want to try and similar game (well sort of) we have had for a while called Blokus. We have had it for a while but I think we have played it twice.  It is a 4 player game, I need to pick up the two player version so he and I can play or Jacene and I or you get the picture.

After we read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland I did teach him a new card game.  Go Fish was getting old fast.  We all played Knock-out Whist.  I had never played before but it is a very simple trick taking game and the only time we played we did not use the knock-out part and all three of us played all seven hands.  He picked it up pretty fast though he kept calling spades “aces” for some reason.  Have to get him to like these games since Jacene will not play trick-taking/bidding games with me for some reason.  Seems they both do things I don’t understand, it might be me.

So along with Jacene’s closet clean out, I cataloged our games at gameboardgeek.com, here they are.  We still need to go through and rate the games but at least we can find what we have.  While poking around boardgamegeek I did find one really cool thing.  We started playing Qwirkle while on vacation, and some brilliant person made a scoreboard for Qwirkle. No hunting for scrap paper, cool.  I think the same idea could be used to score Mexican Train at least the way we score it.

clay

I have included the video clip Jeremy took without my knowledge.  It is the “gutter ball” link.  It was dangerous for them to let me have the camera back after that.  I used the team camera from work and had no idea that it would blur anything that moved faster than a turtle so the photos weren’t the best.

I think everyone had fun.  I know I did.  David and Jeremy beat their personal best scores which was great!  I didn’t lose every game but I think I did lose 3 out of 4.  I wasn’t really paying attention to the scores.

It was a great day.

Jacene

Gutter Ball

Jacene

Jacene