Parentheticals

This whole last week it feels like we have been preparing for our trip to California. I worked a bit on my games, and read a bit, but mostly we have been packing and cleaning and such. On Wednesday Alison took the girls to the wilderness with Max. Max wanted to play Jungle Book: The Wrath of Shere Khan, and Rea wanted to play Jungle Book: Friendship is Magic. They decided instead to compromise and play Jungle Book: the Power of God. Max was Shere Khan and Rea was Baloo. When Max wanted to pretend to fight Rea said that because she was nice she was stronger than Shere Khan since she had the Power of God. Saturday morning we begun to do a final cleaning of the house before we left. Andrea was offered money if she helped (a quarter a room.) She ended up earning over a dollar and very much enjoying herself. Saturday evening we had our brown family dinner, which didn't involve any game playing, but was pretty fun anyway. The best part was not having a long drive to go home

Rea and Sara have been on a midnight joke telling rampage. They stay up super late talking and laughing. Eventually Rea complains that Sara is out of her bed, and we have to tell them that they have to be quiet and go to bed. Hopefully this passes. Rea has also been drawing lots of pictures recently. She usually gets eyes, a head, and any important limbs (though her spiders have way too many legs). She loves drawing owls, bats, spiders, worms, snakes, trees, seeds and eggs. Rea has also begun to enjoy playing bats. She names us, and then we eat food and hang upside down from the monkey bars. If we are fruit bats the names are things like fruity, eaty, and batty. If we are vampire bats the names tend to be bloody, drinky, and batty (batty being the default bat name). Grandma Poulson took Rea away to do some shopping with her, and when Rea left Sara forced mommy to walk with her down the street to smell the roses. Sara is learning so many things, especially how to express herself.

This week I worked more on my MOAR MOAI game. I played a four player game at lunch yesterday and it was very good. I have to change the rules again. I am also working on a single player/multi player cooperative game entitled 'Roguelike'. It is not really ready at all, but I am still working on it. Aunt Katie is visiting us this week. Mostly that means that the girls' play room is also her bedroom. Apparently when you are training to be a teacher you have to teach students some time. We have been recently reading Peter Pan  (That is, Alison and I have been). It is very funny. Way better than the Disney version. I also read 'The Cyborg and the Sorcerers' a few nights ago. It is a short book about a cat. Ha ha! it is really exactly what it says on the cover. It was fun because I like books where people have to figure out loopholes in rules systems. One such situation was when he was talking to a computer that believed him to be dead and he said "Is there a

I just started working on a new game about Easter Island. As I was playing a solo game (testing it out) Andrea asked to join in. I explained to her the general concept (these are your guys, they can get food and cut down trees and dig up rocks. you can only get these fish because they are closer to the island, and these ones are in the deep water.) After my explanation she said: "This guy will get fish and this guy will make bacon, and this guy will cut down a tree to make a canoe." I hadn't told her that there were canoes in the game, but apparently that was the reason for cutting down trees in her book. She is very smart. She also knew that killing a pig got you bacon. We also played a game of chess this weekend. As we were playing I told her that knights could defend 8 squares, and she started trying to set up chains of knights defending each other. Later during the game I explained to her how pawns advance and promote, and she decided that her pawns were goin