INGREDIENTS

1 cup water

12 cashews (or almonds)

4 pitted Medjool dates

1 can (15oz) coconut milk

2 Tbsp chia seeds

1.5 cups oats (Bob's Red Mill Steel Cut Oats was my first experiment)

1 can (15oz) coconut milk

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

INSTRUCTIONS

Put water, nuts, and dates in a blender and blend until milky and broken down significantly.

In large jar, pour in water/cashew/date mixture, and add the rest of the ingredients. Stir, or seal and shake.

Put in fridge overnight. Spoon into dishes and enjoy with fruit, nut butters, or as-is! I like to portion mine out into short individual jars for quick-grab in the morning. Good for 3-5 days in the fridge.

We're in the thick of it now. It's officially Thanksgiving week, which means my counters and fridge are overflowing with ingredients, ready to tackle the mountain of dishes I plan to cook up this week, including all the necessary ingredients to make and freeze some leftover turkey pot pies.

Despite *Science telling us otherwise, our favorite has continued to be the Alton Brown wet brine. We have made many birds many ways in our past 21 Thanksgivings as a couple, including the pre-brining years, dry brines and wet brines of various ilk, the miserably attempted smoked year (threw the whole thing out it was so bad), the amazing sous vide year, and various combos of whole, pieced, and spatchcocked.

 

Also, I will be spatchcocking again, putting aromatics in a little foil nest under the center of the bird and a ring of stuffing around the outside. This is a method I developed for myself years ago when I discovered spatchcocking of poultry generally, and as well wanted turkey drippings to still flavor the stuffing without the food-borne illness concerns of stuffing a whole bird.

Photo of me with one of my early very successful turkey attempts! 2005?

Here's 2020, spatchcocked goodness:


Video of Alton's brine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKr1rByVVCI

Written recipe:
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe-1950271

* Kenji throwing down the science that supposedly proves me wrong. But you can't argue with our taste buds, Kenji!! https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-brining-turkey-thanksgiving

I have been posting a lot of photos over on Facebook of our fun, new Halloween decorations this year. It's been a blast to finally feel like we're getting to celebrate in the style we dreamed of! And while I have tried to do it at reasonable costs (and not always succeeding *side eye at 12' Skeleton*), the other challenge is where to store it all in the off season. We have no shed or garage this year, so everything will have to go up stairs and up a ladder into an attic space. This means everything needs to be lightweight, slim, or both.

Early set-up of the graveyard scene.

A graveyard scene seemed smartest. Foam headstones make for both slim and light options. They are also very weather-hardy, if you prep them for windy conditions. Add some fake cobwebs, some old "iron" fencing we had at our old house (can live outdoors year 'round), and some fake skeletons/bones and you have it. Set the scene with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, pile up some dirt, great. Add a fun cemetery sign to greet visitors at the "front gate" and it looks pretty convincing. But what makes it come alive at night? Lighting.

Porch haunt with my beloved cauldron!

Lighting can really add character and depth to an otherwise flat, static scene. A friend on FB asked me what lighting we used, so here is the breakdown of what we did.

In the photo above, you can see a large chunk of the representative lights in our haunt. The simplest and most obvious is a fake flickering LED tealight in the pumpkin. Fun tip: they make some now with remote controls and timers in them. So I have these all over our house and in the pumpkins, and at 6pm when we're prepping other manual effects, I turn them all on a 6 hour timer. At midnight, they turn themselves off, no fuss, no muss! I could set it for 4 or 8 hours as well. I used these in my Hogwart's Floating Candles in our entry way as well.

Hogwart's Floating Candles Illusion, with LED tealights.

Okay, so back to the porch scene above. In the skeleton's hand is a faux vintage gas lantern. You can set them to white light or to a fake flickering flame, the latter of which is what we use. You can even control the speed of the flicker with the dial, which is a pretty cool way to keep two near each other from looking too "samesy".  At $20 a pop, it's a decent deal. We know we will get use out of these other times of the year, so it won't just be a once-a-year thing. They aren't smart, unfortunately, so I have to go out at 6pm to turn them on, and go out to turn them off before I go to bed. But the effect is so great. I am very pleased with them, and not at all put out by having to do that, since I have to go out to bring in our weatherproof Bluetooth speaker in each night anyway.

Home Depot Fireblaze light

The green wash light shown here is the Home Depot FireBlaze light. This is also sold at Target at a similar price-point of $30 under a similar name*, though the pumpkin housing at HD was black, and Target was a traditional orange. We opted for the black enclosure. It can be cycled through a number of colors and color combinations using a remote (so no need to go outside to change them or turn them on or off). The lights seem to flow and dance, almost like an underwater effect. We opted for green on this scene, but there are lots of fun options--15 different color combos, in fact--and among them there is even a green and red option that looks Christmas-y if you want to get more use in a given year. I have mine on a smart plug that turns them on and off for me, and they retain "memory" of their last state. So if you left them "on" and "green" last time, it will toggle on and off with the smart switch in that same state. Very handy for automations like ours. 

*Note: the same term "FireBlaze" is used to advertise other lights which DO NOT CHANGE COLOR. They are about half the cost, but they will have the color in the name, and will not have a remote option to change colors. So if you want the colors to be able to be changed, don't accidentally get the cheaper, single color option.

The cauldron is one of my favorite projects this year. Following this YouTube tutorial, I was able to turn a huge cauldron (costing only $13 and delivered same day by Party City!!) into a witchy burbling scene. In addition to a fun paint job, there are three different lighting effects at play in this scene.

The wash light from above is a smart, waterproof landscape light I got in a kit from Novostella, on the recommendation of the Hollywood Haunter himself, of VanOaksProps. I used these for purple up-lights on another part of our house, and they will come in handy as landscape lighting year 'round. They can be controlled from your phone via Bluetooth with the free SmartHome app, but you can also buy their hub for it to be even smarter, allowing you to set scenes on a schedule. Given that the hub was literally only $17 more, it was worth it to be able to automate these lights. They come on at 6pm and turn off at 10pm weeknights, and midnight weekends. No hands, ma! 

I got four of them for $99 (they are a little over $100 as of this writing, but could have them delivered within 5 hours. Woah.), and while they are LED, they are not low voltage. So I have them connected via extension cords and SockitBoxes, to make them safer to run in all weather. We've found these boxes to be invaluable in the NW wet season, using them on the lights, our blow-up pumpkin on the roof, and various places around our yard to keep regular voltage plug-ins safe from the rain.

A few other lights you may not be able to see very well from the photo, but are definitely helpful for atmosphere, include some prop lighting, and a few more landscape lights. Inside the cauldron is a little mist-maker, also recommended in the Wicked Makers tutorial. It is hard to see from the photo, but in person you can see the mist and burble, and the light is subtle, but another layer of depth. Underneath, the "hot coals" are actually light up. Yep, another one from the Wicked Makers tutorial, this effect is done with orange string lights, "Great Stuff" expanding spray foam, and a few colors of spray paint. The string lights I got have different modes, and I just found one that made it look most light glowing coals. Click here to see a video of the cauldron and coals close up: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rf11HAhgfBuP9jsg6

Glowing coals for the cauldron!

Outside of frame are two other types of landscape lighting, and one effect light. One is our low voltage landscape lights that were part of our house build and are just a soft white. The other are some lights I wanted to use for up-lighting on our trees. Our build budget didn't allow for more than path lights, so these solar landscape lights seemed a decent compromise. There are several different color combinations on these you can toggle them to. Then they are just light sensing, and turn on a dusk and off at dawn. They aren't very bright, but they really do the trick. One is in our back yard already, up lighting a large tree and bird bath. The other three are on our cemetery sign, a copse of small trees, and a headstone. 

Finally, I have a lightning effect light, also from Home Depot. Small, cheap plastic strobes which only cost $8 a pop, so I bought two. They toggle between two modes. One is an actual regular strobe, which you can dial to be faster or slower. The other has a bunch of soundscapes--such as evil laughter with electrocution sounds, or howling wolves with a thunder and lightning strikes. Toggled to this position, the lights are synchronized with these sounds, and flash more randomly, like lightning. These sounds are very loud and very repetitive, and there is no way to turn the sound down or off. BUT the more randomized lightning effect that accompanied the sound switched side is what I wanted out of them. So I performed minor surgery on them, disconnecting the speaker, so they only flash like lightning now, no sound! They are rated indoor only, though now that I have taken them apart and could see the inside, I can see that it is more or less pretty weather tight. The front plastic "lens" is probably the riskiest point of intrusion, so I make sure not to point them upward too much, so water can't pool at that point. I have left them out in heavy wind and rain, and they are still going strong. At $8, it's no major loss if they decide they are more sensitive to weather, but so far so good. Since they are the other two manual lights in my haunt, they come in every night with the speaker, to let them dry off. One points toward the copse of trees, flashing off the trunks and branches beautifully. The other points at one of the biggest headstones, which creates a great reflection point for the flashes.

Whew! That was a lot of detail. Any one of these effects added to a haunt would up your game, adding some depth, and possibly "life" and a sense of place to your scenes. If I could recommend one or two lighting additions, I would say the Solar Landscape Lights are an easy choice. No plugs, no wires, no need to turn them on or off. Many color choices, and they have many uses outside of a holiday display. The other would be the FireBlaze Projector lights. A decent price point for lights that move and dance on the surfaces they hit, so it can make flame effects, or spooky ghostly effects, and can look very different depending on what you bounce them off of. Both are designed to be outdoor lights, so you can rest easy about rainy fall and winter nights. I'd maybe suggest you get a SockitBox with the Fireblaze lights, to make them a little safer to run the plugs where you want them in the yard.

Here is a short video showing the whole graveyard scene with the lights, sounds, and props described, as well as our window projections and our inflatable Jack Skellington-esque pumpkin:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/fvzA3PiG7bG5QJWG9

And below is an aggregate list of the links from this post. Happy Halloween!

Lights:

Home Depot FireBlaze projector light - https://www.homedepot.com/p/LightShow-Halloween-Projection-Super-Bright-FireBlaze-with-Remote-15-Programs-21GM25922/315532380

Dancing Flame LED Vintage Lantern, Set of 2 - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Z4TDPDP

Novostella BLink Smart LED Flood Lights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WXBQYJN

Novostella Smart Wireless BT Hub - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08WXBLN3G

SockitBox Weatherproof Connection Box - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00274SLK8

Ultrasonic Pond Fogger/Party Mist Maker - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Q3TXYMW

Twinkle Star LED String Lights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087FXNP9R

Low-voltage Landscape Lights - https://www.amazon.com/LEONLITE-Landscape-Aluminum-Waterproof-Lifespan/dp/B0897M9TNY

Solar Landscape Spotlights - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YKGQ184

Mini LED Strobe Light (lightning effect) - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-4-5-in-Mini-LED-Strobe-Light-0305-47004HD/206770871

Props:

5' Poseable Skeleton - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-5-ft-Hanging-Plastic-Posable-Skeleton-Decoration-with-LED-Eyes-5349-60272HD/205828003

22" Plastic Cauldron - https://www.partycity.com/large-black-cauldron-35434.html

2 foot tombstones - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-2-ft-Assorted-Halloween-Graveyard-Tombstone-21SV22300/315554705

3 foot tombstones - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-3-ft-Assorted-Halloween-Graveyard-Tombstone-21SV22301/315554649

Bag of Bones - https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-12-Piece-Bag-of-Halloween-Bones-5349-16268HD/301148351

12 Foot Skeleton is sold out, and they have the link hidden so I can't share it.

Ambient Sounds:

Haunted House Ambience 3 Hours - https://youtu.be/gIzstR4n1ak

3 Hours of Scary, Ominous & Creepy Horror Music - https://youtu.be/mlLGwW7eHTI

Spooky Halloween Ambience Haunted Graveyard Sounds 1 Hour- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1NwulxynHs

Halloween Ambience: Creepy Forest Sounds 6 hours- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ualR8HW1i6M

Tutorials:

Hogwarts Floating Candles - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyr2WiAkliU

Wicked Makers Witches' Cauldron - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKuTqjnWoGI

 Yesterday was utter chaos. I woke up, did a few house things (including assembling my new organizational boxes *Kon Mari closet intensifies*), then had to take the dogs to their FIRST PRO GROOMING IN TWO YEARS!! KERMIT FLAIL!! *ahem* I was a little excited.

On the way home, saw a little reddish brown chihuahua-lookin’ pup sniffing the flowers outside a residential complex. It had no collar, no leash, and a quick glance showed no humans nearby. “Is that…?” I gestured vaguely. “Yep.” Chris said knowing exactly what I meant, and was already looking for the spare leash I usually keep in my car for these moments. Damn, it’s at the old house.

I pull over and get out. Chris stands back, as he often does as the imposing human, ready to jump in to help but avoid scaring them. Little dog sees me and is curious. Lets out a little bark. I sit on the ground, dog comes no closer. I get up and walk nearer and sit down again. I tell Chris to circle behind him to make sure he doesn’t run into traffic as this is on a busy corner. This works great as little doggo sees him, gives a little bark at him, then runs the opposite direction toward me and jumps into my arms. Aw! Wiggly little buddy!

We drive to the nearest vet to check for chip. No chip. I take the little pup home and the dog immediately starts peeing on everything and trying to lick and jump on Benni. Benni was NOT amused and snarled a lot. So I took out a big doggie gate and separated them. 

Dog continues to run around trying to pee on things (My new furniture! My fresh, unsealed concrete floors! NO DOGGO!!), while I am trying to make phone calls, post lost dog notices on NextDoor and FB and web sites. I run around with enzyme treatments to clean up pee. Dog whines that they can’t get to Benni. Dog tries to eat a dog bed. I sit down and play ball with them for a bit, but though they play an excellent game of fetch, they lose interest in 10 minutes. This dog is looking more and more like a puppy, with sharp very white teeth, and an attention span of a gnat. I have no chew toys in the house, so it’s all about distracting them.

The lady at the residential building at which I found the dog checked all records of animals there for me, but none matching. She was super sweet and super helpful. I got an appointment at Seattle Animal Shelter to bring puppers in at 5pm, which was around when my dogs were to be done at the groomers. The woman on the phone was very helpful and answered my questions about their procedures. I haven’t brought a stray in there for a while, so it was good to know.

No promising leads the rest of the day. I spent almost 5 hours calling and posting notices and trying to distract/entertain/clean up after a puppy. Got nothing else done.  At about 4:25, the dog decides they are going to curl up in a ball for a nap on my hip. Of course. Five minutes of quiet snuggles then it’s time to pack the little pal up and head to SAS. While I am filling out paperwork, I get a call from the groomers that my dogs are done. It’s rush hour traffic. Whee. I finish at SAS, give final kisses to today’s manic little companion (really was a sweet little pup!!), and drive north again to pick up my two dogs, stopping at the grocery store on the way for dinner ingredients I was supposed to get earlier. Pick up my pups, and they look fabulous! I get them home by and collapse for a bit. 

After a needed short break—and a lot of snuggling on my own freshly bathed and trimmed pups—I cook dinner, drink wine, watch a movie, and fall into bed exhausted.

What a dog-tastic day yesterday was!

 I am slowly, but surely, falling in love with our house. It’s been such a long (at times completely demoralizing) process. The road ahead still feels so very long. But all I know is I look around at things beginning to take shape, and I feel myself sinking into a happy place I haven’t been able to find for a very long time. 

For instance, today I walked past my dining table. And my first thought was “I have a working dining table.” My second was “…and I can walk past it!” For those who don’t know my last house, it has good square footage, but is broken up into tiny little spaces, as was the way homes were built at the time (to be able to close off rooms to heat as needed). Even a modest dining table doesn’t fit in the dining room, and when we added French doors to have access to our back yard, we turned the dining room into a makeshift office for me for years. This way a table or desk against the wall didn’t block walking to the back doors. 

When we bought our gaming table, it took up a full 1/3 of the living room because we couldn’t use it effectively in the dining room. When in place, it left about 20 inches of space on either side to squeeze by. For a time I even used it as my desk, and we didn’t get to use it at all as a gaming table. That plus low ceilings and small windows, it always has felt a little oppressive, darker than we’d like, and pokey. It’s been a lot of shifting around and making it work. For 21 years. 

I love my old house for so many reasons, and for a young couple—sans pets or kids—in their 20’s, who mostly went out dancing/partying and dined out, it worked fantastically. But as I grew up, my interests changed. Now I am someone who owns three dogs (and fostered more and wants to do it again), loves to cook and entertain large groups, loves epic gaming…that was not ideal.

Now I have the dining/gaming table in the middle of this beautifully spacious great room. I can walk right by it. LIKE WITHOUT SCOOTCHING. Tall ceilings. Expansive windows letting in so much natural light, I don’t even put on lights until the sun starts to set. I can walk right past my dining table into my kitchen, which has an embarrassment of counter space compared to my not-quite 10X10 kitchen at my old house. I used to have to use my stove as prep space because I had about 2 feet square of counter to prep on that wasn’t taken up by drying rack or necessary small appliances.

I’m sure I will discover limitations here. I am sure I will clutter it up in time. It won’t always be this shiny and new. But I look at it and see a culmination of a design process trying to solve so many “problems” we had in our old house and…it’s beautiful.

A tale of adapting a game for its audience.

My little sister is in town and we got to spend a couple hours together with her two young boys at our new house we’re moving into. Right now most of the games are in boxes, and there are mounds of them in the living room. The boys—who are 4 and 6–saw the pile of games and were astounded. I offered to open some boxes and see if I could find a box with games good for their age. They haven’t played much more than Monopoly in their house, my sister told me (I’m gonna fix that!).

I opened the first box, not knowing what was inside… They gasped and grabbed at Marvel Legendary that was right on top. Oops. I tried to explain it wasn’t a great game for them just now, but they would brook no refusal. So I started by pulling out cards to let them look at them, accepting they would make a total mess of our carefully organized box (filled with many expansions, so very full, and very reliant on the dividers. That went out the window immediately.)

“I WANNA BE SPIDER-MAN!” 

“Well, that’s not quite how it works”, I stumbled. 

“OOOOH WOLVERINE! I’m Wolverine!”

I hemmed and hawed, trying to guide them to a different game, but it was a losing battle. So then I decided to embrace the challenge. I excitedly told them they are recruiters for SHIELD, and their job is to assemble a whole TEAM of heroes to battle the villains (so far, a light description of the game). You don’t play any ONE character, you get the PLAY THEM ALL!

I explained the “scratches” were like attack points (one brother kinda gets this, he is JUST getting into the edges of Pokemon), and the stars were like “money for recruiting”. I made up a simple list of rules on the fly about what they could do on their turn, and then I played game master, flipping up a random enemy for them to battle, complete with loud BAMS and BOOMS when they defeated an enemy. I impressed upon them that they had to work together—their first co-op game, awwww!—and they would pool resources to help defeat the villains. They did a great job with that.

As they got more comfortable, and the older one started stopping to read the additional text on the bottom, I introduced a few new rules. Just simple ones that made it feel like the game was getting more complex and the villains more determined to beat them. At the end of every game, they begged for another game. I would rotate a market of heroes for them to recruit, and the villain pile they were trying to get through, keeping the game fresh.

So basically I made up some rules on the fly that made it accessible for kids their age and experience level. And they rocked it! Sure, the youngest was mostly interested in accumulating wealth, and his older brother was doing most of the fighting, but they were both grinning from ear to ear, practicing counting and addition and multiplication. The older brother was starting to ask keen questions about iconography. I feel confident if given a little time with him one on one, I could have had him playing the full rule set. 

In the end, they made me promise when they are in town again that we’ll play it again. “Sure buddy. We have 500 games, though. So maybe next time you will want to play something else.” But I know next time when they ask to play it again (and I am betting they will), we can build toward the full rule set and get them smashing the villains in no time. And in the meantime, I am sending my sister my Geeklists geared toward mixed age family fun.

Have you ever created new rules or modified them for the age or ability of the players? What is a fun memory you have of this for you?

We lost Loki under similar circumstances. He was fine one day, and the next, super lethargic. It was the night before our huge summer party, and we were rushing around trying to get everything done. I remember I “kicked him” (nudged him with my foot, I have never EVER kicked a dog except once when one was attacking my elderly blind pup) to try to get him out of the way, and he wouldn’t move. I looked at Chris and said that something was wrong. Our energetic, eager to please border collie wouldn’t move. I still remember that “kick” and tear up thinking how awful he must have felt for HIM to not be able to respond to my command, even a more forceful one than usual.

We stopped setting up and took him to the emergency vet. We waited and waited. They said it seemed his heart was swollen and they needed to go in to see what was going on. It was going to be hours before they would get him in, and we asked if we could stay, but they told us to go home. I remember Chris hugging him on the floor of the emergency vet and me nudging him to hurry because the vet was standing there waiting on us. I pet our beautiful boy, and told him he was a good boy and we’d see him soon. I still remember looking back, Loki looking confused through the doorway of the surgery and kennel areas as we left him. I am bawling now remembering this was the last time I saw him. Bawling regretting that I rushed Chris trying to love on him for what would be the last time. That I didn’t get on the floor and squeeze him tight before I left. I just walked away, believing he would be okay.

We went home to try to finish prepping for the party. They later called and said they would be keeping him overnight. They found fluid around his heart and would be trying to drain it. We went to bed. At 3am they called and said he had arrested twice already on the table, and if we wanted to come say goodbye, we needed to come now. We were only 10 minutes away, but it was too long. He was already gone.

They let us see him. He was still warm. We both fell to the floor of the large open kennel and hugged and pet and kissed his lifeless body, told him how much we loved him, what a good dog he had been, thanked him for being OUR boy. The next day, we welcomed over 150 people to our house because it was too late to try to cancel. People kept asking where Loki was and we would just shake our head quietly and try not to talk about it. They instantly understood, but had no idea it was less than 16 hours before they arrived. Drink, host, move on. It’s all we could do.

We still keep his ashes, paw print, and collar on our mantle, next to his big sister’s (she died a few years later, almost to the day). He was just the best dog you could hope for. And you never fully get over that loss.

Reading about Rambo passing stirred up all those feels and harsh memories all over again. I know all too well this exact scenario, and it’s only harder on pet parents today who couldn’t even go in with their pet, or come back to say goodbye, due to COVID. A harsh pain on top of an already harsh pain.

Thanks for the memories, Rambo. And thanks for being our Good Boy, Loki.

Today is a day I think of Chris’ awesome Mom, Pat. I loved her, and am often struck by a deep sadness at how little time I got to get to know her before she passed. Pat loved all things from her Irish heritage. She gifted me a coin for in my shoe—in a little pouch embroidered with a shamrock—for my wedding day. She gifted us an Irish poem in a jade green colored frame, for our one year anniversary. She loved cooking for the holiday (well, any holiday), and when I am in the kitchen for special occasions, I often think of her loving preparations for her family. 

Even when she had so little, she was incredibly generous and thoughtful. And she raised two equally generous and thoughtful children, one of which I was blessed to marry, and the other his fierce-but-gentle sister, Stephanie. She gave of herself endlessly, both in physical manifestations as well as in her spirit. 

I think of today as “St Pat’ys Day”. Here’s to you, Mom! Slainte.

I grew up on board games. Yes Candyland and Hi Ho Cherry-o when we were little; then chess, checkers, Sorry, Monopoly ( a favorite of my father’s, who would pull it out when mom was out and he was the lone parent with 2-4 kids), and Uno (which was a fave of my grandparents’); but also Pit (a fave of my mother’s), Waterworks, Pass the Pigs, Yahtzee, Operation, Curse of the Mummy, Trivial Pursuit, and other “Parker Brothers era” family favorites. My parents had regular cribbage nights with friends, and I learned lots of basic cards games, as well, on camping trips with parents and grandparents.

As we became teens, my mom instituted family game night to try to keep her angsty kids from escaping to the Atari or Colecovision or the telephone with friends (and later online with BBSes—yes, I am that age). She also started an annual tradition at Thanksgiving, where we would go to the store to buy a new game, and learn it and play it after dinner. Her whole plan was to just try to keep us talking to each other. I loved those moments of being around the table, good food, people we loved around us. I was sold on the gaming, but was not a graceful loser, especially against my brother.

I got into social games in college (think games like Cranium, Scattergories, Pictionary, or ImagineIf), but then dated and married a guy who didn’t like “performance games” where he felt like he was in the spotlight. I thought it meant he didn’t like board games, and there was a dry spell for a while.

The game-changer? Pandemic. Finding cooperative games was HUGE for us—a guy who didn’t want to be alone in the spotlight, and a gal who was trying to learn to be a gracious loser. We discovered modern games offered even more of what we both enjoyed, and the addiction began.

Now we own over 450 games, a mix across a wide spectrum, and my shy partner-in-life loves to host people and teach them new games to play together. In my mind, we are just continuing a thread my parents started in my life, and I am so happy to have this to share together.

Why play it more than video games? We don’t necessarily. We love our PlayStation, Switch, and Steam gaming. It’s just a different way to play games together. But the bonus is board gaming, for us (pre-COVID, anyway), is including friends across a wider spectrum of tech savvy-ness and interests. I feel like board gaming casts a wider net, and when we can gather again, I look forward to hosting gaming parties again. In person. Totes in real time 3D.

(Pictured: Anachrony)