Parentheticals

Another eventful week. To start off I found some (five or six) puffball mushrooms. If you don't remember, these were the mushrooms that the protagonist ate in my side of the mountain  (a book which Alison loved (she loves all children survival books it seems) and I also enjoyed quite a bit) They were in a neighbors yard, so I am not eating them (since they might be poisoned with herbicides), but I did collect them and place them in a nice spot in my yard so that they can release their spores, and hopefully infect my dirt with a third edible variety of mushrooms for me to eat. We went picking strawberries multiple times this week (as my parents were out of town and someone had to pick those straberries (the things that we do for our families)) They were excellent strawberries while they lasted. We made some goat strawberry apple pea ice cream (Andrea added a slice of apple and three peas to the already perfect ice cream, so we just had to leave them there.) One of the da...

This last week we had a health fair at work. I learned about various healthy things while eating steak sandwiches smothered in caramelized onions and potato chips. I don't quite know what I was supposed to take home from that, but I did end up with lots of swag. I printed up a new printing of Dancing Robots. We played it a few times at work. People seem to like it (which didn't really happen at this work with Polynesia for whatever reason.) We also had Scott and Sheila come over this weekend to help me cut down a tree in my back yard (the one that was killed by the utility company for being 'too close' to the power lines). No-one was hurt in the cutting, and we all had a fun time. Gage and Rea played in the pool as we cut the tree. We also went on a mushroom hunt (and an egg hunt) and ate the things that we found for lunch (mushroom omelettes and biscuits and gravy) We discussed playing another role playing game (a one shot one), and I brought up the po...

Last week we did a lot of spring cleaning type stuff. We also sold some things on KSL. Some of you might remember how I got a big screen LCD TV out of the trash two thanksgivings ago and fixed it up. We decided that a big TV was not really our style, and so 'The Saga of the Big Screen TV' has concluded. I sold it for 4x the cost I paid for it (1.50$ for parts + 40$ for the mount was my investment). I am sure that the new owner felt that he got a good deal (and he has as far as I am concerned), but I also got a good deal, and that is what a good sale is about. I have been working on Dancing robots a lot more recently. It seems like I will be making up another printing in a day or so. Perhaps I will send some copies out to various people for some playtesting. I have also begun to work on a player interface for the computer version of the game. We went down to Alison's dad's parent's house over the weekend for their 60th wedding anniversary. It was a fun trip (th...

The goats have been pushing through the old fence, so I worked hard over the last little bit to put up a strong chain link fence in the place of the old one. I got sun burned while I put up the new fence, but it looks pretty good (the fence, not the sunburn). Alison has been working on decluttering the entire house because she has been reading Organized Simplicity , which is her (Alison's) mom's  philosophy of life in book form. It says "Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful" (apparently one of the definitions of beautiful is also awesome if you are a guy, so an old beat up blackjack taken from a thug in New Jersey is apparently beautiful). Alison comments that it is amazing how much stuff that we have that doesn't fit this criteria. The girls have been 'helping' us to clean up. They mostly think that it is great fun. This Sunday I said that we needed to get the girls dressed for church, and Andrea dr...