Burning down the house

What's new with you today? Here is what's new with me today: I almost burned down the house. :(

I set some oil to cooking on the stove to deep fry some fryjacks- a new Belizian dish we learned while on vacation. I went upstairs to check email for a moment and forgot about the oil and fell asleep. The smoke detectors upstairs woke me up and I went downstairs thinking "Crud, I smell burning, I'll have to toss out the oil and start over" Imaging my shock and surprise when I entered the kitchen to find the oil on fire with flames up to the over-the-range microwave. The microwave was on fire as was the cabinetry. There was thick black smoke dancing across the ceiling [that actually looked pretty freaky and cool, like a river on the ceiling]. I freaked out and called 911 and they showed up about 4 minutes later [after the 911 operator told me to get out of the house immediately]. I grabbed the doggies and my laptop and went outside to wait for the firemen. It seemed like forever before they came and I could hear the fire crackling inside and began to worry.

The men came blazing up in 2 or 3 trucks which drew the curious neighbors attention. It took the firemen only a few minutes to put out the fire. I hoped it wasn't too bad but when I went inside and saw the black ceilings and where they had used the axe to rip the microwave off the wall....when I saw the blackened cabinets and glass on the floor and melted stove display.....blah

So the fire marshal interviewed me and told me after to call my insurance company immediately. The insurance company [USAA, the best company ever] took my info and told me the smoke damage fixer people would be coming to give an estimate on the smoke removal and damage reversal. The smoke people came out this afternoon and took pictures and said they would be back tomorrow with a fancy tool to check smoke levels in every room and on different surfaces. In the meantime they recommended staying out of the house until they finish their clean-up later in the week. Once clean up is over, then the repairs/replacements can begin.

What a mess. Thank God no one was hurt and the fire was contained to the kitchen. I had no idea that oil could just burst into flames all on its own, without a match or existing fire to spark it. But apparently when it gets hot enough [something called a flashpoint according to the fire marshal] that is exactly what happens.

So the insurance company is covering us to stay at a hotel until the smoke people tell us the clean-up is finished and the toxic fumes are gone. Probably that will be at the end of the week.

Please keep us in your prayers.

And if you didn't see my note about where to find our travel blog entries for our trip to Belize, they can be found here:

http://www.travbuddy.com/jenniparks/blogs

Board Game Review > Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

I don't keep my finger on the pulse of all the independent Kickstarter campaigns running at any given time. There's just too much unique content being produced month after month for me to sift through everything. I leave that to those who write previews and reviews for a living (I am an IT Consultant for a living; I write reviews as a hobby because I'm passionate about board gaming). The only way an independent Kickstarter campaign is going to be on my radar is if the designer/publisher reaches out to me to let me know the campaign is running or if it's created a bit of buzz already in the key circles that I frequent. I definitely wasn't closely monitoring Kickstarter campaigns four years ago when the original edition of Middara was initially funded. It was an adventurous dungeon crawl that promised to be so much more than an ordinary dungeon crawl. With options to run in campaign mode for an ongoing narrative or crawl mode for one off gameplay, it could work as a...

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a...

Board Game Review: Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated (spoiler free)

We’ve had our eye on Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated since its debut in 2019 from Renegade Game Studios. In our house, we love legacy games and we own most of the other Clank! editions, so it seemed like a good fit. Boy, was it ever! We finally got the game a couple of weeks ago, and immediately fell for it so hard during the first few minutes of the game that we played it nearly every day with our 11 year old twin sons, Max and Locke. In Clank! Legacy: AI , designed by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen, players take on the role of employees at a small organization. At the beginning of the legacy campaign, the organization is in the process of applying to become a franchise of Acquisitions Incorporated, a megacorp famed for its for-profit adventuring services. We loved the narrative and appreciated the touches of authenticity, like the franchise charter agreement. We’ve played through other legacy campaign games over the past year where the narrative fell flat at tim...