Skip to main content

The Good and the Bad

Good: Barack Obama has evidenced proof of the American Dream and shown that the practice of racial discrimination and oppression on a national/societal level is a closed chapter of American history.


Bad: He's as close to being a utopian socialist as we've had in a leader in a long time. And how will this play out internationally- will his presidency embolden terrorists who will perceive him as weak and scare the oppressed worldwide who are fearful that an Obama led America might not protect them anymore?


Good: We leave for Peru tomorrow! New adventures.


Bad: There are calls for a national strike this week that may prevent us from getting to Manchu Picchu once we are in Peru or prevent us from leaving the country when we are ready to come home.


Good: my mother is settling in better in Woodbridge and getting to know people.


Bad: She is rubbing in my face how the paid caregiver we hired is "practically a daughter" who "loves her and takes her places like a daughter should", directly implying that I'm deficient in not being able to take her everywhere because I work. Thanks mom. Thanks for never saying thank you for anything I've done and telling me how much more you love the caregiver.


Good: I went to sleep early last night to come into work early today and get stuff accomplished. Go me!


Bad: Screaming revelers at 2 in the morning drove down our street honking and screaming "YES WE CAN". Wasn't that the slogan for Bob the Builder Toy (Can we fix it? Yes we can!). Also, the power went out so this morning I had to dress in the dark and I was late to work b/c of a big accident on the beltway.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You should point out to your mom, when she makes wonderful comments about how much the caregiver "loves her," that it's not cheap to pay for that kind of love. Furthermore, while you're glad she's getting to go places, you also enjoy working hard at your job so that you can buy the caregiver's love and time that wouldn't be there without her daughter's dilligence and sacrifice. It's a sacrifice that someone has to make and you're glad you can make it for her.

Popular posts from this blog

Board Game Review: Expeditions Gears of Corruption

L ast year I reviewed Expeditions and ranked it #1 among all Stonemaier games on account of the challenging intellectual puzzle it presents. This year I have played my way through the new expansion, Gears of Corruption , and I’m delighted to let you know that it makes the base game even better. That the expansion so cohesively builds on the base game should not be a surprise to anyone who closely examines the original box for Expeditions. All expansion components perfectly fit in that box including the 2 new mechs that nestle in the placeholder cubbies clearly made for them.  That can’t be coincidence. There might a few features rolled into Corruption of Gears that were developed as a result of consumer feedback on the base game (I’m looking at you, wild meeple), but my theory is that Stonemaier did a Lord of the Rings maneuver with this game and its expansions, designing the entire game with most of the additions integrated up front, and then breaking it into base + expansions fo...

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind   and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream).  On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They a...

Board Game Review: Expeditions

Expeditions is my favorite game in the Stonemaier Games portfolio to date. The game is a sequel to Scythe, and continues the narrative years in the future. It has taken everything I loved in Scythe and expanded on it, while chucking out everything I didn’t care for (the combat). Designed by Jamey Stegmaier, Expeditions brings us into an age when a meteorite has crash landed into Siberia and things begin to go sideways for all who encounter it. One team after another sets out to investigate the crash site and they are never heard from again. No one knows what happened to them. Now it’s our turn to find out what’s really going on, each of us leading a competing expedition team into Siberia to bring back desperately needed answers. During a game of Expeditions, all players are seated around the game board, which is made up of individually placed hex tiles laid out as shown above. At the bottom of the game board is an insert affectionately known as the base camp. The base camp holds ...