Mostly Game

Ry – Can I put stickers on my seat belt?

Me – No.

Ry – Why not?

Me – We shouldn’t put stuff on safety equipment like that.

Ry – Why not?

Me – It might interfere with it and then it wouldn’t work right.

Ry – How can a sticker do that?

Me – I don’t know. Maybe it would make the belt sticky and then it wouldn’t work right.

Ry – I don’t think so.

(pause)

Ry – Has a kid done that?

Me – What?

Ry – Has a kid done that?

Me – Done what?

Ry – Had this conversation. Has a kid put a sticker on his seat belt and then crashed and died because of it?

Me – Um, I don’t know.

Ry – See.

Me – Okay, I change my answer. We don’t put stickers in the van, you know that.

Ry – Hmph.

Phew! Man, got back last night around dinner time and still tired despite taking today off. I’ll probably put up a geeklist on BGG about all the games we played, and then follow it up with a few more musings here afterward. Meanwhile, I have TV and Xbox to catch up on once family time returns to normal.

Don’t ask me how I got off on this tangent the other day, but I found myself using Google Maps to look at some of the places I’ve lived in the past. I kind of enjoyed it, so I thought I’d post pics and links here on the blog.

Here is the area we live right now, an Owasso neighorhood called Preston Lakes. Google’s satellite imagery is several years out of date, because the streets in our area still look like dirt with no houses around.

Before that, we lived in an area called German Corners, so named for what used to be a German Mennonite church in the area. This is technically in Owasso, but is about halfway between Owasso and Collinsville. Our house was built in 2000, and the buyer put up a fence after she bought it in 2007, so this image was taken sometime in that time frame.

We rented a unit in a triplex for two years before that, right in Tulsa. Our landlord actually owns a small bit of land there and has built 8 or 9 units himself, living in one and renting out the rest. They are pretty nice, a sort of normal downstairs with a loft-like upstairs overlooking the lower living area. You know, looking at this image, I want to say it is several years old; I think you can only see the first triplex on the south side of the circled area. It’s hard to say, though, with all the trees. We were in the middle unit on the north side of the circle, if/when it was built.

My in-laws live on the west side of Keystone Lake, west of Tulsa; technically, we lived with them for about three months when we first moved back from Kuwait.

This is a closeup of Hawalli governate in Kuwait City. We lived in the Al-Othman Center. It was a small, two-floor indoor mall that featured the first JCPenney in Kuwait, with two apartment towers. It was brand new when we moved in; we lived there from late 1994 through late 1997. I had a heck of a time finding it using satellite imagery — everything looks a lot different from the air, heh. I finally had to try finding a business addressed there to confirm I found the right building. You can see the large shadows cast by the two apartment towers, and the big parking garage on the south side.

This is Stout Hall on the Oklahoma State University campus in Stillwater, OK. I spent some time in other places in and around OSU, but we’ll always be Stouties. Hm, I notice they have a sand volleyball court in back now… added long after we moved out :/

I went to Michigan Tech for two years, in Houghton, MI. I lived in Wadsworth Hall both years, one of the largest dormitories in the country at one time (or so I’ve heard), marked in the upper right. I thought I’d include the freshman parking lot, over on the left side of the pic, heh; back in my day it wasn’t even paved — it was just a big field. I have no idea/recollection what the big structure between the two might be, I want to say that’s new since 1989.

I went to Eisenhower High School in Lawton, OK (go Eagles!). We lived most of that time in a housing addition on the SW side of town. From this image, it looks like the mimosa tree in the front yard has grown up quite large since I last saw it in the 80s.

On my Dad’s second tour in (West) Germany, we started at Baumholder, but his unit (1/68 Armor) moved to Wildflecken a few months after, where we stayed the remainder of the three years. I know we lived in an apartment on New A Street, and I managed to find it, but I can’t remember which of the circled buildings was the one. We were just down the hill from the rec center, the older monolithic building at the top of the image. My best friend ZH lived in the last building on the right, same side of the street.

I spent 2nd and 3rd grade at Fort Ord, CA. Unfortunately, (a) Ft. Ord was closed down in 1994, and (b) I don’t really have any memories of the geography at the time — like, how to get to our house from a landmark of some kind.

Okay, I cheated. D called my parents and while we were on the phone I asked my Dad for our address. Ord isn’t really on the map any more, so to speak, but the main gate was marked and he talked me through “driving” over toward our house, and fortunately Google had the street numbers marked, so I found it. It was a duplex; we lived in the indicated half, and my best friend KM lived next door. He was a big kid – 2 years older than me, heh.

I didn’t feel like trying to find anything older than that — Mannheim, (West) Germany or Fort Hood, TX, or the first time we lived in Lawton (Fort Sill). I’ll close with my home of homes — my deceased Aunt & Uncle’s house in Minnesota. I was born in MN and went to 1st, half of 4th and half of 7th grades there, plus an odd summer somewhere along the line. My parents still own the home and hopefully we’ll get to take our kids up there, maybe next year. I wonder why the image is so cruddy — no satellite love for upper Minnesota?

So, what started out a little too much fun in the sun at the zoo last Sunday turned out to be a dose of coxsackie virus for Ryan, aka hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). Coxsackie is one of several enteroviruses that can cause HFMD, and enteroviruses as a whole are second only to rhinoviruses as the most common infectious agents in humans; the group includes the viruses responsible for more well-known diseases like polio and hepatitis A.

I think we’ve got a mild strain, though. Ryan had blisters in his throat and a fever, but the fever quit in less than three days and he never got anything on his hands or feet. Caroline got the blisters in her throat and fever, but nothing on her hands and feet. I think I got mine from Caroline (who is a veritable fountain of coxsackie due to her diarrhea and massive drooling). I got the blisters in the throat and fever; nothing on my extremities. My fever broke in under two days, but my throat persists in feeling bad. I think it’s being complicated by an allergy-drainage-induced sore throat; I might have to go buy some throat-soothing stuff.

Unfortunately, coxsackie is apparently pretty tough and can survive outside the host for several days; in addition, the virus can remain present in saliva and the digestive tract (thus feces) for several weeks. I think we’ll let the kids venture out next week, but remain vigilant that they don’t share drinks with anyone, etc. I think we’ll wait at least a week or two before disinfecting everything in the house and letting anyone come over to visit/play.

I have to share this fantastic article over on New York Magazine about lying, specifically how kids learn to do it and why they continue to do it into their adolescent years.

Are Kids Copying Their Parents When They Lie?

You need to read the whole thing (it’s 5 pages long) — it’s really good, and title aside, isn’t just about the parental link to lying. Just some tidbits to whet your interest:

• In one study, when quizzed on 36 topics, 98% of the teenagers interviewed reported lying to their parents.
• Think your good kid doesn’t lie? “Being an honors student didn’t change these numbers by much; nor did being an overscheduled kid. No kid, apparently, was too busy to break a few rules.”
• “In studies where children are observed in their natural environment, a 4-year-old will lie once every two hours, while a 6-year-old will lie about once every hour and a half. Few kids are exceptions.”
• When 6-year-olds are first read either The Boy Who Cried Wolf or George Washington and the Cherry Tree before being asked about lying while under observation, the kids who heard the first storied lied MORE than kids who heard no story at all, while kids who heard the latter story lied 43% less often. “Ultimately, it’s not fairy tales that stop kids from lying—it’s the process of socialization. But the wisdom in The Cherry Tree applies: According to Talwar, parents need to teach kids the worth of honesty, just like George Washington’s father did, as much as they need to say that lying is wrong.”
• The article lays a direct path from “Don’t tattle” in the toddler and elementary school years up to teenagers and the “era of holding back information from parents.”
• “The big surprise in the research is when this need for autonomy is strongest. It’s not mild at 12, moderate at 15, and most powerful at 18. Darling’s scholarship shows that the objection to parental authority peaks around ages 14 to 15. In fact, this resistance is slightly stronger at age 11 than at 18.”
• How out of touch are parents with their teenagers? Consider the results of separate interviews with mothers and their adolescents about arguing.
  • Forty-six percent of the mothers rated their arguments as being destructive to their relationships with their teens. Being challenged was stressful, chaotic, and (in their perception) disrespectful. The more frequently they fought, and the more intense the fights were, the more the mother rated the fighting as harmful. But only 23 percent of the adolescents felt that their arguments were destructive. Far more believed that fighting strengthened their relationship with their mothers. “Their perception of the fighting was really sophisticated, far more than we anticipated for teenagers,” notes Holmes. “They saw fighting as a way to see their parents in a new way, as a result of hearing their mother’s point of view be articulated.”

Anyway, I could quote this thing all day. Just go read it.

Something that’s been bugging me more and more lately, and I don’t know why it started, is the obession with pirates. I mean, I like a pirate themed game as much as the next guy, but it’s really starting to bug me how much pirates are marketed to kids. Pirates, especially those from the “Golden Age” as popularized in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and in kids television shows as innocent as Backyardigans, WordWorld and even VeggieTales, were generally sadistic, murderous criminals.

More and more when I see these things, or children’s Halloween costumes, I can’t help but wonder why we glorify piracy. Such diverse boardgames as Pirate’s Cove (from family-oriented publisher Days of Wonder) and Blackbeard (a classic Avalon Hill title by esteemed designer Richard Berg, recently republished by GMT) remain fairly popular, and even I have a design idea or two with piratical themes. I bought some black stones with the Jolly Roger on them at a local store called Primarily Kids, just because they look cool and I want to use them in a game.

Some reading on Wikipedia reveals that the Jolly Roger has slowly been divorced from its purely piratical usage and into something more abstract. For example, during WW2 it was used by British and Australian submarines “as an indicator of bravado and stealth rather than of lawlessness.” It was (and is) used on military aircraft, and various insignia. I suppose something similar has happened in the greater culture, where playing pirates is as innocent as “cops and robbers” and “cowboys and Indians.”

Of course, I’m not especially enamored of Ryan one day learning how to play at those games, either. I think I prefer him sticking to Kung Fu Panda or Transformers, something with a little less overtly criminal history or human-on-human violence, haha.

So, D had arranged a shopping trip to Dallas with her friend Jennifer for this last weekend. By the way, we also volunteered to come to a “show and share” at a Dillon workshop, to answer questions about our adoption process. Guess who got to fly that event solo, with both kids in tow?

I think I blabbered for 10-15 minutes, some self-(not-so)-directed and some in response to questions from the facilitator. Only one question from the small audience. Caroline was content to be held the whole time, but Ryan had to demonstrate his extensive hopping, chair climbing, and daddy-hanging skills almost the whole time I was talking.

I hate being a blabbering idiot. More than usual, I mean. Blabbering, that is.

It’s a rain-all-day-long kind of day outside. Fortunately, in a rare bit of foresight, we went out to celebrate Easter at my in-law’s yesterday, when it was gorgeous out – sunny and (rare for Oklahoma) not windy. Papa Howie grilled steaks and we had an Easter egg hunt outside – it was very nice.

I think (hope) we’ve got Ry indoctrinated against tobacco usage. After saying grace before eating, he wanted us to bow our heads so he could tack on one of his (frequent) post scripts: “Please Jesus help Papa stop smoking, because smoking is bad for you.” Haha, we were cracking up. Actually, I think Papa Howie is going to stop soon. They’ve been renovating the house a bit lately and I noticed there were no ashtrays inside any more, so good for him. (Nana Vick has been off cigarettes since her heartattack last year.)

And finally, because nothing says Easter like coordinated fire and morale checks, I’ve been granted a 3-hour furlough to go over to Brian’s house to play Panzer Grenadier while his wife and kids are out and about. Woohoo!

Happy Easter!

This post could be about kids that are entertaining, but actually it is about providing a little amusement for a group of 4-year-olds. We had a whole mess of people over for Caroline’s tol celebration, including a half-dozen 4-year-old boys and a couple older girls. I was charged with providing a little entertainment for them, so I did some searching on the Intarwebs for kids party games and settled on the following.

Marshmallow Towers – I bought two bags of large marshmallows and two 150 count packs of colored party toothpicks. We gathered everyone in the dining room, counted out 20 toothpicks each, dumped marshmallows all over the table and in a big bowl, and gave them 1 minute to see who could build the tallest tower. Actually, I ended up giving them about 3-4 minutes; the 4yo kids were able to put stuff together, but the ideas behind building up were a touch outside their grasp. The older girls still seemed to like the activity, and the younger ones also liked being able to eat some of their marshmallows afterward, so I give this one about a B.

Mummy Wrap – I bought a 12-pack of cheap toilet paper. The description I found said to time teams (one mummy and one wrapper) in wrapping the mummy from head to neck. Again, although the 4yo kids understood the idea, they weren’t very fast and dropped or tore the TP a lot. D ended up jumping in to assist (apparently, thirty-somethings enjoy TP mummies, too…) and rather than make all the kids wait their turn, I ended up turning them loose with about 4-5 wrappers working simultaneously on 2 mummies. They also enjoyed tearing all the TP off afterward. I give this one a C+.

Snowball Shovel – I bought one 200-count bag of cotton balls, and used some of the baby’s Aquafor petroleum jelly. Basically, you put a dab of jelly on each kids nose and they try to move cotton balls from the table into their bowls using only their noses. They all seemed to think this was amusing, although it was definitely too simple for the older girls. Also, the kids need frequent refreshing of the stuff on their noses; I was considering (if I were to do this again) giving each kid a little dab they could apply themselves, but this would be (a) messier, and (b) it was sort of fun/cute with them all asking periodically for more stuff. I give this one a C+ (for the younger kids).

Party String – when cruising the party aisle at Wal-Mart, I grabbed 10 cans of spray string on a whim; I thought, Hey, party string is fun. So after the indoor activities wound down, I directed all the kids outside for a “fun surprise” activity. I removed the caps and shook up the cans inside before going outside, then gathered everyone for a brief safety rule (no spraying in the face), then turned them loose. This was clearly the hit of the day for the young ones, the older girls, and about four adults. They were running all over the place spraying each other. A few of the little ones couldn’t depress the spray tip fully and required occassional assistance, but even with an adult’s help they really enjoyed it. After all the cans ran dry, there was still the throwing of string and string-balls. I need to find a source of bulk party string for the next party; this activity was A+, but also the most expensive supply (almost $2 a can at Wal-Mart).

Finally got to play Fight Klub a couple times with Bman. We both enjoy it – it hits the target of being a light CCG with some depth. I don’t want to rehash it all here as I’ve already written a review on BGG for it – check it out.

TGIF, but we have a ton of housework to do this weekend. My parents are driving in from CA next Thursday through Tuesday, along with two aunts who are visiting them from Korea (actually, the same ones who escorted Caroline home in January), plus a family friend will be coming down for the same weekend from St. Louis. Full house, anyone?

We were hoping to squeeze in a trip to the Philbrook Museum tomorrow and maybe Watchmen on Sunday, but that’s starting to look like a long shot. We went to the Philbrook when our friend Marty was visiting last weekend and found they have a free kids program. Ryan got a little plastic box with some art supplies in it, and each month he brings it they give him another item for his box. In addition, the second Saturday of each month is a family day with free admission for everyone (we’re not members (yet?) so that’s $7.50 per adult in savings) and some sort of family oriented programming. Ryan has really taken an interest in painting with his water colors lately, and his drawing ability continues to improve. I’ve been trying to teach him to “draw what you see” sometimes instead of just making up his own (largely scribblicious) pictures, so it’s been fun.

And of course I’ve stayed up way late like a dumbarse, playing COD:WAW and now screwing around here and working on card images to upload to Artscow before the “$5.88 and free shipping” per deck coupon expires this weekend. *sigh*