Plants and more

My phone says it's time to post to my blog. And if I don't then I'll snooze the reminder until it reminds me again next week. And so on. So instead I'm going to write some stuff. Right now!

I've been working a lot but just hit a big milestone for my game at PlayFirst so that's great. I can relax a little. Plus right now I'm working on a really fun part of the game.

Jonah's birthday is coming up. He'll be five. So far he wants a Ninja Turtle cake. That sounds a lot easier, but a little mainstream, compared to the crazy/cool TANKER TRUCK EXPLOSION cake we made last year. Still, I try to come through on his requests. Especially things like this that are easy.

I bought a game (well, in truth I bought a zillion games, but I want to talk about this one) called Pandemic. It's a cooperative board game where each player plays a randomly selected role and the players try to, well, save the world. Four diseases have broken out in the world and the players travel the world, helping each other, getting rid of disease, and trying to find cures together. It's cool. I really like cooperative games. Don't get me wrong, I like confrontational games too, but it's fun to work together.

Ari is starting to talk a lot more. It makes me laugh out loud when he says "No" now. He used to just say "unh uh" and kind of yell his anger. Now he has a real quick and subtle "No." He also say "Tink You m" (Thank you) which is crazy how cute he sounds.

He says a ton of other stuff too but those are some recent excellent ones.

I've been trying to teach Jonah that Ari wants to do everything Jonah does. "Jonah, if you don't want Ari to try to gouge your eyes out then you need to stop eye gouging, okay? No eye gouging." It's not working, but I feel like it's the right thing to teach him.

Okay, I've gotta get back to work. The stock market is plummeting, but I see it as an opportunity to invest. Just don't go spendin' all your money at once everyone.

:-(

I just heard the news from my friends, Mary and Joe, that my friend, Erick Wujcik, died. I'm really sad. Erick was so nice and smart and just so wonderful to talk to. He was always supportive. I wouldn't be at my current job, which I like a lot, if he hadn't given the company his seal of approval.

I ran my (grown-up) nephews through Erick's first published role-playing game, Sector 57, about a week ago. It was fun and brought back a lot of the memories I had of Erick from when I met him 20+ years ago. John Speck and I were 16 when we first met Erick. We would drive to the Detroit Gaming Center almost every Sunday night to play in role-playing games that Erick ran. His games were so fun and engaging.

I'm going to miss Erick's warm smile, big hugs and cool stories.

Here are some details from Kevin Siembieda