Almost there....Week 33 and going...

Hey all, Just wanted to give a few quick updates on stuff happening around these parts :)

Nicole's shower was a hit! She never knew it until she saw her cousins by the door as we walked up to the room. She loved every minute of it and everyone had a good time :) I took the guys and we hit Hooters, then back to the condo for some 300, but by the time the action was about to start, mom called us back to pick everyone up. WE got back home and I grilled some burgers and dogs - then played Fluxx and Apples to Apples. By 10pm, everyone went home and we called it a night.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone that attended and also those that could not but still sent a gift :) We are very fortunate to have good friends and family that are excited as we are.

BABY POOL IS STARTED! Yep! Sign up, use the link to the right and make a guess. Winner will have a party at thier crib for 2 with our new child - includes bedtime and a diaper change!! kidding... WE will see about a prize for the winner :)

Babys Room: Is almost done! Between the hours of working my ass off, some help from Amy and Nicole, and some good ol cash, the room is starting to come together nicely. The paint is up, the closet is done and fixed - including the doors, and the border paper is up. Check it out over at the Gallery.

Furniture comes today! YEP! Its in! Once they deliver it, I get to put the crib together and set that up. Then comes the touch up painting on spots that got damaged or where the paint never took. This weekend is ceiling fan weekend, bathroom door painting and master bedroom closet door replacement weekend. I'm going to replace the outlets, install the ceiling fan and also put the finishing touches on the window still - the blinds.

Once it is complete, I will take more pics and update the gallery, but also post a few in here.

IFL: The Fantasy Football league I run with 11 other crazy guys that think they are better than me lol.. WE are in the midst of our fantasy draft now. So far so good, but its the weekends that kill everything. Between people on travel, vacations and time zones, the email draft sometimes gets bogged down. Either way, the live draft weekend is looking good :) I just received my shipment of Sprechers Rootbeer and is waiting for fridge room that weekend. Pulled pork sandwiches and home made salsa will make it complete :) Doug and Rick are coming over this year to join myself, Dave B, Tony, Jason and Jerry. Amy 'volunteered' to help with the draft board and Nicole will run the chat room, as usual. In all, lots of fun to be had.

PAINTBALL: So far, its on hold, but the 26th could be the day for OTP. Its like a last call event for me, cause after that, my paintball career goes to slowdown mode for several months. I hope to make it.

XBOX: Joined a 2nd game rental place - this time it was Gamerang.com. They have 4 centers in the country, including one here in NJ. Im going to keep Gameznflix for now till the subscription runs out, then close the account. They just dont have the selection as the others do, but the price is good. Gamerang has a better selection and similar prices; I got 2 months for $20 promotion, so if they cant deliver in those two months, then they go bye bye.

We love the fridge - lots of room and water!! That was a fun night hooking up the water line thru the cabinets. When I drilled the holes, it was too far away from the wall behind the oven, so it stuck out several inches. I had to re-drill the holes, but in the end all is well.

Thats it for now - Look for a better update next time with some paintball, football draft pics and room pics :) Maybe I can update this faster as each thing happens.. :)

August arrives with a flurry of events!

Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in postings - its been really busy and eventful. Lets just get to it..

BABY and BABY ROOM: We are now in the 30th week and going well. Nicole is fully preggers and has a defined waddle. I reference her to 'you two..' and she seems to like it. So far all is well with the Dr and after this next appointment we will be starting the classes on Thursday nights. We have one Saturday night class later in the month, and the only other class I can think of is a infant CPR class from the Red Cross.

The room is doing well and should make more progress this weekend. I will be painting the trim work, putting up new trim on the walls and painting out the closet and window area. After that, the carpet comes in on the 10th and the only things left will be the ceiling fan and the border wallpaper, both can be done in a day. The furniture should be arriving near the middle of the month, with a crib, dresser and combo dresser/changing table. The last part will be a glider and that is either a gift from someone or a purchase by labor day. Overall - we are good.


For the kitchen, we decided to get a new fridge. Ours is 14 years old and starting to show. I wanted to be proactive about it, so we went with the brother-in-law discount and got a great deal on a whirlpool. We are getting THIS SUCKER :) . It is a side-by-side model and has all the bells and whistles we ever need. Ice maker, water, lots of shelves, white, it fits.. and it comes next Friday :) I got to run a water line now from the sink, but thats not too hard.

PAINTBALL: Nothing new to report here - no new events or games. I was trying to get a small group for the 26th with a few friends around town, but not sure if there is still interest in it. Dave might have plans and Quino/ Mike were interested but felt they needed to buy a marker. I suggested to them to just try it out before they buy equipment to see what they like or don't like - that way they don't get stuck buying somehting they don't want.

GAMING: Well, I got a good entry for this. Dan (Old navy buddy) and his wife Angela invited me to visit over a weekend back in May/June. We looked at possible weekends and when talking with Nicole she told me that if all is well with the babys room that it would be ok with her to make a weekend trip - I held my end up and she let me take the trip.

FRIDAY NIGHT (July 27th)- I arrived at the parking lot around 6:15, parked my xterra and got a pick up from the shuttle in like 5 minutes, if that. They dropped me with my stuff off - one bag with Bootleggers, Caylus and Pit; also included 2 shirts, socks, the usual... And my laptop with a movie and a crossword puzzle. The flight was suppose to be from 7:15 and land at 8:45 Milwaukee time... Least to say Philly airport SUCKS ASS! Not only did they delay our flight 2 hours right off the bat, but within a 15 minute time span, shut down all traffic leaving the airport due to 'weather' - there was a storm moving into the area and they did not want to risk people outside. now, normally I would agree to this little dilimla, but here lies the issue - the storm was 2 HOURS AWAY. Why delay EVERY GD plane 2 hours to wait for a rain drop. Yep! 2 hours later they open the runways back up - while it was raining... now - I seriously pissed.. WTF!! Who runs this armpit of an airport!

Our flight eventually took off at 12:45am. We landed close to 2am in MKE where I met up with Dan. We loaded up in his Prius and took off for the hour drive to his house. Once there, I met his wife angela and thier friends Tom and Angela...(#2) . It was right after I got my bag in the guest room when i heard - 'Lets play..." and I knew it was a gaming weekend. It was also that time that Tom and Dan were thinking about the Keg.. Keg ?!?! Beer!! NO! Root Beer. Yep! Here is the pic:

Notice the logo - Sprechers Root beer. Tasty stuff. More on that later. Anyways, a quick trip at 3am to the 24/7 store and we left with trash bags and ice. After getting back we loaded the keg into three bags and poured ice into them - then called it a night (?)....

Saturday - 5 hours later, I was up and heading to the shower - Tom and Angela were on the Wii playing a game and Dan was getting some omelettes going. After a cleanup and some food, it was close to 11. A few more people showed up when we broke out a game called Fluxx - a card game with changing rules. lots of fun - one for the collection (eventually). After a Fluxx game, we busted out Bootleggers and I showed Tom, Dan and Steve how to play. The high lite of the game was when Steve played a 'G-Men bust on my truck' and right afterwards Tom played a 'Hey, free truck' card on it, thus leaving me by turn 4 without a truck. I got them back when I denied Steve his delivery of 14 cases of beer and gunned down Dans control in the 2nd bar.
After Bootleggers, we played Outpost - a bidding game with a space theme. You bid on cards which give you something to enhance your buying power for larger cards - I always seem to forget to just build for 2 turns before bidding.. its an economic strategy, but works - Dan won, but not before loosing two straight bids on the top card - a Moon base. When the game ended at 3:30, we split into two groups - one played a game called Power Grid while the other, including me, played Caylus. We took the rules and removed the favor option to get a feel of the game flow - we should have left them in the game as it would have made a difference in the outcome.

By 6pm, Dan grilled up some burgers and brauts and we finished up Caylus and they finished up power grid. We then switched gears and busted out Nuclear War - Man, I forgot how fun that game is. Dan (like me) has all the expansions and the mini cards they sold back in the 90s. He modified his deck to make it go faster than the entire thing. We also tossed out the countries and went straight up. After two games of destroying the world, we busted out a brand new Railroad Tycoon. I volunteered to run it and Dan and Angela teamed up. Bill made a discovery that we were doing wrong - the playing card go out on the first turn, then one after that per turn. in a 6 player game, there were 15 cards out to choose from. Least to say, since it was a new game for everyone, it was a slow, but steady game. Tom came out winning, thanks to his hotel in Baltimore and multi-link deliveries. After that game, most left as it was close to 11. We never stopped as right after that we opened up Puerto Rico to discover that it too was a never opened game. I showed Angela, Dan and Tom how to play and we went - Dan took the shipper role, I went for builder and tom flexed in the middle. Angela had a ton of plantations and made alot of goods. In the end, I think Tom won - if not Dan won.. I forget. I messed up by not building with 6 quarries in turn 6 and 7. It was now 1 am; time for power grid. What a fun game! You start off with money and bid for power plants, buy your fuel (oil, coal, garbage or nukes) then build into cities and power them up. Then get paid for each city you power. repeat the process. Tom won by a good margin, but not without Dan and I on his heals. I would have liked to played it out, but succeeded the game because it was 3am.

SUNDAY- 9am come fast on gamer vacation, but hey.. its time ti play! We played some on the Wii and went to a buffet breakfast at the MineShaft - an infamous restaurant in town. Turns out this place is the largest restaurant in the state!! its 4 storefronts long and has 3 levels. After a filling breakfast, we headed off to thier friend Joe and Angelas house for Sunday gaming. Joes brother Will was on leave, so with Ben, Tom, Me, Dan, Angela (x2), Joe and Will - it gave us 8 players. after setting up the Keg, which was 1/2 empty by now, we busted out Nuclear War, Caylus, Bootleggers, Puerto Rico and even Fluxx. WE did play 2 good games of BANG!, where both times Ben was the sheriff. The one game I was a vice and the other I was the Renegade. Both games were excellent, expecially when the outlaws ketp shooting eachother while not knowing they were both outlaws. Then I finished them off each and almost killed off the vice. The problem was that the sheriff had the guy which can hold unlimited cards. At that point, he pulled out every defensive card and gave the vice a drink and by then it was too late - I kept getting thrown in jail and never got a turn after that. By 9pm, we wrapped it up and headed out. We got back and cleaned up a bid.

In the end, here were the stats of the weekend: (Thanks to Angela)
Hours of total gaming: 35
# of people attended: 11
# of Dan and Angie’s cats high: 1 (she is just high on life though)
# of hours waiting in an airport: 5 (Joe M)
Furthest distance traveled: Philly to Milwaukee ~870 miles (Joe M)
Calories of Root beer drunk: 31,900
# of people sick from too much root beer: 1
Pounds of Jerky eaten: 2
Pounds of Cheese eaten: 5
Bags of chips eaten: 5
# of towels used to clean up the water because the bag of ice used to cool the root beer broke: 10
And last but definitely least, Person with the least amount of sleep all
weekend: Tom G.

Look for another event in the near future - maybe this time we can get a large hall somewhere and get both groups together for a massive game event weekend :)


XBOX: Nothing too exciting here - playing Rainbow 6, Saints row (finished the gangs out.. just screwing around now..) and Shadowrun. I rented CnC and did not like the interface - something about not having a mouse to command troops... I also rented Lost planet, but its another shooter, so back that went. Now I have Crackdown at home - its ok, but takes some gettin use to. nothign exciting on the horizon yet aside from COD4. I hope to get Call of Juarex in the mail next week after I finish goofing off with Crackdown. Carlos M stopped playing xbox and Eric is on late because of his work. Im still in CP, so I some online friends there...

This weekend we are hosting a game party at our place. The usual suspects should be there, so expect another fun sunday! Joe burgers in the works :) Also, this saturday is paint the closet and window sill, and the trim, so we will see what that looks like in a month. I want to do the bathroom door, but it will be too humid to paint. When it gets bad, the paint will blister in a few weeks, so its important to have low humidity when painting..

Lastly, There is talk about doing another big game weekend in the future, but it wont be this year - Were having a BABY!!!

- Striker