The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

Last night was game night and we had a great turn out considering we haven’t had one in a long time. Laura & Jeremy Carnahan showed up as first time guests as well as Mark & Ellen (7) Robbins. Also attending last nights get together was Mr. Jon Adam, Michelle (well, she lives there so she had no choice really) and Bobby Rothrock.

The first game on the table was a German classic called: Rette Sich Wer Kann (Save yourself who can, or Everyman for himself or Lifeboat). In this clever game with no cards, no dice, you do your best to get as many of your crew to shore as the main ship sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Each turn a lifeboat springs a leak. If there are enough open slots for the leak to sit in, nothing happens. If not, then the members of the boat have to vote who gets tossed out, the majority rules (with one exception). At any time there are more leaks in the boat than people, the boat sinks. Next everyone votes which boat moves closer to shore, again majority rules (with one exception). Lastly everyone has to jump out of one boat and swim to a new one in hopes of improving their lot, if they cannot swim to a new boat, then badness befalls them and they don’t make it to shore. The one expection to every voting rule is that everyone has 3 captain chips. If you vote captain, you get to make the decision regardless of whateverone has chosen… that is of course if no one else has chosen captain as well. When that happens, you both loose your chip and your votes don’t count. After all the teams were picked, Bobby arrived from his second job so I left Michelle to manage team purple and played some two player games with Bobby.

Things seemed to go well over at the Lifeboat table, lots of laugher, bribing, and a good time seemed to be had by all. In the end, I gather that Ellen won (after all, who would sink the boat of a 7 year old). While all that voting was going on, Bobby and I turned our attention to trying out Duell. Duell is a card game that simulates the feel of fencing. On your turn you play a card and do one of three things: Move Forward, move backward or Attack (STAB! as Ellen would say). It’s really that simple as you dance back and forth looking for the right opening. At first it seemed like the game would be a run away as I took a quick lead on Bobby, but he quickly turned things around with some clever card play. In the end it came down to the final round which Bobby won 5 to 4. We also busted out HIVE, which is on the top of my two player game list and had at it. Without going into the messy details, Bobby didn’t have a good time. Looks like he needs some more practice at www.hivemania.com.

After Lifeboat, Laura and Jeremy decided it was time to call it a night and so they took off. The rest of us decided that play a game of Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride is a clever game from Alan Moon where you have tickets that list various cities on it and it’s your job to connect them. The farther apart the cities are the more points your tickets are worth. Bobby decided to sit out and watch since he had a “staff” meeting at 9:00. I explained the rules to every one (On your turn you can do one of three things, take up to two card [only one if you take a wild card], claim a route [playing matching cards to the route on the board], or take more tickets [you take 3 and you have to keep at least one, though you can keep all 3]). I was a little concerned if Ellen would be able to get it, I mean after all she was only 7, but she said she understood and a way we went.

Let me tell you that I haven’t had this much fun playing board games in a while. Ellen was a TOTAL RIOT (Ellen you are welcome at game night any time – though we’ll do our best to get you to bed at a decent time). She fit right in with our group (which might tell you something about our group), she was cracking jokes, talking trash, and even picked up on the popular game night catch phrase, “Cures you Bob! [Closed fist shaking included]. It was a great time. And in the end, with only a little help at the end (which wasn’t really help at all) from her Dad, Ellen tied for 1st with 110 points (with her dad).

It was a great time, and I certainly cannot wait for the next one. A great time was had by all and laughs all around thanks to the wonderful demeanor of very special 7 year old (that and the one can of Pop she had).

Well see you all next time – which should be every other Monday.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past lately. I guess it happens when you go through something like a divorce. Kara and I have asked each other over the past few years what we could have done differently, what we could have changed to alter the outcome.

It’s easy now to see where we messed up. It’s easy now to point out specific events that we could have done differently, things we should have waited on, things we should have addressed sooner. I guess that’s all hindsight now.

They say that hindsight is 20/20. I say hindsight is crap. Hindsight is nothing more than a rose-colored dream and a misleading wish. We all have things about our pasts that we’d like to change. We’ve made mistakes, screwed up, taken wrong turns and a hundred other things that are black spots and stains on our permanent record. “If only I had… I would of…”
We often want to live in a world of “what-ifs”. “What if I had asked that girl on a date…”, “What if I had left 10 minutes later then perhaps…” No matter how you phrase it, we are obsessed with going back and changing the things we didn’t get right the first time. We want to, but we can’t. We forget sometimes in our obession that we are who we are because of the steps we have taken down our road. Our hindsight perspective is based upon the hill upon which we now stand. We are where we are because of the paths we have trod. The valleys and the ditches, every bump in the road has led us to be who we are now. We cannot change the past without changing our pesent.

I’ve received some interesting feed back from folks as this story trickles out to people we’ve known, places we’ve attended. Some is indifferent, some has been encouraging (thanks Russell), and some has been down right hostile. I’m not really suprised by any of these reactions I guess. I certainly take what I get because I don’t know that I deserve any different. The hard part are those folks who are angry at me because they think I’m too “cavalier” about the subject, as if it’s no big deal to me.

Let me reassure you that this is indeed a big deal to me. It hasn’t been easy and it wasn’t something that I came to lightly. But as I tried to state when I wrote my first open letter, that we’ve had years to deal with all of this. Six years is a long time. When I first moved out I was angry and bitter. I was angry at my friends for not being there for me. I was angry at God for letting my life end up in this mess. I was angry and bitter at Kara for so many things. I wanted to know why all this was happening to poor old me and I was looking for someone to blame. The obvious person was Kara. If only she was more… If only she was was less… If only we hadn’t… The list went on for days. I lived in a world of “what-ifs” and “if-onlys”. But once I let go of all of my anger and really took a look at things, I knew I had no one to blame but myself. Kara was who she was and you cannot change people. My friends hadn’t necessarily abandoned me, I ran away and cut the world off. And then I found myself depressed. I sucked as a person, I sucked as husband, as a father, and most importantly as a Christian. It wasn’t an easy place to find myself in. But I crawled my way out. Granted it took three years, but I did it. I’ve had the chance to work through all those feels and hopefully I am a better person today on this side of things then when I was to begin with.

I cannot change the past. All I can do is learn from it, change the things that I did wrong so that I won’t repeat them in the future. I have confessed my sins & mistakes before God, Kara and the rest of the blooming world. My life is spilled out before you on this page and I cannot take back the words. I am laid bare. I am sorry if some feel that I am not “repentant enough”, I am sorry that you are just now having to deal with these feelings. All I can do is take the things you hurl at me and move on. For the first time in my life I can set things right. I can make sure that I am where I need to be with God, that I can go forward instead of being stuck where I am at.

I am reminded of a scene from The Big Kahuna. In it Phil (Danny DeVito) is talking to Bob (Peter Facinelli) about loosing a big account they were trying to get at a convention because Bob decided it was more important to talk to the client about Jesus than it was to do the job he was paid to do. This lead to a huge fight between Bob and Larry (Kevin Spacey). After Larry leaves, this is what Phil says to the idealist Bob:

PHIL: “We were talking before about character, you were asking me about character, we were speaking of faces. But the question is much deeper than that. The question is ‘do you have any character at all’, and if you want my honest opinion Bob, you do not, for the simple reason that you don’t regret anything yet.”

BOB: “You’re saying that I won’t have any charter unless I do something that I regret?”

PHIL: “No Bob. I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret, you just don’t know what they are. It’s when you discover them, when you see the folly of something you’ve done and you wish you had it to do over, but you know you can’t because it’s too late. So you pick that thing up and carry it with you, to remind you that life goes on. The world will spin without you and you really don’t matter in the end. Then you will obtain character because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself all across your face. Until that day, however, you cannot expect to go beyond a certain point.”

In the end, that is my hope, that despite wrong things and and wrong choices made that I can grow beyond the point of where I am at. No matter how much we want to, we cannot change the past. Kara and I have some wonderful memories. We also have some really rotten one as well. But you cannot have one without the other. As we are reminded in the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, you cannot give up one without giving up the other.

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
“Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;”
Desires compos’d, affections ever ev’n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav’n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp’ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th’ unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav’nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.”
- Alexander Pope

“You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life.”

You cannot change the past without changing the present, which means you’d never have the opportunity or desire to go back and change the past to changed to make your changed present the present present (it’s the eternal quandry of time travel – the endless loop).

You cannot change the past, but you can change your present in hopes of changing your future. The past is a compus to direct the course of your future. It is the foundation upon which every future thing is construted. You find the weaknesses and you shore them up. The past is to be learned from, it’s a tool to hammer out the dents in your future, in hopes that your tomorrow will be different from your yesterday.

“The flapping of a single butterfly’s wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month’s time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn’t happen. Or maybe one that wasn’t going to happen, does. (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)”

It was a weekend filled with movies and relaxing. The one that probably struck a cord with me the most was the one we watched last: Freddy Vs. Jason. Now, I’ll be completely honest with you, I am not a fan of slasher flicks. I don’t know what it is, they just don’t hold anything for me. I’ve seen a few of the Freddy movies back in High school, and the only film with Jason I’ve ever seen was Jason X, which I watched as a fluke (and which is actually how I ended up TiVo’ing this movie – I figured I saw Jason X, I might as well see Freddy Vs. Jason), but I knew enough to have a general concept of what this film was supposed to be about. In it, Freddy, alone in the depths of Hell, sadden by the fact that he was wrongfully driven away by the town folks from his playground of dreams, decides that it’s time for him to come back. Now, the only way that he can come back is if the kids know about him and more importantly are afraid. This put poor Freddy in a hard spot since the town had cleared away all record of him. I felt bad for the guy. So he did the only thing a nightmare demon can do, he brought back another killer and sent him to do a copy cat crime in Freddy’s home town in hopes that he might stir the memories of the towns folks and recapture that fear and thus his power.

Jason, who appeared as nothing more in a lap dog in this film (which was rather frustating for him I am sure), went off to do Freddy’s bidding and killed a few people. This of course had the effect that Freddy had hoped for and he once again regained his power. However, rather than being encouraging and greatful to Jason for helping his accomplish his goal, Freddy tried to run him out of the picture. For me, this is really where the movie broke down for me and I was saddened by the outcome.

I mean here we have two talented professionals, both masters in their own right, set on a downward spiral that led to their ultimate demise. Why? Simple pride. Freddy couldn’t tolerate that Jason too might be sucessful in his back yard. Rather than seeing what the two of them could accomplish working together, it became a personal war between the two of them. In the end, they lost sight of what was really important, the killing, and it brought a tear to my eye. Rather than understanding the synergy that the two of them might share, rather than seeing the death toll they could rack up together, the movie ended in a fight between the two of them for who was the better killer. I mean come on?! Where is the respect?! Sure, Jason has a different method than Freddy, he takes a straight forward approach, lumbering along and then, slash, but it works. It’s simple but it works. Freddy is the master of the dream, and has a wonderful flair for the dramatic and that has it’s place too. They could have killed alot of kids that day, but no, pride won the day and those sinful kids (with their drinking, smoking, sexing and drug taking) of Elm Street and Lake Crystal got off without really learning anything. Another opportunity wasted. Oh Freddy & Jason, when will you ever learn? I can only hope that in the next movie, when Mike shows up, you’ll work together for the greater good instead of being selfish.

Also on the “I watched these movies this weekend list”:
Miracle
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This is one movie I wanted to see when it came out, but I didn’t have a chance to. I’m a sucker for true stories that inspire, and a sucker for any story that shows us kicking the Russians buttocks (Hey, I’m a child of the 80′s). The movie itself was pretty good, nothing super, but I liked it and even got a little choked up when the US Hockey team won. All in all, a good family flick.

The Goodbye Girl
—————-
The Goodbye Girl has been sitting on the TiVo since January. I got so sick and tired of TNT running ads for this and listening to Hootie singing the song that I just snapped and recorded it. This was of course a made for T.V. remake of Neil Simon’s Goodbye Girl with Jeff Daniels (always gotta root for the Michigan boy). I really liked it. It was cheesy, and totally a chick thing, but dang it, I liked it.

Love Liza
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I’m a huge PSH (Philip Seymore Hoffman) fan. I had watched this movie before, but Michelle had never had a chance to watch it, so this was yet another flick that made the TiVo list (I’m telling you, I have no idea what I would do sometimes without TiVo). This was a horridly depressing movie about a man (a webdesigner) who’s life kills herself and leaves him a note. He turns to sniffing gas to get high and takes up a liking for model planes. The film ends with him burning down his house and walking half naked down the street. But WOW can this guy acted. It was a good movie and if you are in the right frame of mine should catch it if you get the chance.

Lastly, Michelle and I had a chance to do a little bit of board gaming this weekend and we chose the En Garde remake by Reiner Knizia: Duell. Basically it’s a card game that simulates the feel of fencing. It was a total blast (well, I ended up beating Michelle, but it was still a good time). Well other than cleaning the house for Game Night tomorrow and getting the lawn mowed, that was my exciting weekend. Oh that and I converted the Andrew-Peterson.com message board into PHP, ported over most of the Photo Gallery and installed some new blog software for Andrew… but other than that, nothing else.

I had a chance to play again with Mark’s (Network security guy from the college) gaming group on Friday night. His buddies Paul & Brian showed up and Paul for personal reaons (his wife was sick or at least sick of the kids) brought his two children. The game on the table was the Avalon Hill classic – Age of Renaissance.

This is the second time that I’ve played this game and I’m convinced that underneath it all it’s a good game. I’m not a fan of lots of fiddly actions and pieces, and AoR certainly has quite a few. I’m also not a huge fan of games that take HOURS to play (we clocked in at 5 hours and we only played 2 of the 3 epocs). To top it all off, Paul brought his two kids and had his daughter play (who he helped along). Now, I don’t mind playing board games with kids – when Gordon (www.fortwayne.com) comes he’ll often bring his kids to game night (which is totally fine, its open to everyone) and I n’t mind when Rachel plays because normally it’s a lighter game and I have no investment in (for exaple Coloretto or something along those lines). But when I’m playing an intense (and I think 5 hours qualifies as that) game with 3 other guys all over 40, it’s frustrating to be playing with a 10 or 11 year old kid, who Dad is helping play along (giving him a slight advantage since he’s working two kingdoms). And the last little gripe about this, I was originally told this is more of a “guys” night thing so to have kids there and then to have an 11 girl play just rubbed me the wrong way. But other than that I had a good time. I always love the challenge, and I love playing games that I stink at or when the players are exceptional as it gives me a chance to really test my stuff. Not only that, for this being my second time playing (I scored a -7 last time), and through both games to be considered a threat is a good thing for the old ego.

The game ended up really close and despite having played before and all four of us reading the rules, we still managed to mess up quite a few (which is another reason I’m not a huge fan of war games and other games from Avalon Hill – you shouldn’t have to spend 20 minutes discussing the wording of a rule to know if something is legal or not.) Oh well, I look forward to Monday as this will be my night with my normal gaming group and it’ll be nice to have a more relaxed setting (my house). Not sure what we are playing, but it’ll be Euro games and we’ll get a few different ones in.

On a side note, I took the weekend off so it was totally weird to stay up until mid-night, let alone get home after 12:30. Then to top it all off, I actually didn’t have to get out of bed until almost 9:00 am. Can you believe it?! I forgot how good it feels. For the rest of you folks who live semi-normal lives, you have no idea how good you’ve got it.

… Well, that is unless you’re eating at Logans Steakhouse in Fort Wayne.

I honestly have no idea what the problem is. But 3 out of the last 5 times I’ve eaten there, I’ve ended up with a free lunch. It started innocently enough a few weeks ago. We always order from their lunch menu (they have this huge sign next to it that says lunch in under 15 minutes) because we’d like to get in, get out and get back to work (and by work I mean blogging, watching Strong Bad, playing board games online, and then doing some web design stuff). Well for some still unknown reason our lunch took like 30 minutes. We expressed our displeasure, so when the waitress brought us the bill, I said, “The manager is going to discount this correct? I’m not looking for a free lunch mind you, I simply want to be compensated for the long wait, so I think 20% off is fair.” So she went and talked to the manager and then he came over to talk to us (he was rather a jerk mind you), and said the meal took longer than it should, normally it comes out much sooner (didn’t say he was sorry). So I asked him what he was going to do to make things right. “Well what do you want me to do, I said I was sorry.” “Well I think some sort of discount is fair, like say 20%. I’m *not looking for a free lunch, just something that’s fair, we did wait 30 minutes.” So he storms off, the waitress comes back with the check, and he’s given us a free meal (though we still had to pay for drinks), I tried to plead my case again, but that was it. Well, then the other couple that was with us looked at their check, they were charged full price (which lead to another trip back to the manager). So, I left with a rather bad taste in my mouth for Logans.

The next two times went fine, but the last two, again with the free meal. First they messed up the order, which was okay because they brought me a new one, and they gave me the meal for free. And then yesterday they took a long time and without even mentioning it a manager (not the same dorky guy) came over, appologized and then said, “Hey, your lunch is on us.” I was a little stunned. But hey, there you go a free lunch.

In the same line of free stuff from lunch outtings, last week Michelle and I went to O’Charlies for lunch, she found a block of ice at the bottom of her bowl (normally caused by the temp in the freeze). So she just took it out, set it on the plate next to her and we had lunch. Everything else was fine. The waiter (Matt – have him every time we go – the same guy that Tom and I had when he was here), cleared the plates and we didn’t say a thing. Next thing we know the manager comes over, says he noticed the ice on the plate, and wanted to appologize and gave us gift certificates for the next time we went.

So moral of the story, there is such a thing as a free lunch, but the downside is you’ll usually have to have me for company.