The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

Dafyd’s class had a field trip today to the FWMA (aka the Fort Wayne Museum of Art) and he asked me to go along with him and I jumped at the chance. This of course involved reworking my normal schedule at the newspaper and the university but it was well worth it.

I picked up both of the boys in Grabill and took them to school (I had to head their anyway) and made my way down to Dafyd’s class. I had a chance to chat with his teacher Mrs. Ray a bit and help Dafyd straighten up his desk (he takes after me obviously).

The bus ride over wasn’t much to write home about, other than the fact that it was dreadful. I don’t know how kids do it. The noise level is insane, the shocks are terrible and the color green is enough to invoke vomiting. Thankfully Dafyd and I spent the ride over playing Arvale: The Journey of Illusion on the PPC. If I could just remind him how to heal his character, Dafyd could finish the game without any issue, but I digress.

The man exhibit that we went to see was original works by legendary photographer Margaret Bourke-White. For all the years that I’ve lived in Fort Wayne, I have never managed to make my way over to the museum, so even if the kids weren’t excited I was.

Margaret Bourke-White specialized in the beauty of industrial design and took a lot of photographs of machines and workers. It was beautiful stuff to look at. I think Dafyd liked it as well. If you live in the Fort you should make sure you stop by and take a look or just do a search online for her works. She actually took the photograph that was on the first cover of LIFE magazine.

We weren’t there very long and took another joy-filled bus ride back to Harlan Elementary. When we got there I had decided that I was going to kidnap Dafyd for the rest of the day and spend some Daddy and Dafyd time together. I’m a firm believer in the importance of school and your kids attending all the time. However, everyone needs a day off and I could tell he needed one. So I called Kara on the way home and discussed it with her and she agreed that it was okay to take him out.

We had a blast. Burger King for lunch, Christmas shopping at the mall and lots of laughs with a final stop at Toys-R-Us (we had to get a consolation prize for Jace since I didn’t take him out for a half day, but his time is coming). A great time was had by all. If you ever get a chance, make sure you take at least one field trip with your kid, you’ll more than you know.

So I’m a geek. So sue me.

I thought it would be cool to combine my love for board games and my new pocket pc. If you have one, feel free to download these and use them. All images are taken from BoardGameGeek.com

Blokus	Carcassone
Old School Settlers of Catan	Settlers of Catan
Domaine	Puerto Rico
Samurai	San Marco

It’s funny to me the things we miss, the things we remember and the things we celebrate.

For me it was the 10,003rd mile on my 2004 Honda Element. I was leaving work and I was at the corner of Pearl and Fairfield in Fort Wayne. I have this urge come over me whenever I get a new job that for some reason I have to go out and get a new car. In Jan of this year I of course started working for the University of Saint Francis. It turned out that January was the worse snow we had all year.

Motivated by these two factors I went out and bought an Element. It was snazzy, 4WD, and orange. Shortly their after all the snow stopped. The funniest thing though; I had been looking online at the Honda CR-V and I thought that the Elements were the UGLIEST things on the face of the planet.

As a fluke though I built an Element online just to see what I thought of it; the only color that I could stand was the orange. It was kinda growing on me.

When I got to the dealership I hoped in the CR-V and I hated it. The driver’s area wasn’t very comfortable and my knees were racking into the steering wheel. So I asked them if they had any Elements on the lot. They had just gotten a new one in. It was orange and the right model. I feel in love and the rest is history. The coolest thing is that I was the only person to drive it; when I hopped in it only had 3 miles on it. I’ve been there for every mile since.

It was nice to celebrate the Quixote Mobile’s 10,000th mile.

In a similar line of thinking I’ve been thinking about the places that I used to live.

Kalkaska, Lansing, Charlotte, Grabill, and lastly Fort Wayne.

My first response to thinking back to all those places is first one of UGH, I would never go back there. But the more I thought about them, the more I realized that there are things I do indeed miss about them.

Kalkaska: The Big Fish downtown. G’s Pocket Pizzas (Those were the most amazing things ever created. The only thing I have been able to have come close are the defunked P’zones from Pizza Hut. Hey folks in Kalkaska, is G’s still around?)

Lansing: There is actually a lot in this town that I miss. A good Blimpies (the one’s here have driven me away), Papa Johns (not the chain), Little Caesar’s Pizza, and Celebration Cinema.

Charlotte: … I’m thinking … honest … It’s proximity to Lansing. Just kidding, I do miss the porch on my house, it was the best porch in the world. I cannot believe that my sister destroyed the bushes that I worked so hard to grow up into a privacy fence. Some of the people there were awesome.

So there you go. Some mindless nothingness.

So I’ve got this crazy idea.

See I have a lot of board games (250+ including expansions, add on things and the like). Every two weeks on Monday we have game night. We get a group of people together and we play. Every three Fridays I try to attend Game Night and get in some more playing. The problem is that I have a lot of wonderful games that can only be played with a limited number of players. This wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t have so many great friends that I loved to play board games with.

So what’s a game junkie to do?

Well, it’s pretty simple. Put together a HUGE board gaming weekend, invite all his friends, spend hours playing board games and share the love. This is what I had in mind:

Event: Enough Gaming to Choke a Plastic Camel
Dates: Friday January 7 & Saturday January 8

Friday Night: Game Night. This is the already planned meeting of Fort Wayne’s Original Game Night (est. 1991), so that’s excellent as I don’t have to do any work for it other than attend. If you’re interested in Game Night (TM), then I would encourage you to check out this link http://boardgames.meetup.com/193/

Saturday: Uber-Day. I have piles of 4 player games that are looking for attention. This will be the focus of Saturday, breaking into smaller groups around La Mancha (aka Bob & Michelle’s house) and playing some of these. After each game groups will break and reform and continue in the goodness. The house will be open from 10 am until I decided to kick you all out or you leave. This is the way it will work. The day will be broken into chunks (either 2 or 4 hour chunks I haven’t decided). You can sign up for any or all of them and we will game. They day will be broken by a potluck style lunch and much fellowship. Evening consumption will be worked out on site.

Attendance is optional for any and all events. This is not a test of fellowship or friendship just a chance for you to get your game on. Plus this might be a chance for folks like Eric, Scott, Regan and other folks to attend some gaming that they might not normally be able to do.

So there you have it, my master plan in rough form.

If you are interested in attending any or all of the gaming drop me a line and we will start to work out the fine details.

To be honest I am a little shocked.

I’ve written a few things that I thought would surely stir up some response, but I had NO idea what a fun discussion this whole wax nativity thing would turn into.

Here are a couple of good comments that you might have missed:

Everyone has a right to be offended, the good Lord knows that I’ve spent many a day in the past doing so. The hardest part that I have is understanding the “why’s” of it.

Anonymous (and you know who you are) argued the following reasons:

I would agree with their first point whole heartedly. But I would disagree that this was a situation in which God was being mocked. The Bible is very clear that God will not be mocked and I don’t plan on trying to test that anytime soon.

If someone made fun of my son, I would certainly be upset. It’s your kid and you love them and there really isn’t an argument there. If someone made fun of their mother I would also take offense. Here I must disagree again. Jesus is not mocked in any fashion. He is your run of the mill Jesus in all manager scenes. So then let’s address the issue of Mary. She is full clothed, in a normal manager pose and it appears to be very respectful. So all those bases are covered; that would mean then that the real offense would come from the people they choose.

I know nothing of the personal lives of any of the people involved. What is it that Mrs. Beckham is known for having done in her private (or public) life that is so offensive? She used to be in the Spice Girls, and while I didn’t care for their music I don’t know that is offensive. Now understand that I do not come from a Catholic mindset, so the idea of Mary being as sacred as Jesus is foreign to me. Outside of the initial birth of Christ she plays little role in his ministry on earth. But that is for the most part irrelevant. However in the end it is not the actor who is playing the role that matters, it is the role. In The Passion of the Christ, people could care less that Jim Caviezel is rumored to be bi-sexual, you didn’t care about who the actor was in private, you were moved by the story of the man that he portrayed. The same thing applies here.

This leads me to recall a verse from Paul:

Maybe Madame Tussauds wanted to make a modern day nativity. Maybe they wanted to make fun of Bush and Tony Blair. Maybe they wanted to mock the whole idea of the Christmas Season. What does it matter? The important thing is that this image has reminded us all that this is the time of year that we reflect back on the birth of the Christ, that he is the reason that we are here today.

Don’t believe it? Take a look at this link that Wally Loman sent: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&e=5&u=/nm/20041213/od_nm/odd_beckhams_dc

Sadly it recounts that someone attempted to destroy the scene (What a sad commentary on Christians, we rant and rail against non-Christians and then this is how we behave?), but what I found interesting is that many in the public were appalled because they only reason they had come to Tussauds was to see the nativity.

… But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached.