In May, I’ll be speaking to students at Hesperia Junior High School about the benefits of a college education. While I have some ideas (it opens a lot of doors career-wise, broadens your worldview, gives you a taste of independence with a safety net and, of course, you can meet a lot of new girls), I’m curious what other people feel are the benefits.
While my book-reading at Topaz Elementary School went well, I’m still haunted by Career Day at Hesperia High School last year, where I think students actually fell into a coma listening to me, so I’d appreciate any input.
We bought a new bed this weekend, since the waterbed, even with the (relatively) new motionless mattress, has finally given up the ghost. The heater is dead, there’s a mystery leak giving us a small puddle of ice water around the edges and, frankly, we’re tired of dealing with it.
We hit mattress stores in Victorville before settling on a Sealy Reed Rose plush, queen-sized. After a whole lot of Goldilocksing, this one just felt right.
It gets delivered Thursday, meaning we had to drain the waterbed (and the tougher to drain motionless mattress) one final time.
My previous victory over the ants appears to have been aided by the weather, because this week, the ants have returned, once again establishing an initial foothold in my bathroom. (Their point of access appears to be a hole in the sealant around the base of my toilet, which would make a kinder person feel they’ve suffered enough.)
I still have some of the insecticide powder our previous Orkin man gave me, but I’m out of the MaxForce anti-ant weaponry. I’m hesitant to lay down a lot of poison in places the kittens can (and will) get to, but I’m thinking of going full-force in my bathroom and leaving the door closed until all the ants are dead. If they make it to the kitchen again, it’s going to be more problematic dealing with them, since Hanna and Lucky seem determined to misbehave in there when we’re asleep or at work.
So, Peter is going to see a concert later this month with a male friend from high school, and his friend (extremely well-off) is paying for the VIP tickets. The tickets are $425 … each.
I’m saying that Peter and his single never-married male friend are going on a date and, with an evening that may well hit $1,000 before the night’s over, he’s going to have to put out.
Am I right?
Let’s be honest here: The Game of Life is sort of dorky.
I appreciate the basic concept — playing house in a boardgame context — but even as a child, the notion that you would win the game if you were married, had as many children as possible and as much cash as possible sat poorly with me. Brilliant artists, fulfilled social workers, poor-but-happy people in public service, they all lose the standard Game of Life.
I liked the little cars and 3-D board, though.
But the victory conditions work a lot better for the Disneyland/Disneyworld/Downtown Disney-only version of the game, The Game of Life: Pirates of the Caribbean edition. In it, you sail around a very attractive little board in die-cast metal boats (which do poorly on the sloped 3-D landscape, but that’s not a crippling issue) and acquire a historical captain (who determines how much booty you get whenever you cross a Share the Loot space), a ship (with which you can fight other players’ ships, in a mechanic almost identical to the way D&D works, in an amusing twist) and even one or two mascots (all of whom have some combination of eyepatches, peglegs and hooks for limbs). You acquire gold treasure through the course of the game, but don’t know what you’ve gotten until you reach Treasure Island at the end, where you can end up doubling the value of some pieces of treasure based on which mascots you picked up along the way.
We played it this weekend when Jenn and I visited my parents in Oakland. It was a little slower than it might have been at first because of reading through all the rules. While simple, there are a lot of them. A second run-through, with just Jenn and me, went lightning fast.
The game is a lot of fun, although a mechanic for playing either as a sailor or a deckhand (which my father pointed out is a false split to begin with) seems to be half-finished: There are a ton of benefits for playing as a deckhand, with more money coming in most times a player gets money and having to pay smaller fines at the times when a player has to pay a fine, as well as being able to get the two best captains (one of whom, Edward Teach, was better known as Blackbeard). The benefits to being a sailor: A few fewer spaces to travel to reach Treasure Island. Since we found ourselves picking the longer path to get to Treasure Island on the two times on the board you can choose directions at a fork in the path (the better to get more chances for loot and more chances to attack the other players), this isn’t much of a benefit, either. All I can think is that they meant for there to be more benefits for being a sailor, but they never made them into the final vesion of the game. When we play in future, it’ll be as all sailors, I think.
Although this version of the board is a Disney exclusive, it looks like it’s also a test run for a mass market version of the game: This summer, the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie will be accompanied by new versions of Life and Battleship with flavor taken from the new movie. I suspect, other than the addition of movie art and characters, the Life game will look a lot like the one I’ve got at home today.
|
|
