A Very Nerdy Christmas

This Christmas was full of wonderfully nerdy gifts from friends and family. The photo above shows a selection of the highlights. The Wife made my son a plush D20 as featured in my previous blog post. We also got him a plush triceratops, and my cousin got him an awesome Star Trek onesie!

My dad got the Wife Machi Koro, a really fun card-based city-building game that is very fast to learn and faster to play. The Wife and I played our first two games over the course of an hour or so a couple nights ago. I definitely recommend it if you're looking for a new game. It'll also be interesting to see how it plays with more than two people.

The Wife got me the amazing TableTop Owlbears shirt from Shirt Woot!

Lastly, I made my wife a gaming kit to hold her D&D stuff (except character sheets.). I picked up a craft box from Michael's, stained and lacquered it, lined the inside with green felt, and then made up a couple little boxes for her characters' minis. I decorated the outside of the boxes with drawings that represented the core elements of her characters-- fire for her pyromancer, and a tree for her druid.

 I also painted up a couple minis to represent her characters.

 Rayne is her pyromancer from our last campaign. The base figure is from Reaper's Bones line. It's plastic, and so the sculpt isn't as crisp as its pewter counterpart. It turned out okay, but I was having a heck of a time getting a good pale complexion that didn't look ashen.

 Her catfolk druid figure and baboon companion turned out much better. It took some hunting to find the minis, but I'm pleased with the ones I picked up. I especially love that the baboon is letting out some sort of shriek or hiss, as my players have already decided that this is his most common expression.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, and may 2015 be full of joy.

Merry Christmas 2014!

The Wife and I had some unexpected big-ticket expenses come up just as the holiday's were getting rolling. In order to keep Christmas affordable, we decided to do a bunch of handmade gifts this year. The Wife made this awesome plush D20 for the boy.

I've got another holiday story that gamers will appreciate. So, I recently discovered one of the major downsides to living in the 'burbs... or my particular burb anyway.

This past weekend, I had just got back from running errands while the Wife and kid were 30 miles north baking cookies at grandma's. I was getting hangry. We hadn't been grocery shopping, and the dregs of food in our house all looked unappetizing. I didn't want to go back out since all the fast food I like required traversing the clogged streets around the mall. Then I thought, "I'll use this as a chance to order a pizza!" The wife can't eat cheese or cured/processed meats, so pizza is a rare delicacy for me.

I popped online to the one pizza delivery place I had found in our area that produced a pie worthy of calling food. (ie. not Caesar's Domino Hut) I placed my order through the online order service as I have done in the past, put Chronicles of Riddick on Netflix and sat down to wrap presents. Festive, no?

Time passes... not sure how long, but it was at least half an hour.

I think to myself, "I should probably have my cellphone nearby in case the pizza place calls." I get my phone and sure enough there is a voicemail. The online ordering service had called to tell me the pizza place wasn't answering their phone, so they were canceling my order.

Damn. My hanger was flaring up. I was annoyed that my order was canceled. I was more annoyed that an online ordering service was really just a middle man who called the pizza place for me!? I got back on the pizza place's website and called their direct line. Sure enough, nobody picked up and their voicemail box was full. GAH!

I did another online search desperately looking for delivery options that supplied actual food. Apparently our little middle class neighborhood is smack in the middle of some sort of culinary wasteland. I found one other delivery pizza place. Their website said they were open. I called. The phone rang... and rang... and rang... nothing.

PIIIIIIIIIZZZZZZAAAA!!!!!

I had gone full hungry Hulk. I ranted online. I sent despairing texts to the Wife, and then I caved and did the only thing I could. I made boxed mac and cheese. It took the edge off, but did a poor job filling the pizza shaped hole in my belly.

But the story doesn't end there.

The following day, my wife and I received an email from PizzaForYouBoth promising that if we responded by that afternoon, Pizza Claus would deliver a pie of our choice from a restaurant of our choice. My first thought was, "Those Nigerian princes are either getting more clever or more desperate." My second thought was, "I bet this is one of my best friend's little generous shenanigans." The Wife responded to Pizza Claus, since she has the more restrictive diet, and placed an order for a chicken pizza half with cheese, half without.

Sure enough, Pizza Claus showed up just before I got home from picking up groceries and delivered a quality pizza to our door. It's good being best friends with Pizza Claus, even if you only see him once a year.

If you're celebrating Christmas or other holidays this season, I hope they are wonderful! If you are not, I hope whatever you are doing instead is wonderful!