Week Thirty Six: Torchwood Marathon (Netflix)

Week Thirty Five: Lords of Waterdeep

Week Thirty Four: Couples Game Night

Week Thirty Three: Smokey Bones & The Bourne Legacy

Week Thirty Two: Puerto Rico

Week Thirty One: Lost Cities & Pastiche

Week Thirty: Family Vacation in Traverse City

Week Twenty Nine: Carcassonne

Week Twenty Eight: Trans America

Week Twenty Seven: Moonrise Kingdom at the Cinema Center

Week Twenty Six: Legally Blonde at the Wagon Wheel

Week Twenty Five: Doctor Who Marathon (Netflix)

Week Twenty Four: Fort Wayne Ribfest

Week Twenty Three: Men In Black 3

Yup, my Project 52 plans came back around to dinner and a movie (although this time, we went to the movie first, then dinner). I really like the first two MIBs, so when the third came out, I know I wanted to see it. Project 52 gives me a great outlet to slide in a movie during my week, so since I didn't have anything else planned and it doesn't take too much forethought other than getting my mom to come over to watch the kids...

We left for the movie a little late, so it felt like a rushed 20 minute drive, but when all was said and done, we were only three minutes late sitting down in the theater.  I don't think we even missed a preview.

Dinner was another story.  By the time the movie was over, it was 8:45pm (even though is looked liked 2pm sunlight).  Our first choice, Chops, was closing at 9pm, so we went to Plan B. And then, as I was driving, I thought about sushi, so we changed to Plan C, Naked Tchopstix, where both of us had heard of, but neither have been.

So, it was a nice little adventure to tag onto a good movie!

Week Twenty Two: Fort Wayne Tincaps (MiLB)

Week Twenty One: Pandemic

I went back to a board game for my week.  Back when I picked up Arkham Horror, I had seriously considered playing Pandemic, instead.  Its another one of those co-operative board games, where everyone playing is on the same "team" trying to win against events that occur in the game.

This time, I picked a game that not only is rated highly, but one I actually had played before and was fairly comfortable with the rules. Plus, there aren't a whole lot of rules in Pandemic, at least compared to something like Arkham Horror.

Since we were playing at home, I didn't have to worry about a babysitter, but I did need to go out and buy the game. It turned out the day before our P52 night, I got a half day off from work, so I made use of it and ran by a local game shop to pick up the game. Unfortunately, they were out of stock. They said they could order it, but the game is really popular. When they looked it up in their system, they could only give me an estimate of a month, before it would be back in.  They did have a copy when I bought Arkham Horror.  Needless to say, I passed.

I went to Plan B, which was another game I had played which could be run with two players, SmallWorld.  But they were out.  I looked for Carcasonne, a highly rated game that plays two, but they were out of that as well.  I cut my losses and went to Plan...Plan D?

Another store, same issue.  They didn't have Pandemic, but they did have Carcassone.  I asked them about Pandemic, which they confirmed they were out of stock.  They could order it, which the clerk promptly started looking up on the computer.  I mentioned that I was wanting to play it the following evening, which I expected couldn't be done, but the clerk said they could have it tomorrow afternoon.  I confirmed I wanted it and gave them my contact info.

Next day, I was pleasantly surprised to get a call in the morning that Pandemic was in.  I picked it up after work and once the kids were in bed, Amy and I pulled the game out, went over the rules briefly and then started playing.

We played two games and won both of them (what a pandemic team!).  The first was kind of easy (playing on beginner mode). The second, on normal difficulty, we won by the skin of our teeth, on our last turn after strategizing for a while.

Fun times!  The game is easy to learn, easy to play, fun to play and only lasts about 45 minutes.  It plays 2-4 people and doesn't take a whole lot of concentration.

Week Twenty: Momma Mia at the Embassy

Week Nineteen: The Avengers Movie

Yeah, I didn't need a lot of forethought to plan this one.  I really wanted to go see this movie and it was my turn to coordinate an evening for P52. I asked my mom to stop by and watch the kids after I got home from work, so that's all it really took.

I checked the movie times beforehand, and there were plenty of showings at several different theaters.  So, whether we had a long or a short dinner, we were covered.  In times past, we've gotten stuck waiting for a movie or seeing something we had no expectations, so checking movie times is something I try to do if I know we may be seeing something.

We had a nice little dinner at Olive Garden before the movie.  I hadn't been there in a long time and since I had a gift card unspent from my birthday, it made the most sense. Food was better than I remembered and we both had enough leftovers for lunch the next day. Bonus!

The movie was all that I expected and Amy enjoyed it as well. All in all, a fun and carefree evening!

Things I Learned:

• Dinner and a movie is a tried and true date night, so there is no really reason to avoid it, from time to time.


• Action movies, even when featuring superheroes, have the highest likelihood to appeal to both sexes.

Week Eighteen: Komet's Hockey Game

Week Seventeen: Komet's Hockey Game

Last night, I decided to change the pace of the last few of my weeks and go with a pre-packaged, paid event. So, I bought a pair of tickets to Game 6 of our CHL Conference Finals as the Fort Wayne Komets hosted the Missouri Mavericks. The Komets were down 3-2 in the best of seven game series, so if they lost, the season was over. Now, it would have been more exciting to watch a game seven of the finals, but there's no way to guarantee that could happen.

So, after dinner at home, we left the kids with my mom and we took the quick drive to the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum to take in a Komets hockey game. I had already bought a pair of tickets, online, setting me back about $60 total, but since we don't splurge like this often, it was well worth the money. Amy ended up getting some snacks in the third period, so when all was said and done, I'm figuring the night ended up costing $80, but we had a lot of fun.

The Komets have been around in Fort Wayne for 60 years and we have gone to games over the years and always had a great time and last night was no different.  We had really good seats and the Komets won handily. Coincidentally, we found ourselves sitting next to Amy's dad's best friend, so we chatted with during breaks in the action.

Things I Learned:

• Sometimes, money can buy a fun experience, so its okay to spend a little from time to time.


• The community has a lot to offer in the way of entertainment, you just have to go find it.

Week Sixteen: Machine Knitting, Socks

Week Fifteen: Nature Walk

A lot of times, I start out with a grand idea and then as it rolls around in my head for a few weeks, it gets watered down to a more realistic event, like this one did. At first, I was thinking how cool it could be to strap a pair of backpacks on and hike up a mountain, set down for camping and have only what we could carry on our backs for the night.

This imagined scene is probably due to to many movies, books and survival shows, plus some seed of adventure inside of me. The logistics were just not there to make this a reality. For one, there are no mountains in Indiana!

So, my planned date changed to doing a nature walk at a local nature preserve, something like an hour and a half to two hours, as we try to keep all of these events inside a four hour window. Unfortunately, but luckily, I checked the hours of the nature preserve earlier in the day. It closed at 6pm and my mom wasn't coming over to babysit until 6:30.

Plan B ensued. In Fort Wayne, we have a ton of nice bike trails and there was one nearby. A few years back we rollerbladed part of it, but found it wasn't finished and didn't connect all the way to the downtown trail. So, I was curious to see if it was finished and thought it would be a nice walk. Granted, the trail was paved, but it would work.

We parked at a trail head, set my alarm for 45 minutes and we were off. The weather was a bit chilly, but as we walked, it didn't feel bad at all. I would venture to say it was a perfect evening for a walk. We got passed the part that the trail ended last time and got just over two and a half miles. At that point, we turned around and walked back.

It was fun to get out and be active, plus we basically talked the entire way, which was nice. By the time we got back to the trailhead, we were both a little tired (but in a good way).

Since it was 8:30pm and we hadn't eaten dinner, we drove into a neighboring town and had dinner at a restaurant neither of us had ever been before (but I had heard was pretty good). And it was. We ate, drank, talked, relaxed and then called it a night and went home.

Things I Learned:

• Locking in a babysitter early makes planning so much easier.


• Even the most mundane of activities can be fun and fulfilling.


• Pairing exercise with an activity works out quite nicely.

Week Fourteen: The Hunger Games

For this weeks p-52 night I decided that I would kill two birds with one stone. In fact the timing actually worked out really well. I had read The Hunger Games trilogy several months earlier and have been anxiously awaiting the release of the first movie. Well, when it was finally released I didn't really have time to go see it with my friends, so instead I took Dan to see the week after it was released! It seemed like a movie that Dan would actually enjoy and I was looking forward to seeing what he thought of it and discussing it with him after!

After we were done eating we headed across the street to the theater and were once again able to get right in with perfect timing for the movie. I thought the movie was great and it actually lived up to the book. There didn't seem to be a lot that they left out or changed for the movie and the imagery was fabulous! I can't wait to see the next two movies! Dan said that it pretty much lived up to what he was expecting.

So while it wasn't a super creative date night, I think we both enjoyed ourselves and proved that dates don't always have to be elaborate to be enjoyable!

Week Thirteen: Dungeons & Dragons...At Home

Yes, I got Amy to give Dungeons & Dragons another try. In fact, it was a negotiation, as last week's event, included the kids (and that was the deal, if Amy would give DnD another go, then we could have kids along for her event).

So, a couple days before the game, I created a 2nd Edition character and came up with a simple little adventure scenario. I went with 2nd Edition, because it has a lot less rules and jargon than 4th Edition (which is what we played at the convention back in January and Amy really didn't like).

The adventure was basically Amy's character waking up on a beach with amnesia. I emphasized survival instincts, which Amy did well at. She found some food, made a fire, took shelter and hunted. The early part of the game, she wasn't entirely sure what to do or what she could do, but I left it open on purpose.

After she got a little more adjusted, I moved the plot along and she found herself in the midst of a couple of tribes, elves and goblins. She ended up helping the elves get back an ancient, magical sceptre, from the goblins, in exchange for killing a large monster that was antagonizing the goblins.

It wasn't anything fancy, but I felt, at times, Amy was playing and having some fun without thinking about it. This was much more of the experience I was hoping she had and I should have known it would have been better to start with a more one-on-one experience, tailored and focused on her, than to toss her to the gaming dogs and have her feel lost for four hours.

Things I Learned:

• Group activities that are too far out of one's comfort zone may be better done in moderation and/or in a smaller, more intimate way, first.


• Amy can endure a game of Dungeons & Dragons, but she still doesn't like it.


• No more forcing Amy to play Dungeons & Dragons!

Week Twelve: Maple Syrup Days

On Sunday, March 18th, we headed up to LaGrange, IN to check out their Maple Syrup Days festival. http://www.backroads.org/travel-blog/2012/03/12/celebrate-maple-syrup-days-this-weekend/. Dan had talked about wanting to do some Maple tree tapping/syrup making for one of his P-52 weeks... but wasn't able to find anywhere around here that did anything like that. Well, one of my friends asked me a day or two prior to this if we were going to this (assuming that I already knew about it). So of course I asked what it was and if it was worth going to. She said that you could take a wagon ride out into the woods and see them tap the trees and watch a demonstration on how to make syrup, and eat lots of pancakes and sausage with maple syrup. I thought that this sounded perfect... but I also thought that it was something that the kids would enjoy, so we decided to take them along.

When we woke up that morning the weather was a bit less than ideal... especially since it was raining. But we got ourselves around and headed up to LaGrange...in a less than direct route (completely my fault). Eventually we got there and the weather was still cold and rainy and to make matters even worse, when I opened the trunk I realized that we didn't have the stroller with us. So I pulled out the baby sling (feeling very grateful for at least having that) and we headed up the drive to the park. Of course we only had one umbrella and I was getting frustrated trying to stay under it, so Colin and I headed off in the rain! When we got up to the park they were just starting a puppet show, so we sat down under a tent canopy and tried to dry off a bit while watching the puppet show. It was kinda funny... and a lot stupid, but Katie seemed to enjoy it and it gave me a chance to relax a bit from the drive and the rain. After that we headed over to the maple shop to see what they had to sell. Shockingly they had maple syrup (note the sarcasm), but they also had maple syrup suckers. Then we headed over to the Syrup house where we saw a demonstration on how they make syrup. This of course was when Katie decided that she had to go potty and Dan decided not to sit with us, so Colin and I headed off with Katie in search of a bathroom. About 20 minutes later we returned with empty bladders and were able to catch the tail end of the demonstration... and ran into our neighbors, the Neebes'. From there we headed over to the main building for a lunch of pacakes, sausage and lots of Maple Syrup... made right there a week or two earlier. Once we were all stuffed we headed outside where we were told we could find the wagon for a ride through the woods to see the trees that were tapped. We didn't have to wait long and Katie was able to do a leaf rubbing craft while we waited. But this time the rain had finally let up and the sun was even starting to come out a bit. The wagon ride wasn't very long, but it was neat to see all the trees with sap buckets hanging on them! Once we were done with the wagon ride we went back in the shop to buy some syrup and suckers (and I also managed to get an order for a baby sling thanks to Colin's modeling job), then we headed for home.

Since it was still pretty early in the day we decided to make a short pit stop at my parents house. They didn't know we were coming and I didn't even know if they would be home, but we took a chance and stopped. Thankfully my mom was home and my Dad returned home a little while later! After visiting for a couple hours it was time for us to head back home.

Week Eleven: Wings & Darts

This week, I decided to take some of Amy's advice, and do something less "cerebral". The plan, chicken wings for dinner and darts. I got my mom booked for babysitting duties a week in advance, so after turning the kids over to "grammy", Amy and I left for our night out.

One of the best places in Fort Wayne for chicken wings is Peanuts, although I hadn't been there in years. Back before I met Amy, Peanuts was a common gig for BroomPenny (the rock band I played in for a few years) and then RuleSeven (the rock band my friends played in after BroomPenny, but I still hung out with). I had been there with some friends a few years after all the band stuff, and while they still had awesome wings, Friday nights turned from live music to poker tourneys. I had read, recently, Peanuts had new management and were going back to live music, so added incentive to check it out.

All of this is well and good, except for when Amy and I arrive, around 7pm, the place was empty. For a moment, I considered leaving, but we sat down, ordered some wings, fried onions, fries and beer. It was well worth it. The wings were awesome and it was nice to be able to hear each other during dinner.

From there, we were off to Checkerz, one of my favorite places to play darts, but like Peanuts, I hadn't been there in years. I was worried the bar would be way different, so I was optimistic when we pulled into the parking lot and I saw a couple of dart boards through an open door.

Unfortunately, those were the only two dart boards and they weren't really set up for us to play without moving a lot of tables. So, feeling bad to just come in and leave, we ordered beers and hung out for a bit. There was a band setting up (even though I saw online there was supposed to be a band playing from 7:30 to 9:30) and college gymnastics on the TV near us. I could only take so much and started to feel the night turning south, so we needed to get out of there.

Luckily, I did have a Plan B. A place called Break & Run on the west side of town, boasting 33 pool tables and 22 dart boards. We gave it a go and ended the night playing darts!

Amy hadn't thrown darts in a long time and her arm was kind of sore, but she was a good sport (and hopefully had fun). We talked a lot about stuff going on with each other. I figured we would eventually play some pool, as all the tables were free (there was a $3.00 cover and a 1 drink minimum), but we didn't need any other games.

Things I Learned:

• Always have a Plan B!


• Local businesses can change drastically in five years. The clientele at Checkerz went from a biker bar with hard rock bands to someplace my grandparents would go to for a cocktail and dinner.


• Break & Run was pretty sweet. Its the only real pool and dart hall I know of in Fort Wayne.

Week Ten: Wine Tasting

For this weeks P-52 night we went to a wine tasting class through IPFW. I found the class in their continuing ed catalog. It was titled "So You Like Sweet Wines, Now What?". This seemed right up my alley. Dan and I did some wine tasting back before we were married. We would go out to Virginia to visit Dan's Dad and visit some of the local wineries out there. I have such fond memories of those times and was wondering how this would compare to those tasting experiences. This of course was a "class" as well as a tasting, so I really didn't know what to expect going into it. But it sounded like something different and fun!

The class was at an art gallery downtown and was put on by a couple that used to write wine reviews for the Journal Gazette. There were about 20 people in the class and it was a very mixed bag of people. The couple putting on the class were great though. They both had a great sense of humor and were very approachable. We tasted 6 different wines (1 oz pours) and they ranged from sweet and carbonated to dry and red. I of course liked the sweet ones best... and as expected, Dan liked the dry red ones better. I think the class actually exceeded my expectations and really brought back so many of those fond memories of wine tasting back early on in our relationship.

After the class we decided to go next door to JK O'Donolleys for some munchies and some more alcohol (wine for me and beer for Dan). Neither of us had been to JKO's, but we've both been wanting to check it out. Again, it exceeded my expectations. It was fun trying out some of the Irish fare and talking about our thoughts on the wine class. We both agreed that we need to start opening some of those bottles that we picked up at the wineries years ago and just try to start having a glass of wine at dinner more often! I look forward to the next time we are able to go to a winery together again for some more wine tasting. I'm hoping that maybe at some point we can take the kids along for a little day trip with a picnic at the winery.

Overall I would say that this date night was one of my favorites so far. We had a fun activity that allowed us to interact and share our opinions and experiences with each other and also gave us a lot to talk about over drinks and food after!

Week Nine: Creative Writing

Its been a while since my last P52-planned night. Part of the reason was Valentine's Day and taking the option to skip my week since we did have a night planned of dinner and a movie. The spirit of P52 is to spend more time together, so with Valentine's Day being on my week, I had no issue taking the freebie!

My Creative Writing night was originally scheduled for Wednesday, February 29th, but two things fell through. First, my mom was not available to babysit, as I had thought it would be more fun to go out to a coffee house or other lounge-type place to do the writing. The backup plan was to stay home, which would have been fine, but the second issue, was Amy not feeling well and not in the mood to "relax". Now let me say, my version of relaxing, is not really the same way Amy relaxes, and based on her prior P52's, her relaxing seems a lot more like work to me. So, I completely understood and I postponed our Creative Writing night until Friday.

After we put the kids to bed, we brewed our favorite beverages and sat opposite of each other in the living room, both with our new Lenovo X120e's on our laps (Yup, I didn't use a typewriter...).

I started the evening by reading Stephen King's essay, "Imagery and the Third Eye". I had read it a few days prior and I found it very helpful advice and I thought it set the tone nicely. I was concerned Amy would get bored hearing me read (I do have a monotonous, sleep-inducing voice, most of the time), but at the end, she seemed to enjoy it well enough.

The next phase of our evening entailed a timed writing exercise from Natalie Goldman's "Wild Mind". I have been reading this book for a couple weeks and really enjoyed her previous book, "Writing Down the Bones", so it made sense to me to try one of the writing exercises. We did one of the first one, where you keep writing for 15 minutes with "I Remember", take a 10 minute break and then write another 15 minutes with "I Don't Remember".

We didn't have to share what we both wrote, but we both did a little. Both of us had written a little about how we used to weigh less and we agreed the "I Don't Remember" portion ended up bringing up more negative feelings. Amy mentioned afterwards, that it reminded her how much she used to enjoy journaling. I believe most of her exercise was journaling. Mine was some journaling sprinkled with some general observational stuff (like writing about the sights and sounds occurring during a dark and windy evening, as we had) and then a little humor (I don't remember ever wearing a speedo, nor wanting to.) as a change of pace.

We both did a great job of writing the entire time. I was concerned that one or both of use would putz out. Oddly, when the timed alarm on my phone went off, it kind of felt short and we both felt like we could write more.

The final exercise was something I had thought about earlier in the week, but was inspired by Brian Kiteley's "3AM Epiphany". I did thumb through a few of them to give Amy an idea of what we were about to partake in. I think she was the most nervous about creating a short story, with little direction, off the top of her head.

The exercise was simple: Write a "first kiss" story, but from the perspective of the opposite gender. 500 Words.

Before either of us started writing, we talked a bit about our own first kisses (not with each other, by the way) and then a little bit about mindsets of the genders. Truthfully, I could have sat there talking to Amy all night and not began writing anything, but I wanted us to get something done.

Just before we were going to write, Amy mentioned she didn't know what 500 words would be like, i.e. how many pages. Having been nanoing for three years, I know exactly what 500 words is, as well as 1,667! So, I explained it to her, as basically two full pages, double-spaced, but then walked her through installing WriteMonkey, which is my favorite little minimal writing program. Its not the same as a typewriter, but it has the same concepts of what make a typewriter my favorite writing tool.

At that point, we were off. We both wrote for a while, then printed out hard copies and finally shared, critiqued and discussed. I found Amy had a solid story and we could both see how her "male" perspective had a lot of the female element in it. We had a good talk and then went on to mine. I felt like I had to major accomplishments, 1) Amy liked it and she was surprised by my story and 2) it had some solid conflicts to keep Amy reading and a different outcome than she expected.

I have to believe that these past three years of writing have honed my skills. Now, I'm not saying I'm a Hemmingway or King, but I'm a heck of a lot better with writing fiction than I used to be. So, wins all around!

By the time we were done (which we could have continued talking and maybe even do another exercise), it was close to midnight and I wanted to get to bed (I had my writing group in the morning).

Things I Learned:

• Anyone can write, whether that is in a journal or a short story. But, its a lot more fun when you share, critique and talk about everything else that may not have made it into the story.


• Yet another great example of having an enjoyable evening with my spouse, at home and no money. And I do think it was better to have kept this at home, as a public venue could have had too many distractions or been too loud to really have the intimate back and forth we enjoyed in the living room.


• I still need to plan ahead better on the babysitting front!


• I don't HAVE to use a typewriter to write. Sometimes I trick myself into believing I do.

Week Eight: Boom Blox

The past few weeks have felt really crazy busy to me and I wasn't really looking forward to planning and going out another night, so I decided to plan a laid back date night at home. I don't remember what reminded me about all the fun we used to have playing Boom Blox on the Wii when we first got it... but I figured this was the perfect time to try it again!

Unfortunately it didn't end up being as fun as what I was hoping! We started off playing cooperatively which I thought would be nice to play with each other instead of against each other for a date. But it didn't go as well as I had expected. I've always felt that Dan and I made a great team when we work together. We tend to compliment each others skills and talents. But on this night we didn't seem to be on the same page at all. I felt like it was pulling nails to get Dan to discuss a strategy or let me know what he was planning to do on each level.

So before long Dan said to switch over to the competitive mode which we did for the rest of the night. It was enjoyable enough, but I didn't feel like it was much of a bonding experience and was pretty bummed to see us yet again struggling with communication!

In hind sight I think we could have had more fun if I would have set the mood a bit ahead of time. I should have picked up some snacks and maybe some wine or something, as well as verbalizing my expectation before we got started. When we started doing these date nights I had a tendency to keep each week's plans a secret, but now I'm starting to think that it is nice to know ahead of time what we are going to do... both from the planning side and the "along for the ride" side. I guess I just like to know what to set my expectation for.

Week Seven: Valentines Day

Valentines Day fell during Week Seven of P-52. So instead of going out for Valentines Day and then going out again for P-52, we decided to just let Valentines Day count as our P-52 date. So just like we do every year, we went to Biaggi's for dinner, then headed over to the theater to pick out a movie. This year though we don't have cable, so I/we haven't seen any of the previews for the movie in the theater and the vast majority of them I'd never even hear of. So as usual we each picked out a few that we wanted to see, then we checked the times on them and decided on which one worked out best that we could both agree on. On this night we ended up picking The Grey with Liam Neeson. All I can say is that it was a REALLY BAD movie!!! Might actually have been the worst movie I've ever sat through! But that being said I still had a great night out with my hubby and we had lots to talk about from the movie on the way home!

Week Six: Cooperative Canvas Painting

Since Dan and I switched weeks the past two weeks, I now had two weeks in a row that I planned and this week was our painting class that was cancelled two weeks ago. I'd been looking forward to this for a while now. This was a cooperative painting class at Lo's Galleria in New Haven. Basically the instructor teaches us how to paint a painting that she has already done. Here is the painting that the instructor did. This is also the painting that was linked to the class, so I knew that we would be coming home with something similar to this... which I thought would look great over our fireplace!

There were two other couples in the class and one girl on her own. One of the other couples ended up being the owners of the gallery. They told up shortly after we got there that they were going to lock the front doors and turn this into a "private party" which basically meant that she was going to serve us alcohol and she could only do that if it was a private party and not open to the public. So that was a nice added bonus.

So the point of the class was to work together to make two painting the go together as one. I really didn't think this would be too hard, but shortly after we got started I really started worrying that the two painting wouldn't look anything alike. It seems that Dan was under the impression that they were supposed to look different and that we were both supposed to add our own styling to our paintings. I think the first hour of painting was a whole lot of mis-communication and lack of communication between us. But eventually we started to get on the same page and in the end I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Dan pencil sketched the design for our wavy swirls and we kinda decided together where to put what colors. The whole trick to the class was figuring out how to blend the colors and make smooth transitions from one color to the next. That proved to be more difficult that either of us seemed to expect... or at least I know that I had more trouble with it that I thought I would. And then getting both sides to blend the same way was even harder yet!

Here is Dan hard at work!

and the rest of the group...

... and our finished project!

I am happy to say that our painting are now hanging over our fireplace and they look just as good as I had hoped they would! I love how the lights over our fireplace highlight the copper dot lines in the paintings!

After our painting class we headed over to Cocktails for a late dinner snack and some drinks. I really like the intimate atmosphere there and the food is fabulous. Between the wine at the class and a martini at Cocktails, I was feeling pretty good by the time the night was over! That was probably the most I have had to drink in well over a year! All in all I think it was a great date night and probably my favorite one yet!

Week Five: Pottery Painting and Go-Karting

Well, this week was supposed to be Dan's week, but since the painting class that I had scheduled for last week got cancelled and Dan wanted to do the DND convention but it was on my week... I stupidly agreed to trade weeks with him, thinking that it was buying me more time to come up with something fun for my week... but in reality I didn't really come up with anything more fun than I could have come up with last minute the previous week... and I got stuck sitting at a DND convention for 4 hours. I guess we will chalk that up as a bad choice on my part!

So this week for our P52 date I wasn't coming up with anything super exciting or unique, so we headed over to Bisque It on Coldwater road to paint some pottery. The kids were both asking for new piggy banks since Katie broke a while back. So Dan decided to paint one for Christian while I did one for Katie. I picked out a crown for Katie and Dan decided to do the same one for Christian so they would have matching prince and princess crown banks. Christian specifically asked for a blue bank and Katie of course asked for pink.

My first mistake of the night was forgetting to mention to Dan that the studio closed at 8pm. So we both ended up not getting finished with our painting. We got close, but just couldn't quite finish up. So we ended up going back the next week before our Painting Class to finish up our pottery.

So after the pottery studio closed we headed over to Fast Track Raceway for some indoor Go-Karting. I figured after sitting very still at a table focusing on painting pottery it would be nice to cut loose a bit and race on the racetrack. I had never been to Fast Track, but Dan went there many moons ago as part of his bachelor party. The place was pretty dead and for the first two of our three races we were all alone on the track. The karts were faster than I was expecting, but for me the most surprising part was how quiet they were. The most unfortunate part of this outing, and the whole night for that matter, was that I ended up spinning out and crashing head on into the wall on our third race. I'm still amazed at how hard I hit that wall. The rest of the night I knew I was going to be hurting in the morning... but I truly wasn't prepared for just how bad I was going to hurt. It ended up taking 4 Ibuprophen, 1 Tylenol 3 and about 6 hours before I was able to start moving my neck a little bit the next morning and a week later it still hurts!

But back to the racing. My memory is starting to fade now, but I believe Dan ended up having the fastest time of the two of us for each race... and the fastest time overall!

After racing we headed over to Applebee's for some night time munchies and a couple adult beverages! I think that might have actually been my favorite part of the night. I was really nice for me to be able to sit and have an adult conversation with my husband... and the Bahama Mamma didn't hurt any either!

Week Four: Convention Roleplaying Game

I've been playing in and running Dungeons & Dragons games since I was in the 8th grade, but I've never been to a convention. Even though there have been roleplaying conventions in Fort Wayne for a couple decades and Indianapolis hosts the grandaddy of tabletop roleplaying games, GenCon, every year.

So, when Amy's P52 event got cancelled due to the weather last week, I looked to see what was going on and the Dungeons & Dragons Experience was going on this week. I swapped weeks with Amy, as now she had little time to plan something in place of her cancelled P52 and made arrangements to get us both in a game.

This was my first time playing a game at a convention and Amy's first time playing a tabletop roleplaying game at all. So, we both went into the evening a bit cautious.

Before the game, I had already created both of our characters. I tried to get Amy to review her character sheet, but she wasn't really interested in spending any more time in the DnD world than she had to. I also bought her a set of pink dice to play with.

Now, I tried to get us both into an intro adventure, but they were all booked, so we got stuck playing the first of a three series adventure chain, starting at 6th level in the world of Dark Sun (which is notorious for being pretty brutal and not a great place to first experience DnD). But that is what we had, so I took it.

As soon as we sat down at our table, along with four other players and a Dungeon Master, I could tell Amy was out of place. And then everyone started talking about DnD stuff, which I could only assume all went over Amy's head.

When we started playing, things got a little better, but since everyone just acted when it was their turn, I really just looked at Amy's character and recommended what she should do and told her what dice to roll. And we did that for four hours!

Amy endured. I had fun, despite feeling bad that she wasn't getting the feel I wanted her to get. Plus, our DM was average at best. He moved the game on, but didn't really add much to the base experience. I guess it kind of showed me that I wasn't missing anything by haivng only played home games all these years.

It was interesting to me that a bunch of strangers playing DnD for many years could come together and have fun together at a single table. So, for me, that was worth the experience. I have talked Amy into letting me run a session just for her, to give her a different feel, so that will be a P52 week I will look forward to. Amy did make me promise it wouldn't be scheduled for a few months!

Things I Learned:

• For some events, shocking the system by going for full immersion is not the best idea. I can only imagine Amy was bewildered and struggled to understand anything that was going on. Unlike a new board game where the actions are repetitive, a roleplaying games can have an unlimited variety each time you play. It would have been better if I eased her into a home game first before going to the extreme.


• Preparation. Pre-registration for DDXP was back in November and I could have gotten the "right" event scheduled. While it was nice to be able to buy passes at the door, the selection was limited.


• I need to watch out what I schedule, because if it bombs too badly, Amy is going to make me jump out of an airplane. Which I will NOT be doing under my own free will!

Week Three: DVD & Gourmet Popcorn

For my second week, I had to get creative and had very little time to work out a plan. Amy planned her first event last Saturday and her next one, this Friday (tomorrow), so I really only had a window of five days. I had considered skipping my week, but doing a DVD at home was easy.

In fact, Watchman was a DVD a friend gave me for Christmas. My game night friends have been giving me a hard time for the better part of a year for never having watched Watchman. It still hasn't come out on Netflix and when a friend lent me his copy, it was actually the digital copy which didn't play in a DVD player.

So, with a copy of Watchman in my possession and pressure from friends to watch it, this seemed like a perfect last-minute fit. But I didn't want to completely mail this week in, so I bought a new hot air popcorn popper and some flavored seasonings to give the night a more "big event" feel.

After the kids went down for bed, I popped a couple bowls of popcorn and we picked the White Cheddar for one bowl and the Garlic & Parmesan for the other, turned down the lights and sat together on the couch to view Watchman.

The movie was quite a bit longer than either of us anticipated. I thought it was a lot more cerebral than what I assumed and Amy thought it developed slowly. She actually fell asleep for about thirty minutes near the end. We both felt the movie was decent, but certainly not an action blockbuster or an edge-of-the-seat experience. This was my second stay-at-home event, but seeing Amy's first was out of the house and her second will be too, there is some good balance.

Things I Learned:

• Adding an extra "feature" such as the gourmet popcorn to the DVD, gave a typical DVD night a little more flair. It was fun to pop the corn and pick a couple flavors.


• Set time expectations before the event. We both assumed the movie would be about 90 minutes. It was much longer and I think if we both knew that going in, we would have been better prepared. For the Stained Glass event, we knew that it would be a three-hour class, so we were ready for that level of committment.


• I will need to consider not only balancing my own weeks, but also account for Amy's. There may be times when back-to-back events could be a positive or negative, so I should take what Amy is planning and factor that into my own weeks.

Week Two: Stained Glass

For my first planned date I decided to do something that I have wanted to do for many years! Stained Glass! I found a class at Glasslink on Coldwater Rd. that was three hours long and Saturday and it took us all the way through making an abstract suncatcher. We started off by learning how to cut glass, then how to cut glass to fit a pattern. Then we got to pick glass for our project. I was really kinda hoping that we would get to creat

e our own pattern so all of our pieces would look different, but that wasn't the case. They gave us the pattern to use and we got to pick our colors and put it together. I decided to go with blues and purples and Dan of course went with shades of green. As we were cutting our glass pieces we were also taught how and when to use the grinder to clean up the edges of the glass pieces. There were three other people in the class with us, all of whom had already taken 3 other classes, but it seemed that Dan and I caught on to it a bit quicker than they did.

Once all of our pieces were cut and cleaned up we were taught how to wrap the pieces with copper wire and burnish them to make sure they were wrapped snugly. This is what Dan is working on here. This was surprisingly more time consuming than what I would have thought. I also found it interesting to learn that the glass isn't actually held together by the soldering, it is actually held in place by that

copper wire that has a sticky surface on one side. The soldering adheres and joins the copper, but sticky tape is what actually holds the glass in place.

Here is my work in the middle of wrapping the copper wire. The colored pieces are the ones that we cut ourselves. The clear and round ones were precut to save some time in the

class.

Once all the pieces were wrapped in the copper tape it was time to start soldering. I was honestly a bit nervous about this part. I've never done any soldering and it seemed intimidating to me. I guess I just had the impression that it was a one shot deal, that once you put the solder on you couldn't go back and fix any mistakes. Well that certainly was not the case. It turns out that as long as you don't get the glass too hot you can pretty much keep going back and clean up or add solder... or in my case remove excess solder. I pretty much just threw a bunch of solder on with my first pass, then went back and took off all the blobs and pools of solder that I made on my first pass. I also didn't realize that you have to solder both sides of your work (which is kind of a duh comment), but every time I would get one side looking pretty it would leave a pool or mess up the other side, so I was constantly going back and forth between the top and bottom of the work to clean it up. Dan on the other hand seemed to go about it with a much more materialistic approach and just added a little bit at a time. And I must admit that I think his soldering turned out nicer than mine because it is more subtle.

We were also able to choose what sort of finish or patina we wanted for our soldering lines. So after we were done soldering and washed all the flux off of our work we painted off some sort of chemical that turned the solder lines either black or copper colored. I went with black and Dan chose the copper which looks really striking with his green glass. Then the last step was to polish it up and add a hanging chain.

Dan showing off our finished work. His is on the right and mine is on the left.

We were both done well before the other gals in the class... yet it was still about 45 minutes after the class was supposed to end. Under different circumstances I think I could have stayed there a few more hours just observing, chatting and taking it all in... but this happened to be my first outing without Baby Colin, so I was a bit anxious to get back home to check on him and I was worried that the class had gone over by so much. When we got home Grammy was feeding him his second 2 oz bottle which he didn't really seem very interested in, so everything was fine and with any luck my milk supply will be no worse for the wear.

All in all I had a lot of fun, of course as usual I couldn't get much of a reaction out of Dan either way, but I think he at least enjoyed himself. I pretty sure he wasn't miserable and he did a great job with the stained glass. It couldn't have been too torturous to do something that he seems pretty darn good at. The instructor said that we both seem to have a knack for this and should really think about continuing on. I didn't get the impression that Dan wasn't to pick this up as a hobby, though I would love to. I just doesn't seem like a very practical hobby, since you can only have so much stained glass in your house (and we don't really have much space for much of any with three little ones running around) not to mention that it is a very expensive hobby.

As far as the date goes, I really wish the day wasn't quite so rushed cause both Dan and I ended up missing lunch due to time restrictions and we didn't really get to talk much during the class, so it didn't feel like we got to spend much time together. But I'm still glad that I was able to do this with Dan and if it ends up being something that I pursue further in the future that he will know and understand what I am talking about and be able to appreciate the work that would go into each piece.

Week One: Arkham Horror Board Game

I have wanted to play Arkham Horror for months. Friends in my writing group regularly mentioned how fun it was. I've read a ton of great reviews online and in fact, it was one of the games I wanted to play this past Christmas when my friend, Matt, organized a day of yuletide gaming fun!

Unfortunately, I had still not played it. So, I decided this would be a great opportunity. Not only would I get to play the game I've been wanting to for months, but Amy and I would learn it together. Two birds, one stone, as they say (technically, three birds, as it also would count for Project: 52 Weeks!).

Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game that plays 1-8 players and runs from two to four hours to complete. Cooperative means the players are all on the same team and they play against the game, which means there are random events placed in card decks that brings the game to a climatic end.

One thing about Project: 52 Weeks is that even when I am having a bad day, knowing I've got fun plans for the evening keeps me in a good mood. I did get worried, though, as after dinner while the kids were getting ready for bed, Amy was really tired and didn't seem interested in doing anything. I later found out that she only had a couple of hours of sleep. She was running on fumes and wasn't really wanting to have to use her head and I hadn't clued her in on what we'd be doing. Whoops!

I will say, while she seemed disinterested at the beginning and much of the first half of the game, she stuck with it and by the end of the game, worked out strategies for our next turn and at the end, she discussed ways that we could have played things better.

We started punching out all the cardstock pieces and got the game board set up for play around 7:30PM and it took about thirty to forty-five minutes before we began play. That was rather long for a game, even for the first time playing, but we endured. I had to reference the rulebook for at least the first two hours, but we got the hang of things and didn't need the rule book much by the end of the game.

When all was said and done, Yig, the Ancient One (who I picked due to being the easiest), devoured me before the start of the final battle (I had the unfortunate state of being lost in time and space) and defeated Amy in a mathematically-impossible-to-win final fight (she resigned, blaming me for not being by her side). We went down in flames for our first game, which lasted a little over four hours, but we learned a lot. I think we will play much better and faster next time (hopefully, there will be a next time).

I knew going into it, a two player game would be rough. I had a lot of fun and got to learn a great game, plus we spent the night together doing something I picked. As I told Amy, I felt that a game like Arkham Horror has some fundamentals of roleplaying in it, so is a precursor to a full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons, i.e. roleplaying game. I continue to allude to playing one in a future Project: 52 Weeks night!

Things I Learned:

• Project: 52 Weeks doesn't have to be away from home. We can have a good time staying in and doing something different. Variety will be key and I will have to mix up some outings.


• It was a very good idea that I bought the game a couple weeks ago and read through the rules. If we had to figure it out completely from scratch, it might have taken a couple more hours. The more planning the better.


• Just because I have a bias on what Amy may like or not like, she's smart and learns quickly, even when out of her comfort zone. She was a good sport and besides the sluggish start, bought into Week One. By the middle of the game, she was asking about my thought process, detailed questions and suggested her own strategies. A big plus!


• Next time, I need to take some pictures.