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!