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.