Too Much Time and Too Little to Do... Strike That... Reverse It.

Pile Up
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Now I am back at the SLJ and I have a mountain of work facing me. Artwork reviews, sample reviews, paint color matching, deco reviews, product testing, report writing, research, instruction sheet writing and design, box design… blah, blah, blah. The photo above is just some of what I am facing in the next three days. Not that it’s any different from any other workweek. The weekend was one of those weekends where there were simply too many things going on and not enough time do it all. So I had to pick and choose and none of my choices were photography or volunteer related. There just wasn’t time or opportunity to fit those things in. The vast majority of the weekend – from Friday night after dinner until last night after the new episode of The Simpsons – was filled with working on ways to improve my work situation. No, it does not involve anything illegal or pornographic. It’s also something I don’t write about it. Call me superstitious, but I don’t want to jinx anything and… well… I just don’t want to write about it. That’s the bottom line really. When something great finally results from my planning, research, writing and hard work believe me… you’ll know it.

Anyway, when I wasn’t researching, writing, editing, proofing, doing more research, and rewriting, editing and proofing again I was either, gaming, reading, sleeping or sitting in a movie theatre. I didn’t watch a single football game Sunday and hence missed the most exciting Baltimore Raven’s game of the season. To be down by seventeen points in the forth quarter with eight minutes to go and pull a victory out in overtime to win 44 to 43 is amazing. I’ll catch the highlights on ESPN. While the football game was going on I saw Master and Commander with Lynn’s husband, Will. What a great movie. I don’t have a single complaint or issue with the film. My review will be brief and does not include spoilers. The acting was top notch and everyone put in a very good performance. Everything about it is historically accurate so the real history buffs won’t have much to gripe about, although I am sure that there are those out there who will find some nit to pick. The film is very well paced and the action sequences are superb. There was also a good amount of character development and that really helped to get the audience into the movie and close to the characters. Great sound effects and superb sound track. Go see it. I plan to see it again. Saturday was mostly filled with playing strategy games. Once a quarter I get together with a group of friends and we game from Saturday noon until sideways eight. In other words it’s a long day of playing games that generally ends very late Saturday night, or in some cases very early Sunday morning. It was a good game day and I came away with two wins at Battle Cry in the Antietam and Shiloh scenarios
and second place in History of the World. Both are great games I love playing them. So, even though I wasn't actually at Antietam in the flesh, I was there in spirit. We also fit in a game of Zombies. Zombies is a good concept for a fast paced action game – you’re in a town infested with zombies and you need to reach the helipad to escape all the while blasting as many zombies as you can ala Dawn of the Dead – but in reality it’s not a fast paced action game. It’s a laboriously long and frustrating game full of rules ambiguities that is only worth the $20 for the one hundred little zombie miniatures you get in the box. That is if you are into little Zombie miniatures, which I am not. There are also two expansions, Zombie Corps, which adds a military base and government super zombies and now there is Mall Walkers, which adds... you guessed it... a mall. These two add on only add to the rules confusion and ambiguity and to the playing time. This game has too many flaws and for the record I have grown to officially hate it. I really wanted to like this game, but after many plays and even several wins, I have grown to loath it and I will no longer play it, not even for yucks or to be social. It’s shear frustration and takes far too long to play (three hours and up). I’ve reviewed this game before so I won’t repeat myself. If you want to read the review click here. Let me just say that I became so frustrated with this game on Saturday that on my seventh turn, which happened at one hour and fifteen minutes into the game, I quit and watched The Two Towers extended edition with Gary's kids (he was our game host for the day). My quitting the game did not alter or ruin the game for the others because Zombies is basically a solitaire game played by multiple people at once. The gang finished two hours latter just as the movie came to an end. At other times during the weekend I was re-reading Stephen Sears’ book, Landscape Turned Red about the battle of Antietam. Jenne spent her weekend helping her friend Michelle move, doing homework and studying for her classes. Now it’s back to work and thankfully it’s a short workweek with the Thanksgiving holiday just a few days away. Ummm turkey ahhhhhhh.