Everything’s Gray
Published November 6th, 2007Still bothers me that the word in this country is “gray” and not “grey” - “ey” just looks better.
Nothing particularly exciting going on right now with me. My girlfriend found a gray hair on my head though, and that pretty much ruined my week. Ugh. Twenty-eight and one foot in the grave.
She’s also refusing to acknowledge how big of a geek I am, specifically since I joined a D&D group. It will give me something to do in Burbank - she needs to study anyway - and I’ll meet some people that are in the area that share interests of mine. The girlfriend is in denial about this, though I’m actually pretty excited.
The Oracle test is brutally difficult for me. I’m really questioning if I can ever pass it. Supposedly it’s not too hard for full-time DBA’s….but I’m just a small-time DBA.
In my continuing obsession with money (and how little I have, or make) and making sure that every cent I have is earning cents in some way (it just makes cents), I have signed up for a new checking account with Chuck Schwab. My savings account with Emigrant makes (currently) 4.75% APY - and now my checking account will be right behind it at 4.00% APY, a damn good deal. Shifting all my cash over from my old 0% WaMu account is taking some time. The money transfer is a little slow into the new account (it has to be funneled through a Schwab investment account first, and there’s a 3-day hold on it). Plus I need to make sure my auto-deducting student loan is funded in the WaMu account, and my last rent check was written from there too. I also need to re-setup my paycheck’s direct deposit, or I won’t get paid for a week after I actually get paid (because of the delay on transfers). Lame.
I also need to really sit down and see if I’m making any money per month that I can “spare” - I want to start building up the savings account (compound interest, you know) even though it’s less urgent now that the checking account has nearly the same APY, and I also want to start an investment portfolio (jesus who am I? I’m really not this snooty…) with ShareBuilder. I can’t afford real investments, so buying partial shares could very well be the way to go for me, for now. My goal is $100 to the savings account and $100 to the investment account per month. I don’t know if I can afford that though, it might end up being $50 to each. I don’t have a ShareBuilder account yet though, I am trying to finish all the setup on the Schwab account first.
The girlfriend and I have been getting a little bored with the same old games lately, and she patently refuses to play video games, so I’ve been introducing some fun new modern board/card games. If you notice, the mainstream games people play are all 50 years old or more. Ancient. Would you play a 50 year old video game? (No, it’s called a blinking light). Cranium is the biggest board game to come out in the past 10 years or so, and really it’s just a game that packages a bunch of existing mini-games together (hangman, trivia, charades, pictionary, etc). So far we’ve been playing Lost Cities (really fun), Gravediggers (pretty cool, especially with 4 or 5 people…we’re apparently Reiner Knizia fans and didn’t realize) and Ticket to Ride (which is a really great game, I recommend to anyone who likes board games). I want to pick up a couple more games, particularly Carcasonne and Jambo.
I refuse to play the granddaddy of modern gaming, Settlers of Catan, simply because if I do and like it (which I always said I probably would), I’d have to deal with the fact that I missed out on a fun game almost 10 years ago. I can’t handle that kind of regret. Sorry, Irrazione. 
(I kid!)
Why don’t you guys come up with the next big board game?
Everyone and their mother puts together a computer game, widget, web site, what have you, whenever they are bored or dissatisfied with what is available. Why doesn’t anyone do it for board games?
Oh, and don’t worry about the gray hair. Found one of those myself a while back too. :-/
Best part is that when I mentioned it to my Mom… she decided to fill me in on the fact that when your head actually does start to go gray, so does your nether region. Not cool!
Ugh. Yes, I’ve thought of this, and I’m dreading the day I find a gray one in the nethers. *shudder*
it’s not the end of the world, you just deal with it! how was book group? i was going to go but i have been sick with a sinus infection.
j.j.
I dunno - I went, but I left really quickly because I suddenly fell ill. Something I ate really didn’t agree with me.
Settlers is an awesome game, and totally addictive. Brings out that crazy competitive nature in everyone - I’d definitely check it out
Yeah….I’d like to mention here that the following games have been outlawed in my group of friends because of that “crazy competitive nature”…
Risk
Diplomacy
Risk:Lord of the Rings Edition
Axis&Allies
Trivial Pursuit
Monopoly
Diplomacy, over the course of 3 years, was played 3, and only 3, times. Great game - but not for us. People didn’t speak to each other each time for days. It was bad. Risk has spawned epic arguments. Epic.
What might happen from Settlers scares me. At least Cranium games are civil, for the most part.
Settlers is fun, but it has five productive resources. I’d like to see it have six, just for the hell of it. Oh and Cities and Knights of Catan (the expansion) is more social, and more crap to know.
How is the LotR version of Risk?