Finally - Fluxx

I finally played Fluxx.  I had been hearing about it for well over a decade (the basic game has been around since 1996) and had seen the Star Fluzz variant on Tabletop which finally made me get a copy of the Cthulhu Fluxx.  This has been sitting around waiting for a few months but we took it on holidays with a bag of games to play.

If you haven’t heard of Fluxx, I’ll explain it briefly.  It’s a card game where the rules change during the course of play.  You start with a hand of five cards and get to draw one card and play one card each turn.  The cards you play can affect how many cards you can draw, play, and hold, as well as adding goals which give you a way to win the game.  In addition to the basic game, they have many variants with different themes their own modifiers.

We played a number of games over the weekend with my kids and nieces including Cthulhu Fluxx.   My kids know only the basics of the Cthulhu mythos and they have played Cthulhu Gloom but the nieces hadn’t much exposure before.  We lost more games than we won due to the Ungoals – which were conditions that would cause all players to lose.

 

We had enough fun that when we came across a Monty Python Fluxx game while shopping that week we snapped it up.  The Monty Python Fluxx was a bit easier to play but the theme was lost on my nieces – who hadn’t really been exposed to much Monty Python.  This will have to be rectified at the next time we visit them.  My favorite moment in this set of games was the first time one of the nieces played the Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, card and my son and I both drew a card but my daughter and nieces had no idea why.

been busy - part 3 - moved storage

On Saturday morning, we got the kids up and moved everything out of our old 10’ x 10’ storage locker into a new 10’ x 15’ storage locker. With everyone’s help it only took about 3 hours and, in the resifting, we were able to stack a lot better. 

I will still need to spend some time moving around what’s left in there to better stack the rest of it, and the wife wants to move more out of the basement storage and hallway to free up some extra space so that we can move more off of my desk to be able to use it again. 

Been busy - part 2 - daughter's room

At the beginning of July we took everything out of my daughter’s room.  We took the bunk beds apart and took them over to my folks.  We removed the carpeting, curtains, and baseboards.  I washed the walls and filled a bunch of the holes with drywall putty.  

My dad came over and helped again as we put in laminate flooring.  We painted the long walls a lighter blue and the short walls a dark blue.  Both short walls have the windows so it helps with the darkness.

We also popped into IKEA and picked up a pull-out daybed for her that we assembled.  We added back the baseboards and new curtains – having to putty and paint to repair the new holes as we repositioned them.  She has almost finished putting all her stuff back.

I am painting a board to hang her coat hooks back on and need to repair the window crank on one of her windows plus any painting touchups need from that.  She has to decide where she wants all her wall hangers and where her new bed netting will be.  Then we will be done for now – except for having to keep fixing her dresser drawers – as she has a tendency to keep pulling off the faces and pushing out the bottoms.

Been busy - part 1 - new shed

It’s been a flurry of activity this summer. My dad came over and we built a new shed. Well, more accurately, we assembled a new shed. Our old one has been getting progressively worse – with the roof becoming more leaky as the shingles warp, the door sticking as it settles into the ground, and becoming a winter home for the squirrel. The wife didn’t want to spend any more money on it however, so it has been deteriorating over the last few years.


It was also only 6’ x8’ and the new one is 8’x9’. The old one was wood though and the new one a resin. This makes it a bit more tricky to hang things on the walls like we did in the old shed. I started to make a wooden table and shelves with the extra wood I used from the base but haven’t finished yet.

The big and the short of it

I have recently seen figures at both ends of the scale, one very large and one small. Each one invokes a vastly different response with me.


With the new Superman film out, they have released a 31” tall action figure of the main character. It has a whopping 7 points of articulation – legs, arms, wrists, and head. While it is certainly a Super action figure, we can’t help but wonder who the market was for this. It’s so much out of scale with other figures that who would it be able to fight? A giant pillow / rock? Another 31” Superman?

It turns out they had also released a 31” figure for the last Superman movie and even a similar sized Batman so there is always that possibility. Plus, if one is heavily in to making custom figures I suppose one could, with a lot of work, change it in to a Giant-Man, Galactus, or even a Sentinel but all would take a significant amount of modification. An 18” figure or even a 12” figure would have been better in this case.

This one is a definite miss with me. Not a hero I like, way too big, and for $40 it is way too expensive. Even if it was on a super clearance – for $10, I would have to seriously consider it before getting one. Less than that, at $5, I would probably snap up a few – even though I have no use for one, at that price I would find a use for them – even as gothic scenery.


On the smaller side, there is a set of Walking Dead Horde figures at a 2” size that is perfect for army men (or my cowboy figures). The pack is 14 figures (7 each in two colors of plastic) and priced at about $25 or less than $2 a figure. While I didn’t snap them up on Tuesday when I saw them, I’m certainly going to the next chance I get. I wanted to see if my local comic book store had them first - they don't but will see if they can get them.

One pack should be enough to convey the main horde, two would be tons if I can get them cheaper. I can always add to them with hacked up and painted regular figures as needed.

shingles redone!

We finally got the roof done. We had been hoping to get it done last fall but with the constant rain and early snow we were not able to get it done before the winter. So we had some leaking in the spring melting and rains.


The company who did our roof, John Henry, had given us a quote last fall and Shan had picked out the shingles last year. When the snow was finally melting, we got back in touch with them to confirm that we still wanted to proceed.

They came and we had to pick the shingles again. Then we didn’t hear from them for a bit. One day we came home and saw flashing on out front steps – but we had no message on the machine. The boy had said that they had come by in the afternoon and had dropped off shingles on the roof.

The next day they showed up after we had left for work and by the time we had come home they were mostly done. We were very impressed with the speed and quality of the work. Even better, the quote turned out to not just be for the back part of the roof as we had thought but rather for the entire roof.

We had heavy rain since then and no leaks.

Your daughter can't be The Doctor - boo hoo

This gets into some of what people might consider spoilers  - which is always the case when talking about a series that's been around for 50 years - some people may not have seen several years worth.

While I have watched the series since Tom Baker (and Leela) on late night PBS in the eighties, I don't consider myself an expert.  I have friends who are though.  I didn't follow the rest of the doctors as much but have seen episode from all the incarnations.  I watched the American Doctor Who movie when it was on in 1996, and have followed the new series since they brought it back with "Rose" in 2005.  I believe that, if you're not going to watch the entire series from the beginning, "Rose" is the best place to start.


It's been announced that the current actor, Matt Smith, is retiring as The Doctor on the long-lived British series Doctor Who.  Some of the Internet seems to be upset that the new Doctor will not be played by a female actor.  They want to know how they can tell their daughters that she can't be The Doctor but are relegated to being companions as they are female.


Well, if you have watched the series, they have had female Time Lords (Romana) and even male companions (Rory and Adric). "The Doctor" is not really a position but more of a name. It would be like saying you can have a woman be a Green Lantern but not a Hal Jordan.

People say that this answer is a cop out as, since the Time War, there are no more Time Lords.  There were no more Daleks at one point due to the Time War - but that didn't last either.   The Master, another Time Lord also has made appearances since then. It seems that the Time War wasn't quite as final as we were led to believe.

What to tell your daughter?  How about telling her that she cannot become 'the Doctor' as she is already her own person and could no more become 'the Doctor' than she could be you or even her brother. Since neither she, nor you were (probably) born on Gallifrey, she cannot become a Time Lord as she is not already a Time Lord.

If she's more concerned about how she would like to play the Doctor, then she can, all she wants. That's what imagination is for. She could make her own videos and fanfic and be whatever doctor she wants - male or female.  She can dress up as her favorite Doctor as much and go to conventions and be appreciated. 
My son has dressed up as the Matt Smith Doctor and we have run into at least two other women dressed as the same Doctor, here at ComicCon and at ValleyCon.  Besides Fez's being cool, Matt Smith's hair and features seem to lead itself moreso than Christopher Eccleston's did.  Laurie Smith has also dressed up as a convincing Tom Baker version Doctor back in the pre-internet eighties.
  
If she's petulant enough to want to be The Offical Doctor on The Real TV series then you have more important issues to discuss with her - like how the world is inherently unfair and that it incredibly unlikely her, or even her brother will ever play a character that less than 20 professional actors out of a population of several billion have played.