Well, the day is upon us. My baby, whose 4 lb 6 oz frame I held in one hand on the day of his birth, is graduating high school tomorrow.
To say I am proud is an understatement. To think, I survived the tumultuous period of my life called "The Teenage Years of My Children", and with most of my hair no less...
Tyler was the caring one. That's not to say the others don't care, but not to the degree Tyler did (and does). When he was but a stripling, he would walk to the bus stop because he didn't want me to be alone on the walk home. When I needed money for lunch, he would take his last few dollars and give it to me so I could get something.
Tyler was also the worrier. He would eat breakfast, then ask what was for lunch. He would have to be told something, otherwise he would lose complete control. He would cry, and continuously ask what was next.
When Tyler cried, he cried from his soul, as my wife used to say. If he needed to be disciplined he would cry like I just ate his favorite stuffed animal.
When he got to middle school he started getting into trouble. Tyler couldn't sit still, you see, and his constant questions and hyper personality did not endear him to his teachers.
He was also very popular with the other students, earning the nickname Mr. Mayor. To this day I still call him that, though I gave him a new one.
At the start of his senior year I was questioning his dedication to his education. Up until now, only one of my kids had crossed the stage at graduation. The rest had gotten their diplomas through various other methods (GED, Summer School, etc). He looked me in the eye and said "Dad, I'm crossing the stage. You and mom deserve to see it."
Needless to say, I was skeptical. He hadn't shown me anything that made me think he wanted to graduate. As the year progressed Tyler tried...hard. He suffered some setbacks, but he kept plugging away. He tried a few different programs at the school to try and keep out of trouble, since he still wasn't his teachers favorite. He was partially successful.
When the year started coming to a close, the wife and I were dubious of his graduation prospects.
Then, he came home, all smiles, with his graduation invitation and the passes for his mother and father to see him walk across the stage. As my wife told me, I started to tear up. I texted him and told him I was proud of him.
Tomorrow he validates all the trouble we've gone through to get him through school. He makes the heated "discussions" with the school staff worth it.
Tomorrow he crosses the stage with his cap and gown to get his diploma. My wife and I will, only for the second time, watch one of our children graduate high school.
Oh, what nickname did I give him?
Mr. Graduate...
Friday, June 11, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
KublaCon Review
Thursday
I woke up at 4:00 am to get ready for my flight. It was a quick process of showering while my wife packed my clothes.
Unfortunately it was a bit too quick, since I only ended up with four pairs of pants for a six day trip. And I forgot my belt...
We drive to the airport and I say my goodbyes before grabbing my bags and heading to the Southwest Terminals. A few minutes later I'm through security and waiting at the gate. Once on the plane I watch the takeoff and then close my eyes and try to sleep.
I wake up a few times and snap a few pictures out the window before dozing off again. I wake up just as we land in Las Vegas.
I head out to the next gate for my flight to San Jose, which will only be an hour or so long. I read and nap a bit more and then we land in Silicon Valley and I call my friend for my ride.
Once Corey picks me up we stop for lunch and I take some pictures of his kids, because they're cute as hell and because my wife asked me to. While we're waiting for our food Scott comes in and Joins us. We talk about gaming while we and the kids eat, then head to Corey's and unpack.
Dinner starts with the obligatory condemnation of my choice in food preparation (I like my food cooked well and Corey like's his barely dead...)and then we eat.
Things are going well until it hits about 10pm. At this point its decided that Corey and Scott will play Blood Bowl while I watch, after which Corey and I will play Battleground. At this point I have been up for nearly 21 hours. Since its a tradition that stay up for at least 24 hours and play a game of something before going to bed I just sit and BS with the guys while they play. Problem is, I'm TIRED. I mean really tired.
The Blood Bowl game goes on for a while and soon it's about 1am, which is the 24 hour mark. I bow out of my game and opt to go to bed instead. The necessary insults are hurled and I go to sleep.
Friday
Friday starts with me getting up early. Like 6:30am...damn.
Corey gets up soon after and we decide to play a game while Meredith sleeps in. We get the cards out and I play Undead versus Corey's Mercenaries. It was a tough game for me since i don't play very often and Corey does, he pretty much owned me. But it was fun.
Meredith gets up and the activity starts. We all shower and/or bathe. We start packing the cars. We get the kids and Scott ready to travel. Finally after a few hours we are ready to go.
We decide to stop at Jack In The Box for lunch, mainly because I've never been to one. They are not anywhere in the eastern US, so I wanted to try them out. In what was going to be a theme for the weekend, JIB screwed my order up...Oh well...
The drive to Burlingame from Santa Clara is about an hour, and it's a nice drive. Corey and I talked about some of the events and the time passed very quickly. Before we knew it we were pulling in the Hyatt parking lot and unloading the cars.
After a quick SNAFU with the rooms we settled in and got registered. It wouldn't be Kubla if something didn't go wrong at registration and this year was no different. Scott tried to get his GM registration and he was not in the system, which is kind of funny because he was in the program. It took some time, but it was eventually fixed.
It was now time for the BBCS, or Blood Bowl Championship Series. It's one of our most popular events, and it's a lot of fun for us.
My three games went as follows:
Game 1: Necromantic Undead vs. Super Secret Team of Doom (Manny vs. Corey)
So, let me preface this by saying that Corey decided at some point during the previous year that he would build a team to mock me. That team was a chaos dwarf team (I HATE CHAOS DWARFS!!!) painted to look like the New England Patriots. He used a bunch of Impact Miniatures Gnomes. He called them The New Eklund Ex-Patriots. The truth is they looked great.
Anyway, after much pouting I managed to win the game 1-0. It was a good game and I hope I didn't ruin it for Corey.
Game 2: Necromantic Undead vs Chaos Pact (Manny vs. Girl Whose Name Escapes Me)
Another great game against an inexperienced player. I won 2-0 in a very fun game.
Game 3: Necromantic Undead vs. Dark Elves (Manny vs. Trent)
Trent's Dark Elves ran circles around me. It was a great game that I lost 2-0.
Overall, the tournament was great. We had ten people for the first two rounds. Then six of them dropped out to go to the flea market. That was too bad because everyone seemed to be having a really good time. I guess we should start a little earlier...
It was during this tourney that we figured out whoever played against Scott every third game was in big trouble...
After the tournament we started packing up and got ready for bed. We hit the sack about 2:30am.
Saturday
I was once again up early. Set the alarm for 7am so I could get a shower and then call home to talk to the family. We had an event set up for 10am and I wanted to have time to eat and take a walk around the Con.
At 10am we were down in the minis room setting up for the Battleground tournament. Its the game I have the hardest time with, mostly because I only play when I'm in California, which is unfortunate. I know there's a solid group of players in Boston, but that's a little far for me to travel to play.
Game 1: Manny vs. Corey
Playing against Corey in Battleground is like, for me, wrestling Jello. I can't seem to grasp some of the concepts of this game, and Corey is such a good player, that it's usually a forgone conclusion whenever we play that I'll lose. This game was no different. I got tabled and moved to the next round.
Game 2: Manny vs. Trent
The game against Trent was over pretty quick. I guess I should just admit that I suck at this game.
Game 3: Manny vs. Niko
The third game was interesting. I was playing Undead and Niko was playing Orcs. He came charging right at me and proceeded to slaughter me. I had a good time watching as each of my units was destroyed by the greenskin horde. The game ended and we tallied up victory points and discovered to the shock of everyone (especially me) that the game was a draw!
After the tournament we took some time to unwind.
After unwinding for a while and walking through the dealer's room we got together for the next event, a Rezolution Zombie Hunt. There were four of us playing, Scott, Jason, Mark and me. There was a lot of drama in this game, from Jason attacking me instead of the zombies, to Scott killing the objective and pissing off Mark.
It was great fun and I hope to be able to play Rez next year, though I know we were talking about dropping an event...
Meanwhile I was sitting next to Corey and Niko as they played some Battleground and talked shop. It was entertaining in that Corey had been drinking (as had we all) and was becoming more and more drunk...fun for all!
We soon went to our rooms and heard Liam crying. With a sigh, Corey went to use my bathroom and I think he may have fallen asleep. Scott went for a smoke and I got ready for bed. It was about 2:30am and I had to be up for 7am to get ready for the 40K event.
Sunday
I was up and showered early so I took a walk down the street. It was my granddaughter's birthday and I was alittle bummed because I couldn't be there. I called and talked to the little princess and she told me that we had to have another party for her so I could have some cake. I love this kid...
We get to the minis room and get the tournament ready to run. We were expecting six people, of which four were us. We got ten! Thatwas awesome. Even more awesome? The fact that everyone playing embraced the wacky ruleset that Corey wrote and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Game 1: Manny vs Trent
OK, so I figured when I wrote uo my army last summer that any army that could get to me quickly would utterly wipe me out. Guess what Trent brought? Right. On to game two.
Game 2: Manny vs Corey
Second verse same as the first...
Game 3: Manny vs Scott
I also said that any army that had to footslog across the table to get me was doomed. Scott brought some shiny rides. I got the first turn and ended any hope he had of reaching me quickly. Game over.
I finished 1-2 in what I considered a sad showing. We're talking about doing the event again next year and each of us doing a different army. The event was a blast and I would be down for it.
Sunday night we went to Knuckles for dinner. In a series of miscommunications I ended up going entirely too long without eating. I actually walked out after some of the waitstaff completely ignored me for entirely too long...
Corey brought the Battlestar Galactica board game along and I finally got to try it out. I will say that it is an awesome game and has been put on the list of games to buy.
During play I was accused of being a cylon way too many times. It didn't help that I was playing it like I was (though I really wasn't fooling anyone). In the end it turned out I was a cylon, I just didn't know it...
Once again, bed really late...about 12:30, 1am. I had the alarm set for 8am, but the ambient background noise in my room was keeping me awake, so I deployed the handy-dandy iPod Touch. I got up with the alarm and took a shower.
Kubla was coming to an end and I was a little sad.
Monday
We returned to Corey's house after breakfast and saying goodbye to everyone. After unpacking we relaxed in the yard while Meredith did some work for school. It was gorgeous out and we sat around and chatted while the kids did their thing in the yard.
Corey and I decided to get a game of Battleground in. My hopes were low that I could even pull off a draw, but when we drew the scenario and battlefield, I was able to formulate a battleplan (or more accurately, I was able to borrow one from Corey)
In the end my Zombie Trolls won the day for me against the Romans. I'd like to thank Corey's dice for not betraying me. He was none to pleased but he played it to the end like a real trooper.
Next up was Scott in Blood Bowl. His Norse vs my Necro's. Sadly this was a game 3 for Scott. I was sure I was screwed...and so I was. Through the first 12 turns Scott did not fail a single die roll except for armor rolls. Every dodge, every block, every GFI...it was disturbing. In the 14th turn I managed to score a single TD, which ended up being the game winner. I had only just pulled it off as far as I am concerned. It was the best game I played over the whole weekend.
Went to bed about 12:30am in preparation for leaving. Got up early to pack and get everything in order. Before I knew it it was time to go. After a quick stop at the ATM I was dropped at the airport. I got right through security and went to the gate.
I slept through both flights and made it home in one piece.
Kubla was a great time as always. I can't wait for next year!
Thanks to Corey, Trent, Meredith and Darby for everything.
Dana, it was great seeing you again.
Well, that's it. I've already posted what pictures I have on Facebook, so I won't duplicate effort. Check them out on my page.
I hope to see most of you next year. Until then...
I woke up at 4:00 am to get ready for my flight. It was a quick process of showering while my wife packed my clothes.
Unfortunately it was a bit too quick, since I only ended up with four pairs of pants for a six day trip. And I forgot my belt...
We drive to the airport and I say my goodbyes before grabbing my bags and heading to the Southwest Terminals. A few minutes later I'm through security and waiting at the gate. Once on the plane I watch the takeoff and then close my eyes and try to sleep.
I wake up a few times and snap a few pictures out the window before dozing off again. I wake up just as we land in Las Vegas.
I head out to the next gate for my flight to San Jose, which will only be an hour or so long. I read and nap a bit more and then we land in Silicon Valley and I call my friend for my ride.
Once Corey picks me up we stop for lunch and I take some pictures of his kids, because they're cute as hell and because my wife asked me to. While we're waiting for our food Scott comes in and Joins us. We talk about gaming while we and the kids eat, then head to Corey's and unpack.
Dinner starts with the obligatory condemnation of my choice in food preparation (I like my food cooked well and Corey like's his barely dead...)and then we eat.
Things are going well until it hits about 10pm. At this point its decided that Corey and Scott will play Blood Bowl while I watch, after which Corey and I will play Battleground. At this point I have been up for nearly 21 hours. Since its a tradition that stay up for at least 24 hours and play a game of something before going to bed I just sit and BS with the guys while they play. Problem is, I'm TIRED. I mean really tired.
The Blood Bowl game goes on for a while and soon it's about 1am, which is the 24 hour mark. I bow out of my game and opt to go to bed instead. The necessary insults are hurled and I go to sleep.
Friday
Friday starts with me getting up early. Like 6:30am...damn.
Corey gets up soon after and we decide to play a game while Meredith sleeps in. We get the cards out and I play Undead versus Corey's Mercenaries. It was a tough game for me since i don't play very often and Corey does, he pretty much owned me. But it was fun.
Meredith gets up and the activity starts. We all shower and/or bathe. We start packing the cars. We get the kids and Scott ready to travel. Finally after a few hours we are ready to go.
We decide to stop at Jack In The Box for lunch, mainly because I've never been to one. They are not anywhere in the eastern US, so I wanted to try them out. In what was going to be a theme for the weekend, JIB screwed my order up...Oh well...
The drive to Burlingame from Santa Clara is about an hour, and it's a nice drive. Corey and I talked about some of the events and the time passed very quickly. Before we knew it we were pulling in the Hyatt parking lot and unloading the cars.
After a quick SNAFU with the rooms we settled in and got registered. It wouldn't be Kubla if something didn't go wrong at registration and this year was no different. Scott tried to get his GM registration and he was not in the system, which is kind of funny because he was in the program. It took some time, but it was eventually fixed.
It was now time for the BBCS, or Blood Bowl Championship Series. It's one of our most popular events, and it's a lot of fun for us.
My three games went as follows:
Game 1: Necromantic Undead vs. Super Secret Team of Doom (Manny vs. Corey)
So, let me preface this by saying that Corey decided at some point during the previous year that he would build a team to mock me. That team was a chaos dwarf team (I HATE CHAOS DWARFS!!!) painted to look like the New England Patriots. He used a bunch of Impact Miniatures Gnomes. He called them The New Eklund Ex-Patriots. The truth is they looked great.
Anyway, after much pouting I managed to win the game 1-0. It was a good game and I hope I didn't ruin it for Corey.
Game 2: Necromantic Undead vs Chaos Pact (Manny vs. Girl Whose Name Escapes Me)
Another great game against an inexperienced player. I won 2-0 in a very fun game.
Game 3: Necromantic Undead vs. Dark Elves (Manny vs. Trent)
Trent's Dark Elves ran circles around me. It was a great game that I lost 2-0.
Overall, the tournament was great. We had ten people for the first two rounds. Then six of them dropped out to go to the flea market. That was too bad because everyone seemed to be having a really good time. I guess we should start a little earlier...
It was during this tourney that we figured out whoever played against Scott every third game was in big trouble...
After the tournament we started packing up and got ready for bed. We hit the sack about 2:30am.
Saturday
I was once again up early. Set the alarm for 7am so I could get a shower and then call home to talk to the family. We had an event set up for 10am and I wanted to have time to eat and take a walk around the Con.
At 10am we were down in the minis room setting up for the Battleground tournament. Its the game I have the hardest time with, mostly because I only play when I'm in California, which is unfortunate. I know there's a solid group of players in Boston, but that's a little far for me to travel to play.
Game 1: Manny vs. Corey
Playing against Corey in Battleground is like, for me, wrestling Jello. I can't seem to grasp some of the concepts of this game, and Corey is such a good player, that it's usually a forgone conclusion whenever we play that I'll lose. This game was no different. I got tabled and moved to the next round.
Game 2: Manny vs. Trent
The game against Trent was over pretty quick. I guess I should just admit that I suck at this game.
Game 3: Manny vs. Niko
The third game was interesting. I was playing Undead and Niko was playing Orcs. He came charging right at me and proceeded to slaughter me. I had a good time watching as each of my units was destroyed by the greenskin horde. The game ended and we tallied up victory points and discovered to the shock of everyone (especially me) that the game was a draw!
After the tournament we took some time to unwind.
After unwinding for a while and walking through the dealer's room we got together for the next event, a Rezolution Zombie Hunt. There were four of us playing, Scott, Jason, Mark and me. There was a lot of drama in this game, from Jason attacking me instead of the zombies, to Scott killing the objective and pissing off Mark.
It was great fun and I hope to be able to play Rez next year, though I know we were talking about dropping an event...
Meanwhile I was sitting next to Corey and Niko as they played some Battleground and talked shop. It was entertaining in that Corey had been drinking (as had we all) and was becoming more and more drunk...fun for all!
We soon went to our rooms and heard Liam crying. With a sigh, Corey went to use my bathroom and I think he may have fallen asleep. Scott went for a smoke and I got ready for bed. It was about 2:30am and I had to be up for 7am to get ready for the 40K event.
Sunday
I was up and showered early so I took a walk down the street. It was my granddaughter's birthday and I was alittle bummed because I couldn't be there. I called and talked to the little princess and she told me that we had to have another party for her so I could have some cake. I love this kid...
We get to the minis room and get the tournament ready to run. We were expecting six people, of which four were us. We got ten! Thatwas awesome. Even more awesome? The fact that everyone playing embraced the wacky ruleset that Corey wrote and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Game 1: Manny vs Trent
OK, so I figured when I wrote uo my army last summer that any army that could get to me quickly would utterly wipe me out. Guess what Trent brought? Right. On to game two.
Game 2: Manny vs Corey
Second verse same as the first...
Game 3: Manny vs Scott
I also said that any army that had to footslog across the table to get me was doomed. Scott brought some shiny rides. I got the first turn and ended any hope he had of reaching me quickly. Game over.
I finished 1-2 in what I considered a sad showing. We're talking about doing the event again next year and each of us doing a different army. The event was a blast and I would be down for it.
Sunday night we went to Knuckles for dinner. In a series of miscommunications I ended up going entirely too long without eating. I actually walked out after some of the waitstaff completely ignored me for entirely too long...
Corey brought the Battlestar Galactica board game along and I finally got to try it out. I will say that it is an awesome game and has been put on the list of games to buy.
During play I was accused of being a cylon way too many times. It didn't help that I was playing it like I was (though I really wasn't fooling anyone). In the end it turned out I was a cylon, I just didn't know it...
Once again, bed really late...about 12:30, 1am. I had the alarm set for 8am, but the ambient background noise in my room was keeping me awake, so I deployed the handy-dandy iPod Touch. I got up with the alarm and took a shower.
Kubla was coming to an end and I was a little sad.
Monday
We returned to Corey's house after breakfast and saying goodbye to everyone. After unpacking we relaxed in the yard while Meredith did some work for school. It was gorgeous out and we sat around and chatted while the kids did their thing in the yard.
Corey and I decided to get a game of Battleground in. My hopes were low that I could even pull off a draw, but when we drew the scenario and battlefield, I was able to formulate a battleplan (or more accurately, I was able to borrow one from Corey)
In the end my Zombie Trolls won the day for me against the Romans. I'd like to thank Corey's dice for not betraying me. He was none to pleased but he played it to the end like a real trooper.
Next up was Scott in Blood Bowl. His Norse vs my Necro's. Sadly this was a game 3 for Scott. I was sure I was screwed...and so I was. Through the first 12 turns Scott did not fail a single die roll except for armor rolls. Every dodge, every block, every GFI...it was disturbing. In the 14th turn I managed to score a single TD, which ended up being the game winner. I had only just pulled it off as far as I am concerned. It was the best game I played over the whole weekend.
Went to bed about 12:30am in preparation for leaving. Got up early to pack and get everything in order. Before I knew it it was time to go. After a quick stop at the ATM I was dropped at the airport. I got right through security and went to the gate.
I slept through both flights and made it home in one piece.
Kubla was a great time as always. I can't wait for next year!
Thanks to Corey, Trent, Meredith and Darby for everything.
Dana, it was great seeing you again.
Well, that's it. I've already posted what pictures I have on Facebook, so I won't duplicate effort. Check them out on my page.
I hope to see most of you next year. Until then...
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Posting Issue
Ok, so I typed my Kubla report in Wordpad and can't seem to copy and paste it into the blog. Any ideas?
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
I Have Returned!
My latest foray into the wilds of the California Gaming Scene was a resounding success. Check back soon for some pictures and a review of KublaCon.
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