BFF: Dave and Becki Brallier

Eric and Dave eating dinner at Marrakesh, an authentic Moroccan restaurant.

*sniiiiiiiiiiif* Ahhhhhhh! (inside joke alert)










Women folk sitting on the floor, as it should be. Beckeye and Heather.

Two Slugs Mating on Our House (Ewwww)

My Peeps

One big happy (geeky) family. Heather, Eric, and Beren. Thank you mother for sewing most of that. Those cloaks are HAWT!











Speaking of hawt.... I can't figure out where this is, but it's definately Heather and Beren.













This is the park near our house that Beren likes.


















This is the deer that decided it would be a good idea to wander into my neice's back yard and let her pet him/her. My neice is Amber.












This is Heather's brother, Reid. That is not the back of Beren's head.

















This is another brother of her's, Adam.

Those are definately NOT wigs and fake tatoos and they DO always wear sleavless shirts that say things like "I cut the cheese in Wisconson." Pay no attention to the fact that that's an ... um ... canival in the background.

More Beren Pics - The Later Years... Er... Year.

"Say Heeeey! HEEEY! Say Hoooooh! HOOOH!"














He'll never be this excited to take a bath again :(.













And he'll never forgive us for these clothes.













"Yay! Rip my arms out of my sockets!"

"Did I do that?"

"Hey, look! A marshmallow."

"I'm just gonna take this here pumpkin, k? This one right here... I'm gonna grab it.... everybody ok with that?"

Two nerds being nerdy. Ok, one nerd and one innocent child being nerdy.

He was on to us before we could zip it shut.

A geek is born.

Some Early Pictures of Beren

Superstar!















As you can see, Beren is part frog.















Baby Genius? "Well yes, that's true, grandfather, but I think that the potential psycological and neurological breakthroughs that can be sustained through normal breastfeeding far outweigh any perceived or temporary gain that can be achieved via ..."












Or is he? "I can't feel my face!... Oh wait... yes I can.... Hey! You're not my mother..."

















FOOOooot!!















"You are forgiven, my child!"





















This was his first Halloween costume. In case you can't tell, it's the Emporer's New Clothes. We took some rated R pictures to provide for our future blackmailing needs,... and no, this is one of the PG-13 ones.
















That's all for now. More to come.

Don't Push Me, Brallier!

Note to Self

More pictures!

War of the Ring

For those of you who don't know, I'm hopelessly addicted to boardgames. Not your typical Monopoly/Risk style of 'roll and move' game, but Euro games. If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, take a look at www.boardgamegeek.com. If you have fond memories of playing Monopoly all night or Risk always ending in a fight, but don't really see the appeal as an adult, you might be the next Euro-gamer. Trust me on this, folks. I had NO idea that this world existed 5 years ago. I thought, like many, "Yeah, boardgames... like Monopoly and Risk. Yeah, I like those." So my friend had me come over and play some games. Peurto Rico? Never heard of it. Torres? Never heard of it. Settlers of Catan? Nope, I got nothin'. El Grande? Isn't that a river somewhere? I played. I liked. I never looked back.

Anyway, you'll notice that War of the Ring is not in the list of games that I own: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewcollection.php3?username=ejmowrer&own=1&rated=both&comment=both&trade=both&want=both&rating=&startletter=&orderby=quickrating&dir=-1.

I was thrilled to be able to try it out yesterday. I really don't like wargames. They're too long. The rule books, or in some cases rule tomes, are way too long. They're too fiddly. They cause too much contention, etc. You get the idea. In spite of all of this baggage going into it... I LOVED IT. It's fantastic. The theme is SO well integrated into the game, and I'm SUCH a fan of Lord of the Rings, it was honestly like living the book on a little board in front of me. Granted, the plot line was slightly different. The free peoples didn't do so hot at Helm's Deep, for instance. Anyway, if you like Lord of the Rings, and you like boardgames that were invented in the last 10 years, I think you'll like this one, too.

It takes about 3 hours to play once you figure it out. That's a bit long, but it's worth it, IMO. Consider it a really long movie. Six hours shorter than Lord of the Rings, no less (and that's not counting the extended editions). One guy plays the free peoples (Humans, Dwarves, Elves, etc), and the other plays the shadow forces (Orcs, Haradrim, Ring Wraiths, etc). It's absolutely dripping with theme. The bad guys win by finding the fellowship and getting the Ring, or by pretty much wiping all free peoples off the map. The good guys win by getting the ring to Mt. Doom. I suppose they could win a military victory, but I wouldn't count on it. Remember the book? There are so many clever game mechanics that I can't list them all. All I can say is that they all come together to make you feel like you're in the book, but at the same time, you have some control over what happens.

Here is a link to the game on BGG. Check it out: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/9609. PS that rank 13 is out of thousands, which is pretty darn respectable, and I think we're past the 'hype bubble' that tends to push new games up.

OK

OK, so it just occured to me that I begin most of my posts with OK. It's kind of embarrasing really, but I'm far to lazy to go back and actually edit any of them.

Sid Meier's Trains!

OK, so I am a HUGE fan of the Railroad Tycoon series of computer games. Knowing that Sid Meier designed those games, I purchased Trains! thinking it would be a dead ringer. I was wrong. I'm kicking myself for not researching it and making my decision based on designer alone. Not only is it 'dumbed down' significantly from Railroad Tycoon 2 (RT2), but it's slow and incredibly buggy. I enjoyed playing a fully fledged stock market meta-game. I enjoyed the crazy amount of side industries and route planning involved in RT2. They've taken most of that out. Now there are less trains, less industries, more basic industries, and less depth in general. Oh, but it's pretty now.... and it crashes to your desktop every 45 minutes, too. Not to mention the horrible route selection AI the trains have. Bah. OK... concentrate with me: ***I wish I bought RT3 Instead of Trains***.... ***I wish I bought RT3 instead of Trains***...

Why does blogger keep changing my capitalization all willy nilly?

Is there a way to fix that? The blog title is suddenly all lower case, and the short description is now all upper case. Grrrr.

Berenisms

Ok, so we're having FHE on Monday and we're explaining to beren that he has a spirit but it's inside of him. He kept wanting to know where exactly inside of him... like is it in my tummy? We said no, it's all over. It fills up your whole body. It's in your arms, your legs, your fingers and toes, and in your head. All over. Then Beren puts his fingers in his nose and declares, "OH, I can feel it! It's all squishy!"

Maybe we'll save the metaphysics for later next time...

More To Come...

I will make this blog interesting soon, I promise. This is to remind myself as much as to passify all of the many, many, eager Powrer Hourer viewers.... all 2 of them.