Hard Work

It's another slight break for me.  I had hoped to put up more about M2E - there's a lot going on with the project and I've been having a ton of fun playing the game, but sometimes life just gets in the way.  And this time, it's in the form of my son.

James Vete, born June 28th.

He's been quite a handful for me.  I had been hoping while I was at home from work helping to get him under control, I'd have time to post or work on other things.  All my friends who were parents before just laughed at me.  I understand why now.

Since his birth, I've gotten only two games in (thanks Dan for giving me a few hours away from the house).  Gaming, as you can imagine, is a bit of a lull.

But where miniatures has fallen, I do find that I have more time for computer games.  Slaz introduced me to the Steam Summer Sale (something I curse his name to eternity for).  Bioshock was discounted 50% for a while, so I picked that up.  Also got the Walking Dead game which I've heard good things about.  And another game, Anno 2070, which seems kinda like a Sim City type game.  The bonus of that one: it's quiet and I can play it with one hand, so holding James doesn't get in the way of that one.

Also been catching up a little on some TV shows.  Almost caught up on Falling Skies and Continuum.  Started watching Justified.

But most of my time is taken up with James.  Hopefully I will have something more to report soon.

Gencon Recap

 

Back from Gencon and what a whirlwind trip it was.  I traveled with Laura (my wife), Dan (my awesome brother), Ellen (his wife) and Ryan (another buddy).  It was a long drive, made worse for me by my lingering dizziness.  I thought I might be pretty bad off during the Gencon week, but once the show started, my head cleared and it was go-time.

I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow.  That would take far too long.  Instead, I’ll hit the different games we tried out and my thoughts on them.

Evil Baby Orphanage (Wyrd Miniatures):

This was a game several of my friends were looking forward to.  I was on the fence about it, but when we got an advance preview of the game, I jumped at the chance.  It’s a non-collectable card game involving capturing evil people when they’re babies and building a child-friendly orphanage to keep them all calm and not hurting each other (no Genghis… don’t bite Hitler!).  The game was fun, but turned out to be much longer than I expected.  Dan ended up picking this one up (he had funded the Kickstarter for it) but I found it to be a “pass” myself.  I’d play it if it came up, but it would be low on my list of things I’d want to try.

Verdict: TOO LONG, NO THANKS

Attack on Planet Earth (Flying Frog Productions):

Laura, Ellen, Dan and I lined up for a demo of Attack on Planet Earth.  The game can be played co-op or competitively and is designed around a bunch of alien races all trying to take over the planet.  You move your aliens to different places, attack the resistance, and subjugated humans while trying to stop other aliens from doing the same.  It was actually pretty different in gameplay from a lot of other Flying Frog Games, but wasn’t enough to really warrant a purchase.  Especially since I had just spent a lot of money at the booth on something else…

Verdict: WAS FUN, BUT NO THANKS

Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak (Flying Frog Productions):

The first of the games I actually went to find a Gencon and it did not disappoint.  A whole new set of boards, new experience abilities, new characters, new cards.  I picked this up and we played a couple games at the hotel room that night.  Dan wasn’t feeling well (bad food) so Laura, Ellen and I played.  There has often been concern that the humans are at a real disadvantage in the game.  Let me tell you, the experience abilities seemed to turn that right around.  Both games the humans had a pretty solid time of it turning back the zombie horde.  I’m looking forward to combining the games and seeing if they bring a nice balanced mix to the whole thing.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, AND HAPPY I DID

Level 7 (Privateer Press):

The second of the games I actually went to find.  The line for the PP booth was hours long, but Dan spotted one of our locals and asked him if he wouldn’t mind picking up Level 7 for us when he reached the front.  It took a day later to get the game, and we played it on Friday night.  Now understand we were reading the rules around midnight in order to start playing, so we did get a lot wrong, but we had a ton of fun playing.  The game is a board game with tile exploration similar to the Dungeons and Dragons board games.  It’s semi-cooperative in that the players work together, but you can win without the other players winning.  It’s an alien horror game, and does very well at keeping the horror feel going throughout.  We ran into trouble at the end of the game when it seemed to fall apart, but on Sunday I went back to the PP booth to ask some questions and sure enough we played it wrong a little.  Still, fantastic game and really looking forward to the next time it comes out.

Verdict: PURCHASED, AND REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING IT BACK OUT

Chupacabre (Moostache Games):

This was a simple dice game that could be played very quickly.  Each person has six dice with different animals on them.  You roll your dice, put all the like animals together, and then anyone who rolled the evil Chupacabre could start trying to eat other animals, so long as there were not too many of them to overpower him.  Any that he ate, you got to keep the dice and then you all roll again.  Whoever ends up with all the dice wins.  We did notice that the game got to the point of one person winning was pretty much impossible to stop, but made a houserule to help out with that.  Plus, since one-on-one games ended in about 2 minutes, it’s not a big deal.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, IT’S A NICE GAME TO PULL OUT WHEN YOU’RE WAITING FOR SOMETHING ELSE

Smash Up (AEG):

This was a new non-collectable card game where you took two of eight different decks and put them together to make your one deck.  So you could be playing Zombie Robots against Pirate Aliens and then the next game be playing Zombie Wizards against Robot Tricksters.  There were eight factions so you could play up to four players.  Each group had its own feel.  Zombies brought creatures back from the discard pile.  Dinosaurs had lots of strength (and lasers).  Ninja were all about killing and moving their people around.  You had to attack different locations and earn victory points as the game progressed.  A fun diversion, but I think there would quickly become “best deck combinations” and if you happened to get two that played together well, you’ll end up with a leg up over everyone else.  Dan ended up picking it up, so I’m sure it’ll hit the table again soon.

Verdict:  PASS, BUT I’LL PLAY IT WHEN DAN BRINGS IT OUT

Mage Wars (?):

This was the “surprise” game for me this year.  Almost every year there’s a game I get that I didn’t even know existed before I got there.  This year it was Mage Wars.  We got a demo of the game and it sounded really interesting, so I tried to buy one.  But they were sold out.  But they said on Saturday morning they would have 80 more copies to sell.  I managed to get one of those copies and sat down with Laura to try to figure out all the rules on Saturday night.  Wow, it was complicated.  We got through part of it, but it was going to take me a long time just to figure out how to do everything, so we put it away until I had a few hours to devote to learning how to play it.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, BUT NOT EXACTLY SURE HOW GOOD IT IS YET

X-Wing (Fantasy Flight):

We demoed the new X-Wing game and Dan dubbed it “Wings of War 2!”  I never played Wings of War, but it seems like it’s pretty much the same game as this one, except this one has more customization available and used more ships at a time.  We had an enjoyable demo where Laura and I (the TIE Fighters) all ran into Dan and Ellen (the X-Wings) and stuff blew up.  I checked out the game itself – it was being sold as two TIE Fighters and one X-Wing, and then expansion packs of $15 were another single ship.  Wow.  A bit too rich for my blood.

Verdict:  PASS, BECAUSE IT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE

Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game (Privateer Press):
We bought tickets to play in the new IK RPG on Friday morning.  By this point we already knew that we weren’t going to get a copy of the game.  Only 350 copies arrived at Gencon and they sold out quick.  Still, we wanted to try out the game, so there we were.  We had five people (Slaz joined us for this one) but the game only allowed four.  We managed to convince the GM (Doug Seacat, no less!) to let me step in as the warjack so we could all play in the same game.  By the end of it, we were all smitten with it.  Fantastic game, I love the world (I always have – I was playing in Iron Kingdoms back when the only thing PP had to their name was the first Witchfire Trilogy book), and the rules actually seemed to flow very well.  Even my wife, who hates new rules, said she would love to play this one.

Verdict:  OHMIGOD I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS BOOK TO ARRIVE IN STORES!!!

Flashpoint (Indie Games):

I had played this one before, but I didn’t realize they were going to be at Gencon and when I was on my own for a short time, I wandered past them and did a double-take.  I sat down to play a demo mostly because this is one of my favorite board games of all time and I did not own it yet.  I’m going to tell you what it’s about and ask that you ignore the “meh” comment that comes up when you hear it: you’re a team of firefighters trying to save people in a building.  Yeah, doesn’t sound that interesting.  But trust me, it’s awesome.  I had the same reaction as you but my buddy, Zusmer, kept raving about it and I tried it.  At Gencon I bought it and convinced Dan, Ellen and Laura to play it despite their “meh” reactions and it ended up being one of the best board games we played all weekend.  Give this game a try if you like cooperative games.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, ONE OF THE BEST GAMES I HAVE PLAYED

Zombicide (Cool Mini or Not):

I picked this one up through the kickstarter but I figured I’d see how the game itself played.  Laura and I sat down for a demo and got what I would dub “the worst demo this year”.  The girl who was trying to teach us the game (“trying” is probably the wrong word… “reluctantly” might be better in its place) could not care less about us.  She texted on her phone, talked to other people at the booth, and randomly flipped cards and moved zombies and told us we were dead.  Had I not already purchased the game, this demo would have certainly turned me off from getting it at the con.  But I do have it already, and will have to give it my review later when I can actually play it.

Verdict:  WORST DEMO OF THE YEAR, THOUGH I ALREADY OWN THE GAME AND HEAR IT’S GOOD

True Dungeon:

This isn’t really a board game or anything, but rather the whole True Dungeon event that I always hear about.  This was my third Gencon and the first time I had done True Dungeon.  I didn’t know anything about what I was doing.  We had seven people in the game that I knew and were joined by three others – one who was a veteran who was really nice and helped us out, and two adolescent girls, one who was nice and the other who spent the whole time complaining and yelling at people.  She almost singlehandedly ruined the experience for me until she was pulled out of the game halfway through (for unrelated reasons).  Overall, the word I have to say about it is: confused.  I didn’t really know what I was doing, the people who were running the event didn’t really explain anything, and poor Slaz had to help four brand new people who had no idea what was going on.  Add to that the rooms were all quite dark so no one could read the primers that they offered the new players so they would know what was going on.  It wasn’t until around room 4 or 5 (after the annoying girl was gone) that I finally started to understand the game.  And by then, the game was nearly over.  I would probably enjoy it more the next time, but it’s priced pretty high for the entertainment value.

Verdict:  WOULD DO IT AGAIN IF WE COULD GET ALL OUR OWN PEOPLE IN ONE EVENT, BUT WOULDN’T MIND PASSING ON IT TOO

Indianapolis Brew Tour:

On Saturday afternoon when the floor was packed, Laura, Ellen, Dan and I all went on the Indy brew tour of four different breweries.  Some were bad, some were fantastic, some were bland and some were nice middle-of-the-road.  We spent almost four hours drinking and chatting with other Con-goers in a non-gaming-atmosphere.  A great break from everything else happening.  My only worry about doing it again would be that I would want to see different breweries.

Verdict:  WOULD DO IT AGAIN IF I KNEW IT WAS NEW BREWERIES, GLAD I DID IT

Tracy Hickman’s Breakfast:

About 500 people piled into an auditorium-style room to watch Tracy Hickman do an improv/gaming session where he kills lines of people at a time.  The people often have their own things they do to try to mess with Hickman.  The concept seems really fun, except that I could not hear anything anyone was saying.  My wife could only hear every other word.  And half of the people who tried to do something funny just turned out to be lame instead.  I left after an hour of not being able to hear any of the jokes so that I could get in line to get Mage Wars instead, and Dan, Laura and Ellen left not too long after that.

Verdict:  NEVER AGAIN

Fortune and Glory (Flying Frog Productions):

I usually remember the terrible demos I receive, but this is without a doubt one of the best demos I received.  I didn’t really want another FFP game (they all play similarly and we have many of them already), but this one looked interesting.  It’s a competitive game where you all play Indiana Jones-type treasure-hunters going around the world to search for treasure.  As you do, Nazis are trying to thwart you, and you have to go through obstacles to reach the prize.  Sometimes you have to race against other players to reach the goal.  If you fail at a challenge, it flips over and becomes a Cliffhanger!  (Will the Doctor manage to escape the plane crashing into a mountain?  Find out next turn!)  The woman running the demo did great at selling the game like a story, hamming it up as much as she could.  If I didn’t already have a ton of loot and were it not already Sunday, I might have made this my impulse buy of the con.

Verdict:  PASS, THOUGH IT DOES LOOK LIKE A VERY FUN GAME

So there you have it – most of the events and games I tried (I left a couple out because I didn’t really care enough about them one way or the other).  An exhausting con, but had a fantastic time.

A Weekend of Gaming

This past weekend promised to be a weekend filled with all manner of adventures and delivered. I know this post will probably run long, so I'll break it up into different categories and feel free to skip to whichever one you'd like.



Grimm
We started out on Friday night with Grimm, the roleplaying game I've been starting up since the Halloween one-shot was so well received. The characters, all junior high kids, found themselves in a mix of several fairy tales including well known ones like Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, as well as some lesser known ones like The King of Golden Mountain. After a long grueling series of tasks, they set free the Prince of the Kingdom Over Yonder and he set forth to rescue his Princess, Sleeping Beauty. The kids, meanwhile, headed back home, and were surprised to find that they actually got back to the real world. Only things were not as they seemed - small changes had crept in to their world. Instead of winning their last football game, they lost. All because Dan, their star QB, had quit the team months earlier. Brian and Ellen found that their characters, who were ambivalent towards each other before, were dating. And Mary had been relegated to the ensemble in the school play while Laura was given the star role. Only Jay seemed untouched by the changes. Now the characters have to figure out what happened to change their reality, and how to change it back.

All in all, a really good session, and caps the introduction to the story. Looking forward to picking it up again and seeing how the characters deal with their newfound situation.


Monsterpocalypse

After a long break from the game, Dan and I pulled out our MonPoc for another game. It was a fun game to play, but due to the way it was marketed and produced, we lost interest in it (check out this post if you're curious). I brought out one of my Martians that I'd never played, and Dan hit the table with one of his infrequently-used dinosaurs (it shows how long it's been since we played that I don't remember what they're called).

The game took about an hour on Saturday morning, and we had a blast. We crushed nearly the entire city under our monsters' throws and slams, and in the end, I had brought Dan's monster down to two life when he finished me off. As we were packing up, Dan realized that he could not have done as much damage to my monster as he had, and I should have had somewhere around 3-4 life left, not 1, and would have been able to smash his monster the next turn. We'll call it a mulligan - things may have gone differently, or may not. Point is, we had fun smashing buildings again.

I don't think the game will come out frequently, but it was a nice start to Saturday, which promised to be a huge day of gaming.


Malifaux

After MonPoc, I got in a couple of games with the Dreamer. First I faced off against Dan and his McMourning crew. I was pulling off a really good rout of his models, but in the end, he was able to distract me from my main goals while achieving his, and when I finally finished slaughtering everything I could, I was about a turn shy of reaching my goal. I lost the my first match-up with the Dreamer.

The second game I played against Convy's Marcus army. The game could not have gone better for me or worse for him, and I ended up pulling off an incredibly one-sided victory. It was Convy's first time seeing the Dreamer's antics and just what the little boy could do. Next time I'm sure he'll come in stronger.


Touch of Evil

After a quick break for a late lunch, we came back and got in a game of A Touch of Evil. John, Ellen, Dan, Convy, Chris and I all faced off against a Warewolf that was terrorizing the town. We decided, as it was all of our first game other than John, that we should try to play this one cooperatively. We had a few missteps along the way, but Convy was able to root out the Warewolf's lair, John called the hunt, and we all rushed in to fight the beast. The fight was bloody and brutal and John, Convy and Chris all got knocked down and had to leap off the covered bridge into the cold river and swim to safety, but I was able to put the finishing blow on the Warewolf and we saved the town.

Overall, a really fun game. I was hesitant when I first heard about it, mostly because I wasn't sure how it would stand against Arkham, but in the end, I was pleasantly surprised. It's a much faster game (and much less involved), yet still holds a lot of theme. Dan has asked for it for Christmas - hopefully he'll get it and we'll be able to get some more tries with it.


Football

Finally, on Sunday, the first week of the playoffs hit for us. I faced Ryan, and despite outscoring him by an average of 20 points each game of the season, I lost to him for the second time this season, 80-88. To make matters worse, my pick'em was so bad this week that I slipped from tied for first to third place, only getting 6 of the 16 games picked correctly. Now I'm out of the fantasy running, and I've got to catch up with only two weeks remaining in the season on pick'em. Not a great showing for football this week.

Ah well, there's always next season. If I lose this weekend against Ellen (likely - she was the number one ranked team during the regular season, and rightfully so with her team), it will be the third season (out of three we've had this league) where I've made the playoffs and then dropped both games, ending in fourth place.

One day I'll crack the top three.


Anywho, so that was my weekend. Lots of gaming and hit all the major types for me - roleplaying, miniatures, board games and football. Only thing missing were computer games.

Speaking of which, Dragon Age Two should be coming out sometime next year...

Life as a Kelmelis

Over last weekend, my brother and sister-in-law took Laura, LeeAnn and me out to the Melting Pot for dinner - it was a Christmas present from last year. Every year they do something really nice for the siblings to all enjoy together. It's a lot of fun to spend a night out on the town with them. One year it was Eric and I enjoying a trip to Baltimore together. Last year, the two of them took Laura and me to sushi and a show.

So this year we arrive at the Melting Pot on the day after Thanksgiving. It's a bit crowded and they fit the five of us at a table that, frankly, is designed for four people. Plus it's right under the speakers for the music. None of us can hear each other, see each other, or pull our arms above the table to reach the fondue. So we decide we're going to ask for a new table before it gets too unbearable.

Eric heads back to the front to let them know our pain. The guy says, "Okay, I think we've got another table coming up soon." Eric looks around and spots a nice spacious round table that's clear and says, "I think we'd like that one." The guy looks at what Eric's pointing at and says, "Oh, that's an eight person table," and then shows Eric a different, much smaller one. Eric shakes his head and says, "No. I think we do want the other one instead." The guy looks at Eric a moment while Eric keeps a straight face, and then says, "Okay, we'll get you that one."

It's not the first time Eric's lived a charmed life. On the way to the Redskins game on Sunday, a car pulled up to his and said, "Do you guys need a parking pass? We have two and we only have one car." The parking pass in question? Platnium parking. Right in front of the stadium.

He's also managed to land not one but four hotel rooms at a hotel that was booked solid (or so they say) for a mistake in booking that he had made. When the man at the desk told him there was nothing he could do, Eric just said, "No, that's not going to work for me." There was a long silence, then the guy said, "Maybe I should get the manager?" and Eric agreed, "That sounds like the right thing to do here." Sure enough, the manager came out with four keys for him and his friends.

It's good to be a Kelmelis.

Commute Gets Worse

Last week, after several drives to and from work that had me in the car for a couple hours a day round trip, I finally asked my boss if I could work from home two days a week instead of one. She didn't have a problem with that, so now I get to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, two of the worse traffic days around here.

So, of course, with things looking good on that front, they had to take a turn for the worse elsewhere on my commute.

On Wednesday, I was taking my normal meandering back-roads trip to work (Route 7 from Sterling to Tyson's is a nightmare), and I got up to the bridge over the toll road on Beulah. And there was a big sign there that said the road was closed. They didn't bother to put up signs before the bridge saying it was out, just at the bridge. So I had to turn around and drive back to Route 7 and make my way to the office that way. Final time: one hour, fifteen minutes.

On the way home, I figured the bridge might be opened again - they didn't look like they were working on it or anything, so I tried to get back to it. But no, it was closed. So I had to get back on the road and find another way over the Toll Road. Finally, I got home after an hour and forty five minutes of driving.

So my round trip that day took me more than three times as long as my round trip to my old office would have. So much for the benefit of working from home two days a week.

I checked online and found out that the bridge was out indefinitely because a truck had hit it on Tuesday evening, and they needed to do tests on it to make sure it was still stable. Of course, they had no idea how long that would take, nor when it would open up again.

Dissatisfaction with Food

I love barbeque Fritos. For my money, it can't get much better than that. They're not that easy to find, though. People stock regular potato chips and the like before they bring in the tasty goodness of barbeque Fritos.

But my vending machine here at work stocks them. Great news, right? Well, I thought so too. But when I went to get one today, I noticed the bag was nearly deflated when I pulled it out of the machine. Well, that's no good, I said to myself. And then when I opened the bag and started eating them, they were stale! Oh, the horror of it all! So what was going to be my wonderful snack turned out to be just a depressing bout of awfulness. I couldn't even finish the bag, they tasted so bad.

Oh, life is difficult sometimes.

New Furniture

Over the weekend, Laura and I went to IKEA with her mother to take a look at picking up a couple new pieces for our house after our flood. Our hope was to find a corner-style bookcase, but we came up empty on that front. Instead, we found a new organization system for our DVDs and an awesome new craft table. Add that to the hutch we picked up from Laura's house and our main room is looking pretty cool now. Take a look at the new things.

First is the hutch. We picked this one up on Thursday from her parents' place. It's quite heavy, but looks really nice. It was her grandmother's back in the day, and soon will be filled with all the china and silver we're inheriting from her grandmother too.

The next thing is the new DVD rack we've got. It's three pieces all lined up next to each other. Over the weekend we went through our collection and cut it down by what we want to keep and what we are willing to part with. There's another set of DVDs this large that we're going to start selling off.


The last piece is a lot of fun. When it's all closed up, it works well as an end table next to our loveseat. But the real excitement is when we want to use it as our craft table. There's a table on each side that folds up, so both Laura and I will have space to work. Add in the fact that there are three drawers down each side of the piece to store all our paints and the like, and you've got a pretty solid table. Whenever we're ready to do crafts, we'll just pull the piece out and set it up, and then when we're done, we'll be able to hide away our supplies and the like, hopefully keeping our house a little cleaner.

All in all, I think we made out pretty well. Now if only we could do something about this crazy heat!

The Flood: Part Twelve

So yesterday was the huge step - the carpet got installed. I got to run around downstairs with bare feet without worrying about stepping on nails or getting covered in dust. I started moving some of the things back downstairs, just to get the feeling like it's an actual house again. Now instead of the kitchen being the one place that felt like it was a real house, the kitchen is the place that needs the most work.

So while I had the two workers over yesterday afternoon, I asked them if they'd help me move the TV back into place once the carpet was set up. It's a massive thing, so I was glad for the assistance. It would have been days before I could get it done myself.

With the TV in place, I decided to bring down all the various boxes of entertainment I had - the Wii, the DVD player, the speakers, etc. When I took them all apart, I figured I wouldn't need to worry too much about marking which wires go where because hey, I did it once, surely I could figure it out again.

Except that for the life of me, I couldn't figure out which piece went where. The video in goes here, the left speaker out goes there? No, that's not right.

So I sat down on my couch (which is on a new carpet now - did I mention?), and stared at the whole thing a moment, trying to remember why it was so easy for me before. Then I realized - I was probably drinking a beer when I put it all together the first time. So I went to the fridge, popped an IPA, and sat back down on the couch to look over the equipment. Within a half a minute, I remembered how it all went back together.

There you have it, folks. Beer IS good for the mind. At least mine, evidently.

Next steps, I'll have to move Laura's hutch from her parents' place to our place, and then we're looking at heading out to IKEA this weekend to try to find a couple of pieces of furniture that we've wanted. Once that's done, it's just a matter of moving things back downstairs and figuring out what we're keeping, what we're selling, and what we're just trashing.

The Flood: Part Eleven

Over the weekend, I had a couple guys come by (Eric, Brian and Dan) to help out with ripping out the carpet and getting everything inside all set. We pitched the man couch (a moment of silence.............), ripped out the carpet, and moved all the furnature so that we would be ready for the new carpet to be put in.

I got a call this morning that the carpet people would be by today between noon and four to install the new carpet. Happy days and jubilation! Once that's done, I can go around and touch up the paint, then start moving all the furnature back in place. So close to the end!

The Flood: Part Ten

Last night, Dan and Ellen came by to help finish off the painting. We were able to get the hallway completed now that the washing machine was moved back, and did the whole office. Not too shabby! Tonight I'm going to be touching up a few spots, but for the most part, it's all done.

Almost all of the baseboards have been put in place now too - that was finished around 10:30 on Tuesday night (a 14 hour day for the contractor). He had messed up a part of the office wall and had to re-do the entire room with mud, costing him about 5 hours. I was glad to see that when he made the mistake, he went back and did it right, but I feel bad for how late he was there that night.

The contractor's coming by again tomorrow to finish off the baseboards and put the dryer back where it belongs. Laura and I can wear clean clothes again soon!

Saturday is going to be another working day for me, though not near as much as last Saturday. A few people are coming over to help remove all the carpet and organize the furniture so the install will be quick an easy.

Monday the carpet folks are coming by to install the new carpet. At that point, we should be pretty much finished with this whole fiasco. Just got to get everything back downstairs, figure out which of it we want to keep and which of it we're ready to pitch or sell. That's actually the fun part, so I'm looking forward to it. Everything else... just can't wait to have it all done.

Oh, and I had a bad dream the night before last. That night they re-installed my washing machine, and I had a nightmare that the house flooded again. Glad to see that didn't happen.

The Flood: Part Nine

Over the weekend, I had a number of people to the house to help out with painting it all up. In no particular order, a huge thanks to Eric, Tanya, Dan, Ellen, Chris, Jay and Brian for making the trip out Saturday morning to get things done.

We got started around 9:30, and by 12:00 or so, we had the hallway, the bathroom, and the main room all painted up. We took a break for lunch, then got started again around 1:30 or so on the kitchen when Brian arrived and Jay and Chris had to depart. The kitchen was the hardest of the rooms what with all the cabinets and the like, as well as the fact that we were all (except Brian) exhausted. After polishing that room off by 3:30, everyone by Brian took off, and the two of us went around the rooms replacing all the electrical sockets and face plates.

Yesterday I woke up and headed out to Home Depot to order the carpet and get a few things to finish touching things up around the house. I did a quick white-wash over the laundry room, and called it a day.

The contractor should be back tomorrow to finish up the office and put in the baseboards and kickboards. Next steps for me: paint the office, finish the hallway, and then get a few guys to help out this weekend getting the carpet out of the house so the carpet folks can put the new one in next week. From there, it's just a matter of moving everything back downstairs. End is in sight!

The Flood: Part Eight

I think my estimation of them finishing all the work on the drywall and baseboards in a day was a bit off. The group is here today and tomorrow too. In fact, I'll be heading home this afternoon to keep an eye on things so Laura can head back to the office. Her boss is much less keen on working from home than mine. This pushed back some of our prep work for this weekend's painting party and is making us re-evaluate how much we wanted to get done. Our original plan was to pick up paint last night, get the kitchen painted tonight, and take tomorrow night off before having a bunch of people help out on Saturday. We weren't able to get the paint last night because we had no where to store it yet, but we're hoping to get it tonight. That means we may not be able to take tomorrow night off as we'll be doing a lot of prep work then, and then starting up Saturday morning. Also, we reduced the number of rooms we were going to try to paint on Saturday, only trying to tackle the ones that will have furniture moved back into them (so the kitchen, main room, and office). We've got a handful of people offering to help already, so thank you very much to those who have already responded!

The Flood: Part Seven

So things are looking up now. I mean, the house is still a wreck and is hot as all get out, but the repairs are getting scheduled. Over the weekend, Laura and I went by Home Depot and priced out some carpet. The insurance company had given us almost $600 for the carpet cleaning and restretching and all, and the cost of new carpet came in a just shy of twice that, so we're excited about that. I was expecting around three times that for the new carpet, so I'll take the lower price. They're coming in tomorrow to do the measurements. Of course they can't tell us when in the day they'll be arriving, so it could be as early as 9 or as late as... well... 8, I guess.

Also, we got the estimate from the drywall guy and the damaged parts of the work come in at just about what the insurance company gave us, so we went ahead and scheduled that for tomorrow too. Happy days!

Tomorrow night we're hoping to head out to pick up some paint and get ready for a big painting party over the weekend. More details to come!

The Flood: Part Six

So the drywall contractor came by yesterday. Laura and I really liked him - he used to be a ServPro-type guy, working on drying out homes after a flood. He said he likes fixing homes up more than taking them apart, though. He specializes in working after floods to repair any damage that's going on.

I was able to get him the estimate material from our insurance guy, and so he's working up an estimate with that information too. While we've got him here, we have a few spots we're going to have him work on at the same time, just to make things look a bit nicer. He said he'll put those in the estimate too, though they'll come out of our pocket. Not bad, though, since the insurance company's already paying to get him out here, so these will just be add-ons.

I'm thinking it won't be able to start tomorrow, though, since we still have to clear the estimate through our insurance guy if there's any price difference, and I suspect there will be. So instead, tomorrow Laura and I are off to take a look at carpet places and see what we can find.

The Flood: Part Five

Not much to report today. Yesterday was the insurance guy, and I told you all how that went. Laura was able to set up a meeting with a drywall person for tomorrow at noon, and he said he had no problem coming in on Monday to start working on it. That's pretty awesome! I was hoping to have it done by the end of next week, so clearly the beginning of next week is a better plan. My only worry is that the estimate's going to come out higher than what the insurance guy gave me and we're going to be delayed trying to get that resolved.

The Flood: Part Four

The insurance adjuster came by this morning to take a look at the place. It went pretty much as I expected - he cut me a check, gave me an itemized expense report for how the money was calculated, let me know that if the price came out different on any particular part to get the receipt over to him and we'd work out the details that way. The amount didn't come out as high as I wanted, but when I was hoping for a mere $250,000, I guess maybe I should have been more realistic.

Next steps are to get in touch with the drywall folks and get them out to take care of all the walls. From there we can start painting the house, and then worry about the carpet.

Oh, and best news of all: no asbestos. Lab results came back negative. Happy days!

The Flood: Part Three

Last night I came home and my house smelled bad. I mean real bad. There was a wave of rank-smelling heat that rolled out when I opened the front door. Fortunately most of the smell was kept out of the bedroom, so I headed up there quick and shut the door. Laura came home and we headed over to my folks' place for the evening, watching "O Brother Where Art Thou" and working on the invitations.

This morning, ServPro came back over to take a look at things. First thing: check the temperature in the house. I kid you not - it was 102 degrees in the office. They did some testing in the walls, the boards, and the floor, and found it was dried out, so they shut down those infernal machines and cleared them out of the house. Laura and I immediately opened everything up and started clearing out the heat. It did wonders. Not enough, but it's a start. We also started talking about what to do with our house next. Since everything's upstairs now, we figure when the flooring and walls are repaired, we'll have a painting party (or two) and knock out the whole downstairs at once. Once that's finished, we'll start moving stuff down and put them in three piles: keep, trash, and sell in a yard sale. We might be able to get more money through ebay and half.com, but getting the things out of the house fast is the priority here.

For the clean-up, our next step is to talk to our insurance adjuster tomorrow morning, and to get the drywall all fixed. Never a dull moment.

Oh, I also realized that our tickets to Mary Poppins this weekend were in my desk, and my desk was all boxed up and taken upstairs. I tried looking through a few boxes with no luck, so I called the Kennedy Center and explained the situation. They said, "Sounds like you've got a lot on your mind right now. We'll go ahead and print out new tickets and put them at the box office for you for Saturday." Phew. Crisis averted.

The Flood: Part Two

I talked to the insurance folks yesterday. Everything's going just fine on that front. I'm trying to be as up-front about what's going on and ask them every time I talk to them what they need from me to make this process go smoothly. I'm hoping that will negate any kind of problems down the line.

We were told to hold off on bringing in a drywall guy until ServPro's done drying out the house and figuring out how much needs to be done to repair. If they need to break down more drywall, we'll need to know that before the drywall people come through to take a look.

ServPro brought a few more blowers to the house. That brings the total count to 18 blowers (we're talking industrial-strength hair dryers that put out about 120 degree air all day long), 3 massive dehumidifiers, and a "spider" power box that will protect against surges and the like.

Naturally with 120+ degree heat being put out downstairs, we've got a pretty roasting house. Last night we ended up at Dan's place for the evening, and when we came home we set up a fan to help the mini AC. It actually was pretty comfortable. I managed to get a full night's sleep, which is helpful. Unfortunately Laura had a rough night of it. Between her allergies to Dan's cats and to the dust and all that's been kicked up in our house from all the work, she's not feeling all that great.

Well, the insurance adjuster comes on Thursday. We'll see how things go then.

Things I Dislike: Deluxe Edition

There are more than a few things I dislike in life. A fatty piece of meat when you're expecting juicy goodness. One of those dexterity puzzles in video games that make you have to re-do them from the beginning if you miss the first jump. A hangover, no matter how well-deserved.

But now I have a new thing to add to that list. I dislike the hoses that go between my water pipes and the washing machine. Why? Let me tell you about my Sunday morning.

Sunday was supposed to go like this: wake up early, head out with Laura for our engagement photo session, Laura would go to class and I would chill out at home for an hour or two, and then we'd head over to her parents' place to tackle a bunch of invitations with Tini and Mike. It wasn't going to be a fantastic, over-the-top day, but it was going to be a dang good one.

Instead, at 7:30 in the morning when Laura walked out to take a shower, she pauses. There was a hissing noise and she couldn't place it. "Mike, what's that noise from downstairs?"

I take a look downstairs and see a massive water stain on the carpet. Laura usually tells this story better, because I went into red-haze mode at this point, but I'll try to piece together what happened.

Evidently I ran down the stairs yelling "F***!" loud enough to startle Laura. I landed on the carpet and water seeped up to the top of my feet. I looked around and threw open the door to the bathroom, where the sound was loudest. A geyser of water about two feet long was shooting out of the wall above and next to the toilet. I was afraid it was the pipes in the wall for the toilet, but when I looked through, I realized it was the aforementioned hose that connects the washing machine to the pipes. For those who know how my house looks, yes, that means the water was shooting out with enough force to cut a hole in the wall between the bathroom and the laundry room.

I ran over and shut off the water to the house, all the while yelling "F! F!" Once the water stopped flowing, I walked back to the front of the house, fell to my knees and screamed as loud as I could. Evidently Laura had never seen me yell like that, because it scared her a bit.



We could have used this guy.

The entire day was shot. I got a vac from Brian, as well as a dehumidifier and a few fans. Called the insurance company, and then the plumber and ServPro. We had to move EVERYTHING from downstairs to upstairs, so now there's no room in any room except my bedroom. Fortunately I had a few people helping out - a heartfelt thanks to Brian, Mary, Laura's mom, Kevin, my mom, Dan, Ellen, and my dad for all coming out throughout the day to lend a hand as they could.

We have some pictures of the devastation. But my computer's no longer hooked up, so I can't show them to you. Sorry about that. I'll have to update it later.

Taste of Reston

Over the weekend, Dan, Ellen and I went to the Taste of Reston at Reston Towne Center. It was a bit of a last-minute idea since my fiance was off in CT this weekend for a bridal shower.

We got there and were met by a pretty nice set-up. They had concerts, and then tents all up and down the main street with food stalls. I took a look at a couple of them and noticed things like, "Soda: 2 Tickets." Clearly we needed tickets. So I found the tent that was selling tickets and we split a pad of 24 tickets three ways.

24 tickets was $20, so almost a dollar a ticket.

We started heading down the tents and quickly realized why they had people paying with tickets. Paying $2 for a 12 oz. can is a bit much, but 2 tickets doesn't seem that bad. Dropping 4 tickets for six pieces of chicken spread over two sticks doesn't seem hefty, but $4 is a bit much for the sub-appetizer.

Frustrated with the prices, we finally found the alcohol tent. I was thirsty, so I was thinking of a glass of white wine, but it was 6 tickets a glass!

We finally found the more reasonable priced-tent down the other end. 2 tickets for two burger sliders, and 1 ticket for a snowcone. That tracked better, and I finished off my tickets there. By the time we finished, I checked my watch and realized we'd only spent an hour there and were already out of tickets. Not exactly the best way to spend some time, I'd say. We checked out and went back to Dan's place to watch a movie in the comfort of air conditioning.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed with the festival. I was hoping for more free samples (the custard place was doing that, and doing it right, I felt - give free samples so people can get "A Taste" of it, and then charge if the people want a whole cup of custard). Sadly, it just wasn't the case. Adding to that, there really was not a lot in the way of entertainment. Granted we did not go around to the carnival out in one of the parking lots, but the only thing for adults was the concert venue. And when we walked out, all we heard was the guy saying, "Check one, check two, check, check, check... hey, hey hey, hey, check, check, one, two, three..." From the time it took us to walk from the Clyde's past the venue, and then out past the M&S Grill, we heard no music... just a guy talking.