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Tag Archives: anything goes Sunday

What I did today

I took my treadmill desk apart with some help from my dad, carried some pieces down three flights of stairs while my dad and a friend on mine carried the other pieces and the actual treadmill, carried back pieces of a regular desk (chair included) and two bookshelves while the aforementioned friend and father carried the rest, and after my friend was done assembling the new desk and I was done testing the chair for comfort, we went to play a bunch of boardgames.

(It might not sound like much, but I do believe I did my share of work. There were a lot of pieces,  and heavy ones too.)

My plans for the rest of the week are: put the bookshelves back together again and reorganize my office. I have too many piles of stuff everywhere; it will do a world of good.

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Posted by on June 14, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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My week-end

I’ve already covered the playtest in the Friday post. It went really well.

Prose in the Park: I had such a good time. The weather was perfect, which is always a bonus. There was this amazing turn out, and many of them stopped by the table. Some to ask about possibly submitting to Renaissance (which, of course, would be great, Renaissance loves new authors) and some because the posters we put up announcing A Match Made in Austen intrigued them. There were so many people who complimented us, who loved the concept of the game, I’m sure we would have made a ton of sales if we’d had physical copies of the game. It’s such a thrill to see people getting this excited about something that came out of my mind! I can’t even put it into words.

The Belmont Stakes: American Pharaoh! He did it! The first Triple Crown champion since 1978! The twelfth champion in history! Watching the race live is the only thing that might have made it better. Also, it would have eliminated the opportunity of being spoiled. Yes, believe it or not; after all my fretting about having the Tony awards spoiled for me by the many theater blogs I follow on Tumblr, it’s the Belmont I get spoiled. By this one really random blog, too! I didn’t even know this like followed the races. If I had, I would have known to un-follow for Saturday, and re-follow today after seeing the race.

The Tony Awards: I thought I might be able to watch them live from CBS.com, but I get blocked because I’m not in the US. So I am going to get spoiled after all. The ceremony is being recorded, I made sure of that, but I wish I might have gotten the excitement of watching it unfold along with the world. On the plus side, it means I get to go to sleep at a regular hour, which is amazing.

I also went to a library-organised used-books sale this morning, and I had an afternoon-early evening board-game session tonight. Always a lot of fun, but it’s seriously just as well that I don’t have to go to sleep too late, because I missed my chance to take a nap, and the excitement of the week-end is catching up on me.

 
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Posted by on June 7, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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Today was card game day

You may or may not remember, two weeks ago, I mentioned that I created a card game called A Match Made in Austen, and that my publishers, Renaissance, was using the game as a gateway to expend the business into game production. Card games, as it turns out, are a pretty good starting point for printing games, because they are relatively easy to make. So today, fellow Renaissance author Caroline Fréchette and I had planned a day of testing various kinds of card games. I brought mine and she brought hers, and we were going to try out as many as possible. The goal was to try out different systems, and get some ideas about adapting her book series Family by Choice into a card game.

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Those are my card games, photographed from my apartment.

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Those are her card games, photographed from her home. To be fair, she owns many – MANY – more board games then I do. I barely can fill a bookshelf with my board games. She has a wall full in her basement. I also included a regular deck of cards in my games, and I’m sure she owns one of those, too.

Turns out that between the making of the plans and the actual day, she and her partner had already figured out a system, which is the bunch of papers you see in the pictures of her games. So we tried out that version (still some details to iron out, but already a lot of fun) and played Gloom and Fluxx, because I had never played Gloom and she had never played Fluxx.

I think I may have been the overall winner of this game of discovery. I found Gloom to be so much fun. However, while Caroline agreed that the collectible Fluxx versions might be fun to have, for fannish purposes, the game itself is too random for her taste. Of course, randomness is the point of Fluxx, but if you like to be able to plan three moves ahead, it’s not the game for you.

In any case, today was a good day, and there are a lot of potential goodies in the future. One of those future goodies being my own game, A Match Made in Austen, which you can now support on Kickstarter.

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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How my week-end went

Pretty well, all things considered. My week ended on sort of a shitty note, one that I’d rather not talk about, but so far the week-end seems to be making out for it.

Yesterday, the Preakness Stakes, the second race of the Triple Crown, was run in Baltimore. I don’t make as big a fuss about the Preakness as I do about the Derby, which ran two weeks ago, but I do watch it almost every year, if only to see if there’s going to be a Triple Crown winner this year. And from what little I know about horseback racing, things are looking pretty good this year. The same horse won both the Derby and the Preakness, and he won them both by a fair margin, which means he just might have the stamina to run the mile and a half Belmont, the final race of the Triple Crown, three weeks from now. And on top of that, it was pouring rain in Maryland yesterday afternoon, and the horse still held his own.

(Unrelated, but still good news, I went to my parents’ house to watch the race, and my Montreal sibling had dropped off the cats, both the ‘street rescue’ one and the ‘wanted ads’ one, in preparation for moving back in town for the summer. I got to pet the kitties, and they are both so nice and so gorgeous. I think I’m more ready then I expected to get a new cat of my own. Don’t tell the Montreal sibling, though; I don’t want to be pushed. I’ll go to the SPCA in my own good time.)

This afternoon was CanGames, a local convention of tabletop and role-playing gamers in Ottawa. I was leading a play-test for A Match Made in Austen, the card game I designed and which is now being produced by Renaissance. It was a small play-test, only one person signed up for it, but that one person was very enthusiastic, and picked up some of our promo material to distribute to friends who might like the game as well. My friend Caroline Fréchette, the driving force behind Renaissance, was also there, and we had a good look around in the vendors room, browsing other card games, looking for some inspiration. (We bought a few, and are planning a board game day to test them out. We haven’t had one of those in ages, it’s going to be great!) That was a fun time.

Speaking of A Match Made in Austen: the Kickstarter is trucking along nicely. The game is now 36% funded with 31 days to go. I don’t want to jinx it, but we might just make it, and wouldn’t that be cool! Launching a finished product knowing that at least two dozen other people are as excited about it as we are.

And tomorrow is a day off, because it’s Victoria Day. I’ve talked about my feelings about three day week-ends before (in a gist, the two day week-ends suit me fine) but it has been a while since I spent a day in my jammies, watching movies or reading. I think I might be overdue.

 
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Posted by on May 17, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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