In Other News...ConQuest SAC is Coming!!!

I am REALLY looking forward to the upcoming local convention - ConQuest Sacramento! It is scheduled for April 1-3, 2016 at the Crown Plaza Hotel here in Sacramento, CA. This is the biggest board game convention that is held here in Sacramento and is going on it's 11th year. This is the first year that this convention is being held at the Crown Plaza Hotel. It moved to this venue because it had outgrown its old venue.

This is my third year attending ConQuest Sac and is my second year running games. I just submitted my games for this year and I am really looking forward to this slate of games.

Friday, April 1st @ 12:00 - 5:00 p.m. - RoboRally: In this game you are a super computer that has grown bored with producing widgets. You've colluded with the other super computers to develop a capture-the-flag contest using the factory robots and factory floor. There are obstacles and dangers, including your opponents and your own short-sitedness that can really mess up the best laid plans.

This game is the game that got me back into board gaming. I love this game but don't get the chance to play it nearly as often as I would like. I used to have the base game and all of the original expansions, but I lost them in a divorce. Now, in order to obtain the expansions I would have to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase them via eBay. I just don't have that kind of money to spend on this game. However, I have found a place where the game board maps have been made available as PDFs. So my plan is to download the images, print them out, and laminate them so that I have them available to play with at this convention.

Friday, April 1st @ 7:00 - 11:00 p.m. - T.I.M.E. Stories: Asylum:  You have just graduated from the T.I.M.E. Agency Academy and are a newly minted agent ready for your first mission. Your group is going back in time to prevent a time-altering catastrophe from occurring. You have a limited amount of time to fulfill your mission before you are drawn back to your home time and you have to report in. If you fail, you will be sent back to start over from the beginning with only your memory of what transpired before to guide you through the second run.

This game is one of the most innovative games to come out in 2015. It's a combination of a choose-your-own-adventure and RPG*-in-a-box. If you have never played an RPG, this is a great introduction. If you have played an RPG, this will seem familiar and will be great fun as a one-shot game. Join me for this gaming experience!

Saturday, April 2nd @ 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. - The Dread Hangover: This RPG is unusual in a few ways...Dread is a RPG that uses the horror genre instead of the fantasy or sci-fi genre. When I play Dread, I always do these games as one-shot events rather than on-going campaigns. The idea is to spend a few hours enjoying a horror genre story that gets your blood pumping as you try to get your character out alive.

Speaking of characters, the Dread characters are generated through questionnaires rather than a series of stats that are generated via rolling dice. Usually the Game Master (GM) will generate a different questionnaire for each person to answer at the start of the gaming event. The character will react to situations based on how the player answered the questions. In the case of this convention, I'm going to answer the questionnaires and generate the characters ahead of time and then pass them out to the people that show up. They will take some time to read through the questions and answers in order to "get to know" the character they are going to play for the evening.

Finally, Dread does not use dice as the randomizer. Instead it uses a Jenga-type tower to create tension and decide hard actions. Don't let your prowess at playing Jenga scare you away from trying this game however. The game is not about the Jenga tower. It's about the story and the tension that builds. Most of the pulls a person does will NOT result in the tower collapsing, but it will start adding to the tension that will build as the structure of the tower becomes more precarious. Join me for this unique type of RPG!

Saturday, April 2nd @ 7:00 - 11:00 p.m. - T.I.M.E. Stories: The Marcy Case: This is the first expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories and is an excellent story to play. You are sent back in time to 1992 small town U.S.A. to rescue young Marcy who has disappeared. You are told that she is important to the future and shown a picture of a young girl. From there everything goes crazy. It doesn't matter if you have or haven't played the base game. This expansion will allow you to join in on the experience and successfully (or not) play through the scenario. It's a great way to spend your evening at the convention!

There is one more expansion coming out at the end of January called "A Prophecy of Dragons." If I am able to get this expansion before ConQuest SAC, I'll sign up to run it on Sunday. However, its release keeps getting pushed back. The original flier that came in the base game box said it would be released in Q4 of 2015. Now the word is that it will be released on January 31st, 2016. I've pre-ordered it from Great Escape Games. We'll see when it comes in...

*RPG = Role Playing Game

In Other News...Top 5 Moments of 2015

I had a BAD day today. I had to check my husband, Mark, into the hospital for the 5th time in 3 months - this time for a fever due to an infection - and I'm sitting here at home just really worried about him. I turned on You Tube and watched some videos of one of my favorite Pod Casts - The Dice Tower, a board gaming podcast - and they were talking about their best experiences of 2015. Because today was such a lousy day for me, I started to try to think of the 5 best days for me in 2015 and decided to tell you about them here...

Honorable Mention #1: All of the Friends That Came to Visit or Called/Texted While Mark Was in the Hospital

Mark spent a total of 15 days admitted to various hospitals in October/November 2015. 12 of those were consecutive days. I want to thank everyone who came to visit us/him while we were going through that time. As I'm writing this, Mark is enduring his 6th hospital visit and 5th hospital admission in three months. We couldn't get through this without the support of our friends and family. Thank you all!!!

Honorable Meniton#2: New Year's Eve 2015 with Our Friends

We had a few friends over for some board games, food, booze, and fun on New Year's Eve. We played some of our favorite games and rang in the new year. While we did this several time during the year with this particular group of friends, this event is the freshest in my mind. We had a good time, enjoyed each other's fellowship, and celebrated yet another milestone in each other's lives. I think for all of us it was an important night but for different reasons. 

#5: New Year's Day with Mark

We had had such a lousy 2014 that we were eagerly looking forward to 2015. We had lost our house and had to move - but we liked our new home and community. We were looking forward to the future being brighter. We decided to just stay in that night and celebrate the new year alone together and look forward to the new year instead of back on the crappy year that we had just left. It was a peaceful, quiet, snuggly night. Just us and Shasta, and Roobee. It was the best possible way to ring in 2015.

#4: My Vacation to Santa Cruz with Kim Swenson

I needed a vacation. My friend Kim had just been in a BIG car accident and suffered a concussion - something I had a first-hand understanding of - and she needed a vacation. So we decided to escape together for a girls get-away to my Grandma's cabin just outside of Santa Cruz, CA. We drove down to Santa Cruz and went to The Mystery Spot, and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, had Archery Lessons, played pool at a billiards hall (I'm terrible at that game!), ate at The Crepe Place and The Santa Cruz Diner, and an awsome pizza joint where we got clam pizza (that I can't remember the name of right now), played Firefly in the cabin, and watched The Tudors that she had downloaded. It was a wonderful few days. 

#3: The Day We Adopted Sadie

As you will read in just a bit, the worst day of 2015 was the day that our dog Roobee died in mid-July. We waited a about two weeks and realized that Shasta, our other dog, was suffering from loneliness and was mourning the loss of Roobee. The whole reason that we had adopted Roobee in the first place was as a buddy for Shasta. Shasta is a dog that needs a buddy or she just gets anxious when she's alone. If she has a friend, she relaxes and enjoys herself. Although Mark and I had not nearly "finished" our mourning period for the loss of Roobee (sometimes I think we still haven't "finished"), we knew we needed to set aside our grieving and think of Shasta's needs and get another dog. We called my brother and he was ready with a solution.

Sadie had been adopted as a puppy by a family that wanted a bird hunting dog. Somewhere in the training process, it was discovered that Sadie had absolutely zero interest in birds. After trying and failing to change this, the family brought Sadie back to my brother and asked what could be done. He took her back and gave them another puppy so they could try again. In the meantime he had a one-year-old hunting dog on his hands that had no interest in hunting. He also had a sister who had no interest in hunting that was in need of a new dog. (Ironically, she had come back to David about the time that Roobee had died.) Match made in Heaven. 

We went out immediately upon realizing this and took Sadie straight into our hearts. On the way home we could see that she had abandonment issues and those continued for a few weeks once we got her home. She also had a few clashes with Shasta once they got home. However, I don't believe in "returning" members of the family. A natural parent cannot return a child they gave birth to. Why should an adoptive parent be able to "return" a child or dog they have taken into their home?* As far as I was concerned, no matter what issues Sadie had, she was in her forever home. Our hearts were big enough to overcome the issues. To date she has settled in and become a wonderful member of the family! 

#2: The Day After Christmas Visiting with My Grandma

My Grandma is 95 years old and lives (largely) on her own. She's an important influence in my life. I'll be the first to admit that she and I don't always see eye-to-eye on much, but I love the stuffing out of that woman!!! Mark and I went down to see her on the day after Christmas and we spent the day visiting with her and we even played some board games with her (2 games of Tsuro and 2 games of Qwirkle). On New Year's Eve she fell in her bank and broke her hip and wrist. This is the second time that she has broken her hip and wrist (not the same hip and wrist, but you get the idea). As I'm writing this she's in a skilled nursing facility where she will go through rehabilitation as her hip and wrist heal a bit before going home. 

On the day that Mark and I visited her in her home, she was so happy to see us and was talking about plans to start driving again and how she felt like she was just about back to where she had been before she had broken her hip nearly two years before. She seemed almost chipper. It was really good to see!!! It is a memory that I will cherish in my heart.

#1: How My Friends and Family Came Together to Help Us Through the Worst Day of the Year

On July 13, 2015 the worst day of the year started for Mark and me. We had been dealing for about nine months with our dog, Roobee, having kidney failure. We had been feeding her special food and giving her subcutanious fluid and she had been dealing with all of this pretty well. She tolerated the fluid doses and ate the food (mostly). We relished the days when we could take her to the dog park and just watch her run and run and run. We called her the Roobee Rocket! She wouldn't fetch anything, but she would run laps around the dog park and chase any birds that landed in the park's confines until they took off. (Shasta was always the fetcher dog). 

On July13th, 2015 Roobee let us know that it was her day to go across the Rainbow Bridge to the next life. That was the worst day of 2015 for us because we had to take our BABY to the veterinarian and ask them to release her from her pain and then watch her die. I'm bawling just typing this blog post right now. So why would I say this is one of the best memories of 2015? Roobee dying is THE WORST DAY OF 2015. Hands down. No debate. 

Our friends, family, and co-workers poured out their support for us on that day. The love that we felt on that day was unparalleled. Our friends Kim and Frank spent time with us and Roobee before we had to take Roobee to the vet. Then they accompanied us to the veterinarian for Roobee's last appointment. And then they came with us to bury Roobee. 

My brother, David, offered us a place to bury Roobee on his property. Then he dug her grave, saw her placed nicely into it and personally buried her for us. He then said that when we were ready for a new dog, to come see him and he would take care of us. 

Through Facebook and text messages our friends and family poured out their support for us in our time of loss. They KNEW that our dogs were our babies and that this was as bad for us as if they had lost one of their own children. 

Even the veterinarians followed up with a card that was full of their memories of Roobee and condolences for her passing. She wasn't just a dog to them. She as a patient they couldn't save and that seemed to hurt them too. 

Everyone's love and support made the worst day of the year, my #1 Memory of 2015. Does that make any sense to you? If yes, can you explain it to me?

*This is my opinion for my own circumstances. Everyone has to do what is right for his or her own circumstances. I'm not judging anyone else. I'm just explaining my own reasoning and philosophy where my dogs are concerned. Please don't leave me angry comments over this. I'm not judging you.