Golden Anvil

Well, tonight was the first time our gaming group has gotten together for about three or four weeks. Monday is our usual play night, and I intend on keeping everyone up to date with what goes on.

Right now our group consists of me, MrsKheldar, RaNae (our teenaged friend from church), and two guys and one gal from my work. We all meet at my workplace, and MrsKheldar usually brings food for everyone. We've been playing for something over two years now, usually once a week, although sporadic at times due to scheduling problems. We've been playing a supers game set during World War II time period.

Having just finished up our last adventure prior to Christmas, we decide it was time to put the old campaign to rest for now (who knows, perhaps we'll pick it up again sometime) and start into something new. So, we spent a portion of the night talking about what we wanted to play.

It’s interesting that there have been a couple of posts about books today because I got the following in an email from a friend at work and thought you all should know too.  I have made it a habit not to forward emails that I receive that would be considered chain emails.  However, I don’t consider this email a chain email per se and I do think it’s very important that we act before we lose our Liberties.  While this may not something that endangers our Liberties directly, I do believe it starts us as a country down a slippery slope.  When I read this I thought about the scenes of book burnings in a Berlin plaza from the Indiana Jones Last Crusade movie.  Perhaps I am reading too mu

Copying a meme started by Optiker, I poked around a little to see  what was the oldest thing I have still sitting around that wasn't just sitting in a box somewhere.

I think I've got five categories of such things.

1) Games (roleplaying and such mostly): I've got Car Wars stuff here that dates back to early highschool. Now technically, I haven't played it in a while, but I really want to. Doesn't that count for something? I also have some Lost Worlds stuff that dates back to highschool. I've played that more recently, but it's still been a while. I'm sure I've got a couple other games that date back to at least late highschool.

Well, this morning I beat Portal. Wow! Outstanding game! Technically I still have things to do. Right now I'm going back through it again in developer commentary mode. This basically makes you invulnerable and adds little commentary icons throughout the levels that you can activate to hear the developers tell you things about the game. It's a fun way to learn more about the design and creation of the game. After that, there are advanced and challenge versions of the levels to play through. I'm not sure exactly what those are like, but they're supposedly harder. We'll see.

I do think I'll need to play through the final sequence one more time so that MrsKheldar can get a chance to watch it as well.

All in all, this was (and as I continue to play in the different modes will continue to be) a great game, and well worth the money I spent.

Welcome to the new year everyone. As some of you already know, this is the start of GABloPoMo (Golden Anvil Blog Posting Month). What this means is that I have challenged the members of this site who have blog posting privileges (essentially just members of my extended family) to post every day this month. To help encourage this, I even offered two levels of prizes, one if someone posts every single day, and one if they manage four times a week.

So, expect a lot more activity in the blogs this month. However, because blogs can be posted with various permission levels, you may not see a blog post every day from the regular posters. They may still be on track to win the pize though.

Yesterday MrsKheldar and I wen to visit the BodyWorlds exhibit here in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take pictures, but I did find a few on their website here which may give you a little better idea of what the exhibit is about.

This was an absolutely amazing experience. We took 2.5 hours to wander through the exhibit (they suggest that most people take about 90 minutes). The human body is an incredible thing!

Some of the highlights included getting to see exactly how a hip replacement works and looks. Now I know exactly what's going on inside Mom! It's definitely different then I'd imagined, and yet, seems relatively straightforward. We also got to see some examples of the stent that was put in MrsKheldars leg after her blood clot, and got to see some examples of a hole in the heart between the two sides like I've got.

I wanted to pass along a few tips to help in using this website.

• The sidebar contains a "Recent posts" link. Use that link to see a list of any changes that have been made recently. This will list new posts as well as new comments, and includes a link to take you directly to the new post or comment.
• Feel free to comment on any of the blog entries. Posts that you can see have been intentionally made visible to allow others to read and (if desired) participate in any feedback. This is intended to be a web site not just for my family, but also for friends of my family.

I'll leave this post stickied for a while. I may eventually take it down and replace it with an FAQ page.

Well, welcome everyone to the brand new Batishko web site. Most everything should be up and running properly, but please feel free to contact me if there are problems with anything. The easiest way to do that if you don't know my email is to leave a message in the Meta forum. Feel free to post there too if you have any suggestions on improving things. Anyway, I hope to see you all back here often.

My Saturday was very busy! Just last week, I started volunteering a few hours a month at the Ogden Pregnancy Center. I figured if both my Mom and Mother-in-law were involved, I should be too. Actually, it just started out with me wanting to make baby cards for them, now I'm going to do that and go in a few hours a month to work on the admin side of things - filing papers, etc.

Anyway, because of that, I found out the volunteers were doing a beading party. I went with some wire hoops and old beads I had laying around and got a feel for what it was like to make jewelry. Oh boy...am I hooked! I went home and with a glimmer in my eye looked at my husband and said, "I have a new hobby!" Today I went out and bought the essential pliers and a bead board. I'll be keeping my eye out for coupons that come in the mail as a I begin building my wire and bead collection. (Hint Hint - Gift cards to a craft store would be a perfect birthday gift!)

I guess it's been a while since I posted, so it's time to fill you in on my peaceful little life (Are you jealous? You should be!)

It surprises me every year how difficult it is to get back into a regular schedule after the holidays. I still am running around, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing! Slowly though, things are settling down, and I'm finding myself with some new projects that I'm excited about.

It looks like I may spend about 4 hours a week teaching preschool one-on-one with a kiddo from our church. He has some developmental delays, and Mom would like him to have a jumpstart before possibly entering a group preschool experience. I spent some time ironing out the details with her today, and it looks like we are going to start the first week of February. I'd appreciate prayers for wisdom and guidance as I prepare, and then begin working with this little guy.