Distopia and Dattopia

I'm feeling a little better today. Nothing like a little time away from work to make it a little more endurable. I'm not completely ready to cut and run, but at the same time, I'm going to start looking. Things might be okay around here for awhile longer, and within a month at least they may have some answers and be able to give me a better idea of whether or not there is any reason to stay.

When I got home from work last night it was almost like a totally different family. Richard was feeling considerably better, and that had a positive influence on everyone. We had a pleasant evening, and even our Family Home Evening went relatively well. Walter didn't even mind that his mouse kept getting caught when we played Mousetrap.

That's not the Mousetrap where you build a Rube Goldberg contraption to catch the world's stupidest mouse, but one we used to play when I was a kid. You take a metal nut or washer, tie a string to it, and place it in the middle of the table, while holding the other end of the string. One person has a pot lid and a die. He rolls the die over and over, and if he rolls a one (or was it a six?) he gets to try to catch the mice before the players can yank them away.

I know there are more rules to it than that, but I couldn't remember. Not that it mattered. That was as complicated as the kids could easily handle, and more than enough fun for them. I always knew there was a good reason to play Warhammer: graphical dice. Rather than have the kids have to worry about counting spots in a hurry I'd just roll an artillery die from my game. It has two sides that show an explosive cloud, while the others all show arrows. It both made the game go faster having two sides that could come up, and made it easy for them to tell when to yank their mice.

Anyway, I need the rest of the family to fill me in on the rest of the rules just in case they want to play it when they're a little older and need more complexity.

I got a flier today for a lawn company that wants to fertilize my lawn this year. It's tempting. Boy is it tempting...