Videos

This is a cartoon made by a friend of mine from high school. It's called 'The Infinite Goliath'. It's about a super-powerful space villain that has been captured, paroled, and forced to live in the suburbs. I thought it was pretty funny:

Here's a clip of a deleted scene from the original Star Wars movie that I'd never seen. Too bad they didn't leave it in.

Mario Kart

You know how much I love my children?

I love my children so much that I spent hours becoming a Mario Kart expert so that they could play on the 'hidden' courses. HOURS!

Now, I enjoy playing games with my kids. And they love Mario Kart. We have the old version for the Game Cube (actually belongs to My-Friend-Who-Lies who was kind enough to let us borrow it. I guess that somewhat makes up for him stealing my 'Great Escape' DVD). Every now and then, me, Mrs. BigKat, and the 2 LilKats will have some great 4 player races.

But I'm talking about playing by myself after the kids have gone to bed because LilKat1 has told me 'Dad...we REEEEAAAAAAALLLLLYYYYYY want to play on the new courses.' Me, by myself, sitting in front of the TV (on a tiny wooden kid chair) when there are perfectly good boardgames upstairs just begging to be played!

Now, it wasn't all by myself. I did play a bit with LilKat2 to try and unlock the courses. We played the 150cc Star course together during my lunch break a couple of times. I remember once, I was very close to coming in first place. Then, all of a sudden, right before the finish line, I got blown up by a flying shell. I said something like 'Aaaaargh! I had it, but then someone blasted me with a flying shell!'

To which LilKat2 replied: 'Oh! That was me Dad!'

So we had to try again...

Well, over the weekend, we finally unlocked the tracks (actually Mrs. BigKat got the final piece of the puzzle with a 1st place on the 100cc Star Course with LilKat2) and the boys have been enjoying the new courses (LilKat2 woke up at 5:30 yesterday to go play them).

As for me...I think it's going to be a long time before I have one of those Mario Kart by myself sessions again.

Well, until we get a Wii and they want me to unlock those courses too...

The BigKat Deck

My wife and I just celebrated our 10 year anniversary (Yay!). I was trying to think of something creative to give her that would be fun for both of us. I had trouble thinking of anything good, and was about to give up. But then, I found out about a special deal on ArtsCow.com on custom made decks of cards. That led to...

The K-Deck!



The K-Deck allows you to play some of my favorite games, Lost Cities, Battle Line, and Tichu, all from one specially made deck of cards (actually 2 decks smashed together). It also functions as a standard deck of cards. But the best thing about the K-Deck is that all of the cards contain images of our family. For example...

This is what the 10's look like:

Here is an 8:

For Battle Line, here is one of the Tactics cards (used to be 'Fog' in the original game, I renamed it 'Mess'. The picture is from when LilKat2 dumped a whole box of Strawberry Quik on the floor and made sand castles out of it (Quik Castles?) ).

For Tichu, instead of 'The Hounds', we have 'The Cats':

And of course, the single most powerful card in Tichu...the Dragon:

I was quite pleased with how they turned out. Mrs. BigKat got a kick out of them too. On our date nights, we sometimes will go to a coffee shop or library after dinner and play a quick game of something. Now we can bring the K-Deck with us and enjoy a round of Battle Line, featuring our family!

I'm thinking of making another deck for Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, an out of print game that I'd like to play. But instead of being about Jack the Ripper, I'm going to re-theme it to a game of people in our family stealing desserts.

Even I have my limits

So  I own a bunch of boardgames. I have a room dedicated to boardgames. I own boardgames of many different kinds. I have purchased almost all of my boardgames without having seen (in person) or played them first. Sometimes, I'll buy a boardgame just because it seems like a good deal. I've even bought a boardgame knowing that it probably won't get played very much, but it might be a good idea to have for when the kids are older. I buy a lot of boardgames.

But even I have my limits...

I

I don't think I'm going to be getting this game anytime soon. It's a little too...silly. I didn't think that was possible, but, apparently, it is.

How'd I miss this?

From Rick Reilly:

"Why is nobody talking about Antrel Rolle!" All he did was lose the Super Bowl for the Cardinals! Rolle, the Cardinals' safety, was on the sideline at the end of the first half when Steelers linebacker James Harrison intercepted Kurt Warner at the goal line and began his unthinkable 100-yard touchdown rumble. That was a 14-point swing for the Steelers and turned the game. But Cards' wide receiverLarry Fitzgerald was close to catching Harrison at the 30 when he ran smack into Rolle, who had stepped onto the field go get a good look at Harrison going past. Fitzgerald slammed into Rolle, pushed him out of the way, had to start over and didn't get to Harrison again until the goal line, when it was too late

Did this really happen? I've long since deleted the SuperBowl from my tivo, so I had to go to YouTube...

Wow...

Harrison barely made that touchdown. If Rolle stays off the field and Fitzgerald doesn't run into him...

CURSE YOU ANTREL ROLLE!!!

Prayers

Wow, seems like a lot of people I know are needing prayer right now...

1) One of my Sunday School kids, B, is out in Philadelphia right now. He just had back surgery yesterday. If this surgery is successful, it may make it so that he does not have to have another more major surgery later on.

2) A friend of the family, H (9 years old), had to fly our to Utah last night. She's going to have open heart surgery on Wednesday.

3) My dad had pneumonia and ended up having surgery to drain fluid from his lungs on Sunday.

If you could take some time to pray for these guys, I think it would be great.

Crokinole

Last month, I decided to order a custom made crokinole board. Yeah, it may seem strange to spend a lot of money on a handmade board for a game that I've never played before. But when you're addicted to boardgames like me, things like this are really not out of the ordinary.

There are a few differnent options for nice crokinole boards. I went with the Hilinski brothers. They're a couple of guys that enjoy making crokinole boards for people. Most places have a line of standard models that are all the same. The Hilinski's are interesting each board they make (with a few exceptions) is unique. You can check out their gallery to see some of the interesting boards that they've made.

Anyhow, after a month of waiting, I finally got the email that my board was done. I just sent in the payment, so the board should be in the mail very soon. It's called Chautauqua Here's a picture of it:

If you want to know how to play the game, here's a video that explains it:

Color Blind update

By request of My-Friend-Who-Lies (MFWL), here are the pictures from the last post after processing them with the color blind software.

Like I said...U-G-L-Y!!!