Are plans actually coming together?

We have found a place to move to. It is the house of a person that was in our ward, but then moved out of the ward, and sent his landlord our contact info. Then we got in touch with the landlord and he agreed too rent it to us. The house is three houses down from us. We will (obviously) stay in the same ward. 

In other news, apparently my birthday is in one week from today. It seems like every passing year I think about my birthday less and less often. This year especially because of the fact that we're moving and having a baby all within a month of each other. If any of you are wondering what I want for my birthday, the answer is what all 33-year old men want: money to pay for bills and life and such.

Because I'm turning 33, when I hit four months from then I will be 33 and 1/3 old, which is one-third of 100. So if I live to be 100 years old, I will be hitting my thri-life crisis. (Like a mid-life crisis only for a third.)

The baby is due the 21. What if she was born on the 22? Then my birthday would be 2, Henry's would be 12, and baby's would be 22. What are we going to name the baby? Even if we knew we probably wouldn't say. The last two children we had we thought we had a name picked out... until they were born. Then we changed our minds and named them something else. So since Henry and Joy got their names after they were already a few days old, that might happen with this new human too.

Okay, so you know how last week I talked about making a video game and it would be hard to learn how to code? So I did some research on game-maker engines that would be easier for a beginner (like myself). Not only that, but the normally $80 engine was on sale on Steam, so I bought it at a discount. The legal contract with the engine is that you can make a game and then you can sell it and it's within your contract to do so, and can legally do that with no ties. Buying the game-making engine itself gives you the legal rights to do that. Oh, it's called RPG Maker MZ.

So maybe I'll actually be able to make that Book of Mormon video game like I wanted to.

Okay, so remember a while ago I said I supported a Book of Mormon based video game called Servant of Helaman? Looking back at the images and videos now (once again, I can't access the actual game itself) it looks like the creator totally used RPG Maker MV.

Unfortunately, because I can't access it, I'll never know how similar mine will be to it. You know, that is, if I ever make it. But we can always have faith that I will.

Book of Mormon projects

    "A few weeks ago," the larger one said, "A group of us went and took out Target number three." He nodded over to the skinner man on his left, who continued the train of thought. 

    "Unfortunately, there were more witnesses than we would have liked, and it was brought to the attention of the Chief Judge."

    Heoit sat up straiter in his stone seat. "Unacceptable!" he roared. "This jeopardizes all of our plans! How could you let this happen?"

    The large man looked Heoit straight in the eye while the skinny guy squirmed. "Well, sir, if only you had listened to me, then we would have gone with plan B, instead of trying to take him out in the market."

    Heoit glared at the man, but said nothing.

Okay, so the above is something I wrote up thinking about my Choose your Own Adventure: Book of Mormon book. The problem is, I can't really just sit down and write. Maybe it's this idea that what I write down has to be perfect the first time. And it's not; like, the above sample I'm like, okay, that's not too bad. Has a lot left to be desired. Of course, it was also me just writing off the cuff with no real plan, so that might have something to do with it.

I discussed this with my wife earlier, but I want to do so many things... too many things it seems like. A Book of Mormon book, a Book of Mormon Legacy game, a Book of Mormon video game. I've been looking into writing code and creating your own video game recently. But like, I don't know. Learning curve. Like, some things has a gentle learning curve where you ease yourself into it and others have a steep learning curve where it's a lot at first but once you get the hang of it you can do so much more.

Man, my Spring Break's over. It was all last week for both Henry and me. Which means I have to go back to school tomorrow. And I don't want to because I'm not good at classroom management. Maybe I'll use the break as a hard reset and just crack down the first day. At least that's my plan but let's see if I have the ability to do it. I need to have it if my work is going to be any good-I can't dread coming into work. I can't dread work, or else my entire life will be wasted. You're supposed to love your job or else your life will be miserable. 

We're getting closer to moving. There were two main trains of thought: moving after the birth or before the birth. We're thinking it may be easier to move before the birth. So that gives us... about 33 days?

A few words

 Henry is writing a book and he's on episode 3 and he just finished.MMMM...Do you like M&Ms?

This is Andrew. Henry wrote that first line for you guys because he wanted to write something in my blog post. He also wrote the title of this blog post.

Today was Stake Conference, as was yesterday night. Yesternight? Is that a word? Well, my spell check isn't red underlining it, so it must be. Today and yesternight we had Stake Conference.

I have another week of school before Spring Break, which will be a week long, 13-17. I could work for Edible Arrangements that week, they'd probably let me, but right now my plan is to buy a whole bunch of boxes and pack up a whole bunch of stuff so that I'd feel more prepared for moving.

Baby girl is due end of April. We need to move out end of June, or earlier. 

Henry wants me talk to about his Pokémon cards. (His book he's writing, by the way, is about Pokémon.) Notice that I made the e in Pokémon an é because of that cool trick I learned a few posts ago. Henry says he is trying to collect all the Galar, Sinoh, and Kanto Pokémon cards.

Do you know what an awesome game is? Hollow Knight. Do you want to know what another awesome game is? Maybe Silksong, but I don't know if that will ever come out. Hahahahaha.

Heather played in Stake Conference today and it sounded so good. She also played yesternight and it also sounded so good.

Henry wants me to write that 8:30 is eight o'clock. Whatever that means. He is now just sitting by me giggling his little head off.

The Kickstarter I backed about a year ago should be delivering soon. I already mentioned it in a previous blog post. The latest update from the Kickstarter page says that the assembly process finished March 2nd. So I should be either getting the actual game or more news about it soon.

Henry and Joy love feeling little baby girl kick in mommy's tummy.

The Missing Piece

So our Landlords got back to us and we have to move out my June 30. So we have to look for a new place. We are thinking about renting, crashing the housing market so that houses are affordable, and then buying a house afterwards. (Okay, so maybe we won't be the ones crashing the market.)

Buying a house as opposed to renting one is, in my opinion, what would make me an actual adult, instead of just a grown kid pretending to adult. I have a wife and kids, a salary job, two working cars (now), insurance through work, and have to pay taxes and do bills every April. But I'm still missing that one piece. That one missing piece.

And on that note, I'm going to go to bed so that I can wake up, eat breakfast so that my physically body continues to function for a little bit longer, go to work so that I can prove to society that I'm worth getting the solution to rarity of the coincidence of wants, (i.e. money), drive home, clean the house for baby soon and moving soon, and do it all over again day after day after day while I seek joy and happiness. 

eeeeeee, or èéêëēėę?

The Super Bowl is today. But I'm not watching it. Because it's Sunday. Although I'm not really into sports, so it's easier for me. If I was really into sports, it might be more difficult. Today we're going over to my mother-in-law's for dinner. It starts at 4:00. The game starts at 4:30. Coincidence? I think not. We're bringing chips. 

Oh cool. I just help down the e key to type out eeeeeeeee but instead of doing that a little menu popped up above the e with different options: è, é, ê, ë, ē, ė, and ę.  I tried it with o and instead of getting ooooooo I got ô, ö, ò, ó, œ, ø, ō, and õ. I tried it with t and nothing popped up. Maybe t is a boring letter.

Henry and I played a couple of games go Isle of Skye this week. Oh, by the way, after my last blog post my mom got us Isle of Skye for Valentine's Day. Anyway, one of the games Joy also played and the other was just two-player. I let Henry win the first one so that he'd feel happy by "forgetting" to award myself some points. The second game I won.

Right now I'm watching season 3 of The Chosen. Have you watched The Chosen yet? If not, get on that. It's really good.

Valentine's Day is coming up. I know my wife got me some chocolates. I'm not going to say what I got her in case she reads this.

A long, long time ago (March of last year, 2022) I backed a Kickstarter game. It hasn't come yet, which is typically because it usually takes a year to do so. So why am I telling you? Because its estimated delivery date is February of this year. In other words, it should come some time this month. And this time I pledged for the whole game, not just the print-and-play. It's this game by the way.

Okay, I'm going to take a nap now. And I can, because our church got over two hours ago. I taught Elder's Quorum today. It went really well. I teach every second Sunday of the month. That's my calling.

The Five Games I Played the Other Week

Not yesterday, but the Saturday before that, there was a board game get together that I went to. Here is the list of the games that I played, in order of when I played them that night: Welcome to... the Moon (both sides), Stone Age, Isle of Skye, Khôra, and Taverns of Tiefenthal. 

Welcome to... the Moon is made by the same people that made the Welcome to... game, and has tons of similarities. Albeit I've never played the original, so this is the first one form them I've played. It's a flip and write, kind off like roll and write, but instead of rolling dice you flip over three stacks of cards to get three unique number and symbol combinations. You pick one of the three to write down on your board (using dry erase markers on an erasable sheet) to either launch your rocket on side a, or fly to the moon on side b. Although I guess there are even more cards with duel sides for even more variety. The cool thing about this game is that in theory you can play with as many players as you want, an even do it online via Skype, because it's all simultaneous.

Stone Age is the obit one of these games that I've previously played. Although I've only played on Board Game Arena and not in person, so this is the first time I've played in person. It's a worker placement game, where most of the spots have you gather resources. For each maple you've placed on the spot you roll one die, and then divide the number you get by either 2, for the most common resource, up to 6, the rarest resource. Super simple to understand. You can also place workers to build buildings or get cards with those resources. And, like other games, you can get more workers, but each round you have to feed your workers or risk the consequences.

Okay, confession time. You ready to hear my confession? A long time ago my family asked me for recommendations on games to get for Christmas. One of the games proposed to me was this one, Isle of Skye. I persuaded them against it, because I said it was too much like Carcassone. I thought that at the time, but my confession is that I now regret that. If only I could go back and change my mind on what I said, because this game is great and I do recommend it. Too late now, I guess, but I just needed to get that off my chest. Anyway, in this game you are pricing tiles to sell, buying other players' tiles, making your own personal land, and has multiple different goals that get you points that change every game and throughout the game. Great fun.

Khôra was a really fun civilization building game. I only have two gripes. The first is that one of the action selection tiles that remains face up in front of you the entire game has the bust of a naked female chest on it. I had to use a tile to cover that up while I was playing. Anyway, the other one minor complaint is that it seems like in this game if you don't go for military you can't win. One of the things I love about 7 Wonders, and other civilization building games such as Tapestry, is that you can go any route and still have a shot at winning. In Khôra though, it seems like if you don't do military you cannot win, no matter how awesome you do in culture or economy or anything else. But besides those two minor gripes it really was a fun game that I had a great time with.

Taverns of Tiefenthal is made by the same person that made Quacks of Quedilisomething. I like Quacks much better. This one was fun, but after playing it I would never want to buy it. If someone brought it and asked me to play it I totally would though. There's this weird kind of deck-building element to it, and you can upgrade different parts of your tavern, and the two main currencies are beer and coins. Beer buys better customer cards, and coins buys better equipment cards. The only real player interaction was passing dice around at the beginning of the round, and that's really it. Unlike Quacks where you have your neighbor's exploding cauldrons, rat tails, and black moths. Anyway, everyone else loves this game much more than I do, so maybe I'm wrong, but that's where I stand.

Okay, so wrap up time. All five games were really fun. My least favorite is probably Taverns. My most favorite is probably Isle of Skye. Welcome to... the Moon and Khôra tie for second favorite, with Welcome to... the Moon being the lighter game and Khora being the heavier game. Then comes Stone Age, which after a few plays becomes repetitive. And there you have it.

Little vs Big Projects

Tonight our kids wanted to have a little picnic outside, so they grabbed some blankets and put them on our front porch and I made pancakes and we all sat out on our front sidewalk and ate pancakes. It was a fun little FHE (which we are having on Sundays instead of Mondays because our it's easier to do that day).

Yesterday my kissy wife Heather and I played Sagrada.

She won.

A level I made for a contest was played and here's the YouTube video of the guy playing it:

Now, I know what you're thinking (okay, I don't, but I know what my inner doubter is thinking, which may or may not be the same thing you're thinking): Andrew, why do you waste your time away on small little things of no importance, that will be swept away and forgotten in less than a year's time? Why not work on something longer lasting, more permanent, more important? Something bigger and better?

My answer to that is: I am. Or, I'm trying. Or, I want to and am occasionally working on it in my spare time. But some things that are smaller are easier to finish. 

I have a bunch of game ideas. These games are games that I consider "big" projects. Lots of pieces, a large board, rules that I need to figure out, and I need to playtest it (against myself most of the time because I have no Perazzo family near) to make it fun, and I need to pieces, and plus if I'm feeling really ambitious I might want to get files up on printplaygames.com and send it to a publisher. 

All that takes a long ling time and I only have the slightest chance of seeing any results. For instance, I don't think my awesome game We Three Kings has ever been played. Which you know, is fine a lot of the time because the joy comes in making it. But smaller projects? Like, I already have a level I made played by a YouTuber and now it's online and he enjoyed it and so did the viewers and the link is above.

My levelpack for Baba is You already has 9 downloads (admittedly, three of those are Ryan, so like, 7 downloads?) and so I feel like the "little" things I do have more possibility of making it out into the world. So that's why I do smaller things which my insecurities may say are "not important."

Other smaller things I've accomplished include writing the short story Synesthesia. I have also written some chapters of my longer books like Paths of Zarahemla and The Fallacy of Time, but finishing a short story is easier to do because it's, uh, shorter. Eric, meanwhile has already written his entire first book of his trilogy.

Anyway, so that's why I do little stuff even if it's not "as important" as the big stuff. To, you know, actually finish something instead of just having a bunch of half-done projects.