The Waiting Game Sucks. Let's Play Hungry Hungry Hippos!

Wil Wheaton - blogger extraordinaire, former Wesley Crusher and as always, in the running for the coveted title of King of All Nerds - has once again written about something near and dear to my heart. Wheaton's a gamer, and this week he's writing about his favorite "analog" (i.e. non-video) games (This is on SuicideGirls and may or may not be work-safe, so click with caution). In that spirit, here are a few of mine:

Munchkin: I started Emily playing Munchkin well before I ever managed to get her to play D&D with us, so you don't have to be a huge RPG nerd to enjoy it. It's hours of goofy fun, whether it's classic Munchkin, Star Munchkin, Munchkin Fu, Super Munchkin, you name it. To some people, bickering about the rules seems to be the entire point - though certain friends of ours would probably bicker about the rules of Old Maid for hours on end. Anyway, backstabbing, thievery and general shenanigans are the order of the day for this one - it's not for the thin-skinned.

Fluxx: The best thing about Fluxx is that it's entirely portable, and a nice change when you're tired of standard-deck card games. Between a Fluxx deck and a standard deck of cards, you've got hours and hours of gameplay in the space of a few cubic inches, so it's a great thing for backpacking, plane rides, or other such things where size and weight might be a concern. The built-in variability ensures that each game will be different, which creates replayability. Sometimes a hand will take two minutes, sometimes half an hour.

Axis & Allies: This is a great one if you've got all night - like Risk, only moreso. Yeah, it's both tough to win and extremely unsettling when you're playing Germany. But if you've got the time, this one's a blast.

Monopoly: Yeah, I like Monopoly. The sad thing is, every other person I know hates it with the fiery passion of a million hells, so I can never get anyone to play with me. Still, it's a fun mix of luck and strategy, and if you don't play with all the lameass house rules that everyone assumes are actually part of the game (e.g. the huge prizes associated with Free Parking), it's not necessarily an all-nighter.

Carcassonne: Easy to teach and learn, tons of fun. I'm amused by the way the box advertises "Includes free river expansion pack!" as a selling point. The river tiles are included in every box, always has been - why doesn't the box just say, "Includes all the pieces!"?

MindMaze: I would so dearly love to find a complete set of this game. My brother and I found this buried in the back of the game cabinet one summer when we were about 7 and 9 or so. Basically, it's a two-sided plastic board that stands vertically between the two players. Each player uses plastic dividers to create a maze that the other player can't see, and then both use magnets to try to navigate a steel marble through the maze. First one to finish the maze wins. We played it all the time, and it wasn't long before several crucial pieces were lost. I would love to play this again to see if it's as much fun as I remember.

28 Things I Love About Emily

1. She doesn't think she's funny, but she makes me laugh a lot more than she gives herself credit for.

2. She does nice things for people she likes not because it's socially expected, but because it really means a lot to her to be able to do so.

3. She makes all the appropriate yummy noises when she eays my cooking - which is good, because one of the main reasons I cook is because I want to impress her.

4. She delights in small things that most people don't care about - snow falling in ploofs, the first tiny flowers blooming in Spring.

5. She's a perfectionist about pie, and hates when she has to use canned pumpkin in a pie rather than making it from scratch.

6. She's a nerd, too, and really enjoys watching "Heroes" or "Battlestar Galactica" with me, or the same 14 episodes of "Firefly" for the tenth time.

7. She likes playing nerdy games like Munchkin, Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne with me and our nerdy friends. She's even getting into roleplaying games, a little bit.

8. She's full of fun ideas like, "Since we're passing by, let's stop in at the erotic bakery and see the penis cakes." Unfortunately, the place was closed. Next time, maybe...

9. She's as perfect a traveling buddy as I could possibly hope for. We've hiked six miles on the Great Wall of China together, stood on a corner in Winslow, Arizona together, visited Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug and Carhenge together, and we're looking forward to more adventures great and small, grand and absurd.

10. She likes hiking and camping and doesn't think that sleeping in a tent is necessarily a bad thing. She agrees enthusiastically that we should register at REI rather than Crate & Barrel for wedding gifts.

11. She has a sense of humor nearly as juvenile as mine, and agrees with me that farts are hilarious.

12. She carries on entire conversations with me in strange nonsense words we've invented.

13. She, unlike most adults including myself, sings and dances without a hint of self-consciousness.

14. She wants to wear a green dress at our wedding (but not a real green dress, that's cruel).

15. She is perfectly comfortable leaving the house nearly every day without wearing so much as a trace of makeup.

16. She refuses to conform to nearly any feminine stereotype you can name...but still has a hard time passing by any shoe store without at least stopping in to browse a little bit.

17. She makes the best goddamn french toast on planet Earth.

18. She'll save children, but not the British children.

19. She falls asleep inside five minutes when I read to her in bed.

20. She moved 1000 miles away from home and family mostly just because she wanted to try it and see what it was like.

21. She tells me my paintings are good, even when they're not.

22. She wears her hair in braids.

23. She knows all kinds of things about subjects I know almost nothing about.

24. She always wants to have a sip, or at least a sniff, when I drink beer or bourbon and always makes the same "eew gross" face while handing the glass or bottle back to me.

25. She makes me feel totally at ease with myself and never asks me to be anything I'm not.

26. She's dead sexy. Her arms and shoulders, so often overlooked in the female sex-appeal department, are simply stunning.

27. She's beautiful, even though she seems not to believe me when I tell her so.

28. She loves me, and what more could I possibly ask?


Happy birthday, Emily Rose. I love you madly.