She had us all meet at Bellevue State Park in Delaware and had set up a circle with 16 starting points around a Cornucopia of supplies in the center. When she ... [ more ]]]> For my birthday this year, Selena put together a most fun event modeled after the book series The Hunger Games.

She had us all meet at Bellevue State Park in Delaware and had set up a circle with 16 starting points around a Cornucopia of supplies in the center. When she said “Go” everyone either ran in to grab supplies or ran away because they were trying to stay alive, which meant keeping on their flag football flags on.

From the start, like in the Hunger Games books, a few died quickly, many scattered and some came away with the supplies. But you were never quite sure why or when the supplies would matter, that would come later as the Gamemakers (Selena and crew) changed the game. As the game progressed, we received text messages from the Gamemakers telling us if they were entertained new rules.

One memorable rule change, at some point when the deaths were not stacking up quickly enough, was all participants had to gather in the center of the Cornucopia ring, link arms with a fellow player, and then the Gamemakers unleashed the kids to pull away as many flags as they could in a minute.

It was intense and exhausting, since the way to win was to get everyone else’s flags and that meant a lot of running and chasing, or being chased. I found myself being chased a lot, and one time, when Selena changed the rules to make my specific flags worth triple points. I’m pretty sure all the players in the game were running after me at top speed at once.

In the end there was a winner, our friend Jason, and a tie for second between our friend Joe and my brother Jeff.

Thanks to everyone who came out to play today in the cold and the mud, and special thanks to Selena and Beth for putting this fun event together.

Here are photos from the event:

Gathering supplies from the Cornucopia

You have to watch your back when organizing your supplies

Attack of the Kids

Tired from the chase but having a blast

The winners of Hunger Games

The participants in the Hunger Games

Everyone dies in Hunger Games

Contrastingly, we have really close friends that ... [ more ]]]> We have some friends that we see nearly every month for a book club or game night. If we had a free night without Kaylee, I imagine we’d have no qualms with calling them up to see if they are available to get together.

Contrastingly, we have really close friends that are losing touch with. As each day passes they become further away and it reaches a point where it becomes awkward to contact them out of the blue when we have a free night to randomly get together. These friendships are going the route of requiring pre-planned get-togethers.

And if I want to reach way back to friends from high school, for the most part I haven’t kept in touch with at all. So a random free night is right out, even a pre-planned event seems unlikely. I’m assume we’ll be reconnecting on the every five year schedule of reunions.

Except St. Marks doesn’t do 15 year reunions, so there was to be a decade long gap between the 10 year and 20 year events. And a few enthusiastic members of my class weren’t happy about the wait and actually reached out to the entire class of 1994 to come together at a bar to an off-cycle unsponsored 16 year high school reunion.

That was this past weekend, and I had a great time reconnecting with my former classmates. But moreover, I came away inspired not to over-think how much time has passed, and just reach out to those friends I’ve been losing touch with and see if they want to get together.

I love the award-winning German board games that take forever to set up, but are still challenging, complex and fun to play (I’m looking at you Space Alert, Agricola and even to some degree Settles of Catan). So I was ready to be snooty and dismissive when ... [ more ]]]>

GiftTrap the game

I love the award-winning German board games that take forever to set up, but are still challenging, complex and fun to play (I’m looking at you Space Alert, Agricola and even to some degree Settles of Catan). So I was ready to be snooty and dismissive when I was introduced to a game that was “like Apples to Apples”, but to my surprise, I’m a big fan of Gifttrap.

Gifttrap is a game of giving and receiving gifts. From a series of gift options, you have to determine what would be the best gift to give each other player as well as decide what you yourself would love or hate to receive.  The scoring is based on the amount of matches on both sides – giving and recieving. You have to be stellar at both to win the game.

Unique elements of the game are that it can be played with up to eight people, which is perfect dinner party size.  It is simple to set up and easy to learn. But I think one of the most interesting elements is that you get to be yourself, not a medieval farmer or settler or astronaut – you are you.  To win the game you need to know yourself and what you like and hope that other people do too.

I recommend Gifttrap (available on Amazon) for just about anyone to own, but put the one caveat that you should probably only play it with people you know well, should know well, or want to know better.

“Hi everyone, I’m Greg, and if you don’t know me it may be because you started working here in January and I’ve ... [ more ]]]> On Friday, January 29th I was standing beside a big projection screen in front of the entire company of The Motley Fool. I took a deep breath and began:

“Hi everyone, I’m Greg, and if you don’t know me it may be because you started working here in January and I’ve been out most of the month on my Fool’s Errand.”

“I think the Fool’s Errand is a fantastic initiative. I had the most remarkable and rewarding time. But wait, this is The Motley Fool, we don’t evaluate success based just on word of mouth. No, we look at the numbers. So I submit to you, Fool’s Errand – The Report.”

“All right, let’s dive right in.”

“I spent the first half of the trip moving into my new home. You can see in the upper left a chart of which level of my home I spent time unpacking. It turned out most of the work needed was in the attic and basement. Notice here too the number of boxes left to unpack: one. I’m very proud of that.”

“Enough about moving in, lets go on to the road trip. I drove down to Florida with my wife and my puppy, 2969 miles in total. I am presuming that’s expendable, I’ll be submitting an reimbursement report later today.”

“You can see here a breakdown of where I slept each night of the Fool’s Errand, about half in my home, and then a little less with relatives and less still in hotels and B&Bs including SoBe You in South Beach which I highly recommend and La Quinta in Savannah which… well, not so much.”

“While in Florida we travelled down to the Florida Keys and then back to Orlando to spend some time with family. We did hit all four Disney parks in one day. You can see in the lower right here a breakdown of time spent in each park, pretty balanced Disney experience. Also, I want to call attention to this score right here, 39 or -14. Yes, I played a sick game of mini golf  and held the low score of the day at Fantasia Gardens.”

“The weather was surprisingly cold, you see here 19 degrees in Orlando. The locals found that novelty fun and interesting. Me… not so much, I knew cold, I left cold back in DC, I wanted some warmth, which did come towards the end of the trip, 78 degrees on the last days in Orlando.”

“Let’s talk about what I ate while I was away. I totally recommend Puerto Sagua in South Beach for excellent Cuban food, and hey, did you know that there is still a Bennigans in operation in Orlando?! I was so excited to get to have a Monte Cristo sandwich again.”

“You can see her a breakdown of what I drank. We all know it’s important that we have a nice variety of beverages, and I think I achieved that here.”

“Now, exercise… let’s not talk about exercise, wasn’t much to speak of.”

“Ah, entertainment, yes. I highly recommend the Finding Nemo Stage Show in Animal Kingdom, it is Broadway caliber, by far the best thing I watched while I was away. And the worst… that would be my Eagles losing to the Cowboys twice while I was away. Ugh, Cowboys.”

“Oh, there’s my dog. I am very happy about this number, zero accidents in the house or car, she finally became housebroken during this trip. I will also point out this number here, six attacks by poodles. I don’t know what the deal with ShihTzus and Poodles but there is some bad blood there.”

“Finally, if I may tell a quick story, two years ago my wife and I got married on a very warm day in the Florida Keys, and a staff member at the resort, trying to be helpful, put our cake, well actually cake topper, in the freezer to keep when it should have been out thawing. When it came time to cut the cake it was frozen solid, there was no penetrating it. So, my wife and I never got to eat our wedding cake.”

“Knowing I had this opportunity  of the Fool’s Errand, I convinced my wife to join me on the trip to Florida, and we contacted that same bakery and ordered that same cake, and we went to that same spot on the resort where we married. It was two years late, but we finally got to enjoy our wedding cake. And it was damn good too.”

“That alone made this whole Fool’s Errand worthwhile, so thank you The Motley Fool for providing me this opportunity, and thank you all for letting me share my experiences with you today.”

And with that I returned to my seat, smiling, knowing that I had made the most of my Fool’s Errand and the most of presenting it back to the people at The Motley Fool.

A little late on the post, but here’s to another successful race at the Rockville Twilight 8K, so named for the time of day it is run, not because we were chased by sparkly vampires. Although, I definitely still had the monster complex going on.

But let’s face it, here’s the ... [ more ]]]>

A little late on the post, but here’s to another successful race at the Rockville Twilight 8K, so named for the time of day it is run, not because we were chased by sparkly vampires. Although, I definitely still had the monster complex going on.

But let’s face it, here’s the real reason this race is awesome:

And the drinks were free with registration.

For more images, find us on flickr! And race/drink with us next year!