I found it ironic that, in the current real estate market, it still took us less time to sell out or house than to close on our new one. You’d think that banks would be falling over themselves to sell their all-but-foreclosed houses — at the asking price, no less — but this was not the case.

Like after the last move, we’re clanging around the area, trying to familiarize ourselves with the new neighborhood. Thing One is starting in a new school. And I had to figure out my commuting arrangements. But unlike six months ago, we actually have room to unpack. No more living out of boxes! Hallelujah!

After living in a state of about-to-move/moving for almost a year, it’s harder than you’d expect to just settle in.

“Relax,” I tell myself. “You’re home.”

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Like a passive-aggressive computer A.I., I’m still alive. Unlike said A.I., I’ve been filling the past couple weeks by researching and purchasing a new computer to replace the PC that was dying on me and preparing for NaNoWrMo, so there hasn’t been a lot of time and energy left for blogging.

Even now, I’m wrapping this up so I can finish off the outline for my NaNoWrMo novel, which I’m starting on Saturday (November 1, of course).

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My daughters have taken to playing games with me in the evenings this week. On Tuesday, we played Landlock. Last night, we played it again, this time using some of the rules. Tonight, they requested Candyland.

“Remember when I used to play with Candyland with the zombie dogs?” asked Thing One, who is six. I assured her I did.

“We should use a zombie dog,” she continued. “It can go down the path and try to eat the other players.”

House rules? With zombies? I was proud. With just a few questions from me, she worked out her own system for integrating a zombie dog into Candyland.  And so it gives me great pleasure to present Thing One’s Zombie Dog Variant:

  • One player controls the dog.
  • The other players each receive three bullet tokens.
  • During the dog player’s turn, she moves the dog to the next purple space.
  • If that space is occupied by another player’s pawn (aka “gingerbread man”), that player can fight the dog off by spending a bullet. If that player has no bullets left, his pawn is removd from the game and he is elminated from the game.
  • If the dog player eliminates all the other players, she is the winner.

(After playing with these rules, I would suggesting modifying them so the dog doesn’t have to land exactly on the pawn, but can attack while “moving over” it, which will increase the quantity of zombie dog attacks.)

Yup. Pretty proud.

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We’ve been in Denver for about a week and a half, and the constant blur of motion that’s surrounded us for the past two months is starting slow. Details are starting to come into focus. For the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.

While I’m breathing, I feel I should give a shout out to all of you who helped reduce the move from near-impossible to a merely Herculean effort: Our neighbor Dwight,  without who I could have never got the new screen door installed; my brother- and sister-in-law, who helped with a mind-blowing quantity of last-minute packing, truck-loading, an mechanical fixes; Grandma and Grandpa who took the girls to the farm for two weeks while we packed and moved, then brought them out to our new digs 900 miles away; and a special thanks to my wife’s uncle who, accompanied by his wife, drove the 24-foot U-Haul (towing one of our cars) while we drove in the other car. The two-day drive went as well as we could have wished for, but still… It’s a long haul, and it would have been murder to do it by ourselves.

Thank you!

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The house echoes now.

Practically everything is in boxes. Most of the furniture is gone. And our footsteps and voices bounce back to us from naked walls.

The computer will be the last thing unplugged and packed, first thing tomorrow morning. And when it is, I’ll be going black for a while.

See you on the other side!

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Here’s my schedule for this week and next:

Sunday: Drive 13 hours or so cross-country to Denver. Well, almost to Denver. About 2:00 AM the wife and I give up and find a hotel.

Monday: Go the rest of the way to Denver, look at apartments. Discover, to our groaning chagrin, that the large, reasonably-priced apartment we had in mind was rented over the weekend. In fact, most of the places we’d planned on visiting don’t have openings until the middle of July or later. Finally find a place on the bus line: two bathrooms inside, a pool outside; the girls will be pleased.

Tuesday: Visit SOE, have some lunch with the guys there, then wander up to Boulder to poke around. It’s a beautiful area, with houses for sale well outside our price range. (The first one we look at is going for two million dollars; the second is only half that, but we decide to stop looking.)

Wednesday: Drive back.

Thursday: Finish packing. Panic as necessary.

Friday (today): Finish packing. Panic as necessary. Oh yeah, try to wrap up that contract gig.

Saturday: Finish packing. Panic as necessary.

Sunday: Finish packing. Panic as necessary.

Monday: Load the truck.

Tuesday: Drive to Denver (or close enough).

Wednesday: Unload the truck.

Thursday: Realize we forgot something vital in Minnesota and make a bunch of panicked phone calls.

Friday: The girls arrive, and our family is whole once more.

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You know you’re a game design geek when you have three heavy boxes labeled “Game Prototyping Materials.”

Who else would move game boards, glass beads, cardboard chits, and hundreds of cards from a dozen dead CCGs cross-country?

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Can a person go on hiatus? Or is that strictly for an on-going program (like a TV show)?

I’d look it up, but don’t have the time. The point is, I’m going to be pretty inaccessible for the next few weeks. I started to say that I was going on vacation, but since this “vacation” entails packing everything I own, cleaning everything I don’t, and driving thousands of miles, the term doesn’t quite seem accurate.

While on hiatus, I will try to read my e-mails, but can’t promise that I’ll reply to them until the hiatus is over. Heck, I can’t promise to reply even then, since once I hit Colorado I expect to be swamped with unpacking, getting set up, and finding my vocational bearings. We’ll see. Please be patient.

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I was winded. My back was starting to ache. And I was wondering how much longer I could keep running up and down the block, pushing my daughter on her new bike and keeping her from falling over.

“You have to pedal,” I reminded her. I suspected my groaning frame was providing most of the thrust, and her feet were just sitting on the pedals, going round for the ride.

“I am pedaling.”

“Good, good.” I didn’t have the breath for much more encouragement. And she was pedaling. The bike was moving faster now; I had to run faster too.

I thought back to when I was my daughter’s age, sitting on my first bike, and how my father had run behind me, one hand on my back and the other on the bicycle seat. Was he winded, I wondered. Did he pause at the end of block, huffing and wheezing, before turning the bike around? If so, I didn’t remember. What I did remember were the important moments: crashing into a tree, the terror when I realized he was no longer holding the bike, the exultation when I realized he wasn’t holding the bike and I was riding it on my own.

A glance at my watch gave me a shot of guilty relief: Supper time. Thank God.

“It’s time to go in,” I said. “We’ll practice some more tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I need a break,” said my daughter. “I’m tired from all that pedaling.”

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This was the first time I’ve attended the GAMA Trade Show in five years, the first time that I’ve gone on my own dime, and the first time attending that I haven’t stuck around for the whole thing. Since it was on my own dime, it was most cost-effective to just show up for the two days the exhibit hall was open, flying in the night before and flying out the night after. Quick and dirty, you could call it “drive-by networking,” and you’d be right.

http://flickr.com/photos/hauntedgamecafe/2441218756/

While other reports on the GTS have declared it “sort of a success, I guess,” my experience puts it squarely in the “success” category – at least for me. I brought a half-dozen games to pitch, ran them all past a number of different publishers, and there was interest all around. I have solid leads on some, and possibilities for others, so it’s all good.

I also had the pleasure of not only catching up with the friends I only see at these shows, but met up with some I haven’t seen for years, as well as a handful of new folks who I hope to add to that list of friends.

Not bad for a day and a half.

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