So as Fall Break comes to a close I thought I’d at least share a bit about the adventures I had this past week. For those who don’t know about Fall Break in the midwest (or at least in Indiana) there has been a short break in October for as long as I have been teaching. It started off as a time for teachers to attend workshops and conferences, but slowly (because teachers have families- and therefore need to find daycare for their kiddos) it ended up being a four day weekend, until recently. Over the past few years many people woke up to the understanding that they no longer work on a farm the idea of “balancing” the school calendar had come into vogue. Ideally the calendar would be something like 9 weeks of teaching, then a break. I did my undergraduate thesis and graduate thesis on the advantages of a “year round” calendar and it finally might become reality. Sadly opponents claim this would destroy the time honored tradition of complaining that teachers get “summers off” it could also ruin the even more sacred high school athletics schedule. So many school districts have come up with a compromise, quietly extend some of the already community approved breaks and shorten Summer “vacation” a bit. This is why many people look at me like I have three heads when I talk about going back to school in early August. So this year my school district extended Fall Break to one week (many school districts have extended it to two weeks). We also have a week at Thanksgiving since attendance during that week is awful as so many people pull their kids out to travel over the river and through the woods.
What did I do this week? If you noticed an actual comic strip was published on both Tuesday and Thursday, a tradition I hope to continue. I also tried to relax… no really. I went to a game night on Friday, attended the Kokomo-Con on Saturday, and spent a lot of the week reminding myself why I hate doing artwork for other people, even friends.
Geek-wise I played Boss Monster, Ticket to Ride and Pandemic and had a great time with each. For those who have never played any of these a quick overview of each:
Boss Monster – A chance to play the evil villain in one of those old scrolling video adventure games. You construct a dungeon, room by room, and at the end of each turn you lure heroes to their doom (you hope). It was a Kickstarter project and the gameplay is pretty easy to understand. I have a few questions on the actual sequence of some things, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out if I play it more. – I lost, this time around
Ticket to Ride – Where have you been living? a cave?!? Sorry, Ticket to Ride is a train game in which you attempt to complete routes across the country (there are many versions of this game dealing with many continents the base game is mostly the U.S> with a few side trip into Canada.) It has been around for a few years and is a lot of fun to play, especially with more than two people, when it can get challenging, and a little cut throat. I won! trouncing my opponents with a route from Miami to Los Angeles and Houston to Winnipeg worth lots of points!
Pandemic – I don’t feel so good… Pandemic is one of those games in which it is the players vs. the game. A “cooperative” game. Which is a really cool idea. In this case you are trying to stop the human race from dying off from four different diseases. Each player has a role and therefore special abilities. The problem with many cooperative games is all it takes is one simple mistake, or a bad draw and it’s over…and yes, it was over, we lost. For kids Forbidden Island has a similar game mechanic and is a little easier to grasp. in that case an island is sinking and you are trying to rescue four artifacts and escape before it plunges into the depths forever.
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I’ve been to many a comic-con- I started with Creation Conventions, then WizardWorlds, C2E2, New York Comic Con, and San Diego… and now I can say I’ve been to Kokomo-Con. Kokomo-Con does not compare with any of the other conventions I have been to, but that’s not a bad thing. It has a homey feel about that only a small convention can have. It was small, and it reminded me almost of pop culture flea market, but again not in a bad way. It was a lot of fun and I decided to go for a few reasons. First my friend Jim McClain who does Solution Squad a great comic to engage older kids in Math was going to be there and I had run out of books (silly kids & teachers “borrowing” them) and he had a new poster dealing with the four steps of problem solving which I wanted to get for the schools I work in. Then another friend of mine (from Geocaching and Lego) had posted he was going to attend, so we hung out for a bit looking at all the different things at the show. From rare collectible toys, to a fiberglass replica of the Bat-mobile. Booths stocked with comics & toys and folk art made from comics and toys. I did discover some cool things so it wasn’t at all a waste of my time. Then again, as a teacher, a lot of what I found was stuff that would be great for school. One thing I did pick up was a copy of Boss Monster, I know I’ll have a chance to play it again.
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I started off the week with a long list of stuff, and after the first day decided to dump it all and do some drawing. So I spent most of the week doodling and inking (hence two comic strips getting posted). This reminded me how much I love to draw and just play with images. It reminded me why I can never do artwork for someone. You see MINI Takes The States is coming up next summer and I was playing around with the idea of creating “badges” for some of my friends who would be going. Making them official “Cecil MINIons” I did some artwork for MINI on the Mack and thought it would be fun to extend it. Unfortunately I forgot how difficult it can be to draw for someone, and not just for myself. I asked my friends to give their “MINIon Number” and I would create a badge for that. Now some of these folks I have known for years, and other are fairly new so what they got may be determined by how much time I had spent with them, or the geekiness of their MINIon number. So the person who asked for #42 was pretty easy, a monkey with a towel holding a yellow fish, others, not so much. Stupid me started with the ones I wanted to do, the fun ones. Then like any proud parent I posted them for the group to see… then the floodgates opened with requests- which drained the fun right out of the project. Then my friends started asking for tweaks to the drawing I had done, “Could you add this?” “Could you change that?” “I really want this instead.” Then they started to make requests for their friends… I have stopped working on this project for the time being. I will return to it, but not right now. I do appreciate the person who specifically asked how much I was charging for these badges, and seemed a little shocked when I said “nothing, I’m doing this for fun- it keeps me out of a straight jacket.” I know that many of my friends would help me in a heartbeat if I needed it, so it’s not like the favor will not be returned, but for now, I’m taking a break.
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Besides that I worked a little on a Lego Project- taking the “Just like Beggar’s Canyon Back Home” to the next level, and seeing how I can add some kind of motion to it. I’m about 1400 bricks into my first draft so we shall see how it turns out. Fortunately I have until March to get it done.
All in all not a bad break, kept away from schoolwork unless it connected with something I was already doing, now I just have to figure out how I’m going to get up tomorrow in time to make it to school…