The Busiest Time of Year

The shopping is mostly done. We still have not decorated. Tristan has school programs on Wednesday and Thursday this week. The older boys have a birthday party sleepover this weekend. Holiday celebration at my parents this weekend and at Jill’s parents next weekend. Game night with my group next Wednesday. I’ll be happy when the 21st arrives and I’m finished with work for the remainder of the year, most of the activities are behind us and we can relax for almost two straight weeks!

Speaking of the game group. This was an experiment I initiated with a couple of friends to have a regular night of gaming with all of our gaming friends. It has been moderately successful. We meet on the 2nd Wednesday of the month and rotate between our 3 homes. We generally have at least 4-6 people show up and have peaked in the low to mid teens one month. A week night was chosen because I felt that a weekend night would be prone to cancellation, especially in the warmer months when families have other activities and commitments. With only one scheduled night a month, I feel like we go too long between sessions. I have irregular sessions on weekends for some longer games like Twilight Imperium, 3rd Edition.

After some discussion with Jeff and Dan, we’ve decided to host the game night twice a month in 2006. We’ll continue to hold a game night on the 2nd Wednesday and the new night will be on the 4th Friday. I also asked another member of our group if he’d like to host and he has accepted. Adding Bob makes 4 hosts so each of us will host a night every other month. Dan, Jeff and I were hosting every 3rd month. The new arrangement changes the number of nights for each of us from 4 nights/year to 6, a reasonable increase to double our scheduled gaming in my opinion. Using a Friday will allow us to pull out games we wouldn’t normally choose for a Wednesday session. We should also pick up a couple of gamers that don’t attend our Wednesday night sessions because they don’t enjoy being out late on work nights.