For my brother's 15th birthday this year, I got him THIS.



I will start breaking him into the soul-crushing, relationship-breaking world of CATAN once finals are over. Much crying will be happening this winterbreak >:]

M

edit #1
For some reason, "birthday"s in my household mean eating an insane amount of food.
tonight we ate...
2 large pizzas from Uppercrust. I ate 4 slices.
Chinese birthday noodles with pork. I was forced to eat a bowl.
Chinese soup. I ate a bowl because it's currently -7F with windchill in Lexington.
Spicy eggplants. I could only eat 3 bites......
Andrew's 10-ppl birthday cake (there are only 7 people here). I ate a huge slice to compensate for unbalanced ratio between people and size of cake.

I always complain in NYC about not eating enough meat because of the price, but when I come home, all I do is eat... specifically meat.

I'm ready to go back to NYC and fast until I come home again.

edit #2
Plan worked. My brother is now MORE addicted to catan than I personally have ever been. We have played every night for the past three days. Today upon returning from our ski/snowboarding vacation, we've dragged out aunt into this madness.
Therefore, our sibling relationships are currently experiencing turbulence. But we're also laughing a lot. So I guess that's good.

Some memorable quotes, for my own entertainment...


Current tally of wins
mal: 2                andrew: 1                glo: 0

To Be Continued...

edit 3*
We purchased the traders and Barbarians expansion set today. A whopping good 42 dollars well spent. This expansion has 5 different games in one. Tonight we tried out the first one-The Fishermen of Catan.
It was EXCELLENT. And Gloria finally won her first game.
I will stop tallying the scores because its too hard to keep track at this point...

Today I was sitting inside gregory's coffee shop finishing up a final paper that was due tonight when suddenly I felt rain pouring onto my head-the roof had started to leak in the very spot that I had set up camp. My one year old laptop nearly drowned.

FML.

"There's nothing wrong with being new or better. Our problem is that we have come to see these two adjectives as synonymous--as if anything new is always better, and if something is better it must be new...an obsession with new and better is as common inside the church as it is outside. The list is endless and always changing. Healing and miracles. Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Godly marriage. Creationism. Worship music. Evangelism. Missions. The return of the Lord. A specific form of liturgy....There's an important place for all these concerns. They shouldn't be neglected or ignored. But neither should we let any issue, topic, or cause displace the gospel from its rightful place at the very center of our lives...New things will always come along. Some will be good; some will be better. But according to God, only one thing will ever be best. He sent His Son into the world to live a perfect life and go to the cross to bear His wrath for sinners like you and me...nothing else are of equal or greater importance."

The Cross Centered Life-C. J. Mahaney