Morning all. First day of the new semester - oh, joy is me.
I used to be a Settlers of Catan whore. That game is so addictive. And takes freakin’ forever. I would always go for the longest road card. It gets to the point where you abandon your cities and focus on building a road that stretches a distance the equivalent of from Sydney to Toronto.
Ellen, I am convinced you and my mother must be related or something, because that’s exactly something she would do. 
Wow, this OP takes me back. Way back…
Sorry if you’ve heard this before: I had three younger brothers, and Monopoly wasn’t Monopoly unless there was widescale cheating. Absolutely anything was allowed as long as you didn’t get caught. Casually lifting an extra $100 bill from the bank or from your opponent’s pile, knocking over a die to a better number if you didn’t like the roll, advancing your piece a different number of moves than what you rolled, moving houses and hotels to more advantageous locations. You name it, it was allowed. But you had to do it with everyone in the room. Waiting until someone left the room was considered “unethical”. My youngest brother (whom everyone ignored because he was so young) turned out to be the best cheater of all. I have no idea how my mother didn’t start hitting the bottle every time the weather got bad and we had to stay in.
Ha, well you can be my Virtual Daughter, then. If LiLi can do it, so can I!
Pugs - peepers are feeling less sore but still a bit gritty. I have to go back to the horsepickle on Wednesday morning though, at which point I’ll be halfway through the treatment.
I’m bored now. Is it hometime yet?
Oh, you mean like in real life? 
rosie, I have a very long-time friend who’s your Monopoly twin. I’m not really into board games (or card games), but we’ve played Monopoly together on and off all our lives, and she always cackles evilly whenever anyone lands on her spaces.
And holds out her hand for money, grinning smugly.
The Husbands play Risk together. I watch, and make sarcastic comments.
Hi, Miss Purl! Do you have any idea why my sewing machine snaps the top thread every half inch? Ive changed needles, thread, and tension. I’m going to punt it through the window.
Oh, and I have not yet had the baby. I will let y’all know as soon as I start. 
Good morning. We’ve had intermittent snow, just enough to kill bugs and make the hill difficult to drive, which seems like a reasonable tradeoff. I have played no games this week. Between having to put the cat to sleep and getting ready for the term, I’ve been neither happy nor at my leisure. However, I have finished the syllabi and posted them, posted most of the course materials. I still need to scann a few pieces–a fair use segment of Dharma Punx, for example. I’ve written the first set of PowerPoints. One course is a conversion to complete online delivery, which has a heavy up-front construction load for me. Today I get to choose my laptop desktop image for the first week (I switch them every week). I think I’ve settled on a crazed-looking white cat with its mouth wide open, captioned on icanhascheezeburger.com as LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!
Great OP, Rosie. As a kid I used to like board games. As an only child I often ended up playing them by myself. But I still liked them. I even used to invent board games, often based on video games I liked playing at the arcade back in the day. (This was the early 80s when you couldn’t spit without hitting an arcade.) I didn’t have a video game system at that specific point (though I would get one not too long after) so inventing board games was the only way I could play them at home after a fashion.
Of course I played my share of Monopoly and enjoyed it, but I think the board game I enjoyed most (that I didn’t make) was called, IIRC, Full House. (This predates the TV show and has nothing to do with the Olsen Twins.) It was a hotel management game. I don’t remember why I liked it so much, but I did.
I haven’t been around much, mostly because I’ve been working out the details of this project. My partner – who initiated the project in the first place – dropped out due to time constraints, so this project is now entirely mine. Oddly, this is kind of a relief for me. I actually came up with the idea first, but he was the first to (independently) start something. Now that he’s dropped out I can turn this project into my own. I kinda prefer it that way, actually. I’ve always been a DIY kinda guy (as I suppose the DIY board games above indicate) and I’m pretty sure my report cards have all been absent any remarks resembling “plays well with others,” so now it’s the way I like it: My project. Aaaall mine. So I can do it the way I like. Of course I may recruit some help – but that part I don’t mind because I can do the delegating and pick and choose what needs to be done and how. I don’t mind working with others so long as I call the shots.
I made a big pot of chili last night, too. It’s being slow cooked in a crock pot so it’ll come out all nice 'n stuff. It’s been a while since I made some good chili so this’ll be a nice change.
Fow now though it’s lunch time so I’ll submit and come back after to catch up.
Have you checked your bobbin?
Man, I miss playing board games with people. I need to find a circle of people to do that with. I am the queen of Solitaire Monopoly. Sad, no? And, despite my ability to move words and manipulate them mercilessly, I suck at Scrabble. I suck like Lisa Simpson playing Anagrams.
I’ve had a completely relaxing, off-the-grid, two-week vacation and now I’m gearing up for the Death March to the Thesis. I’m also indulging in a bit of schadenfreude* because Complicated Roommate’s vacation is the exact opposite of mine. HA-HA.
I was supposed to have my new car on Friday, but due to bad directions, two names on the title, and the fact that the DMV closes at 4:59:59, all we were able to do is get the title notarized. So now I have to go back up to High Point on Saturday with the new plates and get the car. And I have to sell my old Nissan this week as well. That will be tomorrow’s task. I need to ask Adopted Dad how to best go about doing that.
Hi, Lissla! Good luck with the labor thing – have you resorted to jumping jacks or running up and down stairs yet?
There’s so many reasons your top thread might be snapping. In no particular order:
– The thread itself might be weak. If it was left on a windowsill in the sunlight or had needles stuck into the thread on the spool or it’s old or it’s faulty – those are all things that can weaken thread. Try switching to a different spool that you know is good.
– The bobbin tension might be too tight, and pulling too much on the top thread. When the bobbin is threaded, you should be able to hold it by the tail of the thread, snap your wrist, and have the bobbin fall 4-8 inches comfortably before it stops. If it keeps going, it’s too loose. If it stops too soon, it’s too tight. Both the bobbin and top tension need to be adjusted as you use the machine.
– You might be using too heavy or too fine of a needle for the thread or fabric. What are you using and what are you sewing? Or there might be a burr on the inside of the needle that’s rubbing on the thread. Or it might be the fabric itself – I was sewing with some acetate taffeta once, and that snapped thread like no other.
– The thing nobody wants to hear: There might be something wrong with the timing of your machine, so you’ll need to take it in to be tinkered with by a professional. Sewing machines, like cars, need tune-ups every once and a while.
Before you take it anywhere, though, blow all the dust out of it, oil it, and check the tension on both the bobbin and the top thread. Treat it like a lady.
How is it snapping? Does the thread wad up on the fabric before it does? Does it just break?
Yup. It got rethreaded and the tension adjusted, but it’s been sewing fine- the top thread breaks. Between every half in to two inches. Grr.
Great OP, Rosie.
I’ve never been much of a board game player, myself (or of any kind of group-activity, really – except for playing ball games); but as the eldest of three children, I had little choice in the matter.
I still like backgammon – I can play that for hours – but regular board games? Spare me, please.
Ellen, if it were a slightly less 5-YO song, my 15-YO would be up there, doing the singing herself
My 11YO daughter, OTOH, would react like yours. Different personalities I guess.
My 11YO boy would love to get up and sing (he’s such a ham) but can’t carry a tune in a bucket…
**Spaz **-- great to have you back! ::hug::
Hi, Ms. Purl!
All the sickies and ouchies, this is a new MMP already; get over it!
I was going to go out today (I’m off work), but I may or may not, because it’s been snowing off and on again all morning. YAY! But still…a bit inconvienient. Usually when they say there’s a 50% chance it doesn’t. Apparently not today! And we’re under another winter storm watch for tomorrow. Maybe I should go out today, because if we get another big dump tomorrow, I realllly don’t want to be out driving unless I absolutely have to! I’ll have to get a few new pics while I’m out to make MT jealous.
My internet access at home has been incredibly spotty the last few days, but right now, I’m on. I really do not want to have to pay for internet access. If this keeps up, I might have to consider it, because it drives me absolutely insane when I don’t have it at home. I don’t like checking my email at work where anybody could come by and see what I’m reading; it’s not like I get x-rated email, but it’s just a privacy thing I have. At least the Dope is no problem there!
I haven’t played board games in ages. Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a game of Monopoly ever, though I do enjoy it. I have a computer version on my other computer that is 2000 miles away, but I’d need to see if I brought the software with me here.
Lissla, I once had a friend who once was made by a pregnant friend of hers to drive at high speeds on a bumpy road for awhile to try to get things going. Just an idea.
I really wouldn’t mind taking a crowbar to my machine- it’s crummy, and has a general charming habit of random breakdown, eating fabric, and suddenly refusing the even try. The problem is that I can’t afford a new one right how.
It’s sheeting fabric, I’m zigzagging the edge (extreme basic no-fray sheet hem), and I’ve switched between sharps (no number), and the two middleweight needles I have. The threads are I’ve been using are both Guterman poly.
It would be so nice to have a machine sometime that didn’t hate almost every type of fabric, and didn’t have paranoid delusions about actually being a chainsaw, or maybe a toaster.
I’ve been told that spicy food, bumpy rides, and castor oil are all great ways to pass the time, but don’t actually do anything. And castor oil makes you feel really, really miserable, too. Someone told me that Swiss Chalet sauce was an excellent labour-starter. :rolleyes: We’ll probably have Swiss Chalet for dinner tonight, because I don’t feel like cooking. If I go into labour it’ll be a pure coincidence.
Apparently, the only sort of general rule of thumb is that a lot of women start labour the night before they’re scheduled to be induced. Which would either be Wednesday or the 17th, depending on whether what the midwife’s going to do to me on Thursday counts as induction.
gt I just saw something last week about that train game. I’ll try to remember what I saw/read, and get back to you.
My wife and I play Scrabble[super]TM[/super] a lot, and we both have a word finder game on our PDAs called Book Worm. I played Risk a lot when I was in a Navy school down in Orlando. One of the guys in my group would never play to win. He’d just group all of his armies onto one or two countries, and then send out a bunch into whoever was winning territory to keep the game going.
Feeling a bit of a doofus today. Seems that I forgot to wear a belt, and the new shirt I have (provided by my company) is a little too tight. I should have run home at lunch to change, but I didn’t.
Driving by quickly. Have read nothing, will later.
Need sleep, hate people.
**gt ** - was it TransAmerica or Empire Builder?
Hello Mumpers! I think that for a brand new year I should post more instead of just lurking quietly.
Ah, Monopoly. I don’t play it. Haven’t played it since I was, oh, about fourteen and I realised that although two younger brothers have tought me how to win and lose almost everything with what I like to think is a calm grace, Monopoly is something I incapable of relaxing about. Risk? No problem. I can watch my men fall to cannons with good humour, I can be trounced at Pictionary and find it hilarious, but there’s something about Monopoly that makes me lose my sense of humour entirely. I sulk, and I try so hard not to sulk, and there’s nothing, nothing less attractive than me trying to lose with good grace and failing. So I don’t play it, and I get to keep my friends. It’s a good trade.
I do have a Monopoly story, that I’ll share with you all:
I would have been about nine, and we’d recently been given a Monopoly set, so my whole family are up at the bach playing one evening. Cunningly I had traded my mother the Electric Company for a station.* HaHA! I thought. If someone rolls a twelve, and lands on either or the Utilities, they will have to pay me ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS! *
Did my mother mention to her only daughter that she now had all four stations? No. No she did not.
Did I land one one of her stations with each of my rolls, losing a cool $200 a time? Yes. Yes I did.
Did anyone land on a Utility?* No they bloody didn’t!*
The game ended with me storming off to bed, decrying my mother’s unfair business practices. Face down in the dark, sniffling at the cruelty of the world, I hear the door open. Had my mother come to ask me back to the game? To say sorry for taking all my money?
Like hell.
SHE LAUGHED! SHE DID A DANCE! SHE MADE NOISES LIKE A TRAIN! SHE DANCED OUT OF THE BEDROOM,* STILL LAUGHING!*
And that, friends, is why I don’t play Monopoly.
My machine does that sometimes, too, but I think it’s because it hates me. It’s really just evil in a white plastic shell. OK, no, I’ll be honest. It does it because I don’t oil it often enough or change the needles as much as I should. And I sew over pins too much. It’s a miracle it hasn’t rise up in a nightmare version of “No Batteries Included”.
It’s so weird that it’s acting up on such a basic project. Since you’re zig-zagging, it really makes me think that there’s something wrong with the machine itself and not just the tension. What kind of machine do you have?
Howdy, Noone!