orngesodalampst

Today was Christmas and although it was one of our more successful ones as adults, my favorite part (about which I'll be writing) was playing the two board games I recently bought: Tsuro and Codenames Pictures. I really like both of these games and while Codenames was wildly successful with my friends (so much so that they all put it on their Christmas lists), Tsuro kind of fell flat with them. I've tried to get my family to play board games at family gatherings before (mostly Apples to Apples, which they loved the one time we played it), with no luck; but for the last few holidays we've ended by playing Bang, a game my parents picked up. I was kind of hoping then that my family would be willing to give these a shot, especially since Lea hates Bang because of its steep learning curve. Both of these games, Tsuro in particular, take less than 3 minutes to learn. Can you believe my surprise when Lea, Andy, AND my dad were all open to playing my games this morning? Mom had ...

Char and I went to the indoor skatepark tonight. It's called Four Seasons and has apparently been around for many. many years (since the early 90s), but I didn't know it existed until just this month. I looked up indoor skate parks after one of my roller skate dance classes, and this popped up. It was everything I had expected - it had that awesome 90s factory vibe with graffiti murals in the bathroom and a shady side entrance. The second floor area was supposed to be a beginners section, but even that proved too advanced for us; so we were a big worried at first. Really, we were scared chicken shit to do anything. I practiced a bit up there in the flatter area (Char fell a few times on her longboard. Surprisingly, I was better at skateboarding than I remember) and we eventually moved down to an unoccupied area on the main floor to practice, since there wasn't much flat area to work up upstairs. Char went across the arena a few times, and I went up a small ramp twice. I p...

Kind of, not really. Mostly Kate helped me fix some longstanding issues I've had with a few moves. Kate honestly fixes everything I have problems with. She got me my shoulder mount, my first handspring, chopper, superman (cross your ankles and push your hips down), dove, aerial chopper... and now she helped me get my Ayesha and shoulder mount bounce! I could always do a shoulder mount bounce, but apparently -- according to Tiffany -- I was becoming too vertical when I did it. I never noticed and it never caused any issues, but there you have it. So I asked Kate for help; she saw exactly what I was talking about; and she told me to only pop my hips directly upward instead of upward and towards the pole. Sure enough, that worked! Now I can show Tiffany on Thursday. True grip Ayesha has been my nemesis move for a while now despite being able to handspring into one just fine from cup and twisted. If I were only able to do it from twisted, I would say that strength was the issue...