Fighting Monsters: Extra Life 2014

Next weekend, Jim, Ranger and I will fight some real-world monsters in our third annual Extra-Life board game marathon for Riley Hospital for Childen who gave our Rogue a life-saving cranial surgery in 2012.

Rogue is doing great these days, and we want to help other families who are going through heavy medical concerns like injuries, illnesses and developmental needs.

Riley is a special hospital where kids and their parents are cared for together. My eyes tear up when I remember the parent cart that circulates the hospital dispensing toiletries and other small items for caregivers staying with a patient. The smallest things are monumental when you don't want to leave an infant's bedside even for a moment.

If you want to change a life with your donation, Riley Hospital for Children is a great choice. Not only are they healing kids from Indiana and the rest of the world, they also contribute important research to the global medical community.

Please consider donating to Riley Hospital during Extra Life. Even spare change, added to other's spare change, will change lives for the better.

As an added incentive, if my fundraising goal is met by Sunday, October 25th at 6PM, Jim and I will live-tweet the 1982 made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters over Halloween weekend. 

One randomly drawn donor with a Mazes and Monsters note attached to their donation will win our second-hand copy of the movie! I will mail the DVD to the winner or the winner's designee (offer limited to the United States; substitution of Amazon Instant Watch Credit may also be available).

Please help me reach my goal for Riley kids and their families.

How bad is Mazes and Monsters?

That bad. And yes, that's Tom Hanks. We may own the only copy of the movie he hasn't personally purchased and destroyed.

Why is he screaming?
Well, not to spoil anything, I suspect it may be the hats...

Or scenes about painting miniatures...

Share some serious joy- donate to Riley today! Don't forget to note Mazes and Monsters if you want at a chance at the DVD!

Together we can slay real monsters!

***Baby Toolkit is the epistolary adventures of some geek parents and their family.  We're Amazon associates, so if you click on any Amazon links, a small portion of their profits comes to us. We use those funds to keep the digital homefires burning. We have no relationship with whoever produced or distributed this laughably bad film. You can also find us using our big people voices at GreatBigTable.com, a podcast about board games and the communities they inspire. Thanks for reading the fine print. 

Hold the Bacon: Preventing Fridge Disasters

Before we had kids, Jim and I rarely prepared meat at home. I'm slightly squeamish about it and we both benefit from a meatless diet.

Now that we have kids, I cook with meat more often. That means packages stored in our fridge. Sometimes those packages would leak and send me into a HAZMAT response.

Who has time for that?

One dedicated Pyrex dish later, if something drips or dribbles, I can just toss the meat dish in the VERY HOT dishwasher and move on with my day. The corner of my eye twitches a little less these days.

***Baby Toolkit is the quotidian revelations of a couple geek parents somewhere in the cornbelt. We are Amazon affiliates, so if you buy stuff through our links, you're supporting our online endeavors. Thanks for reading. My apologies to any vegetarian readers. Hear our voices at GreatBigTable.com.

Hairband Carabiner 2.0: A Hack and a Hitch

I've been a Parent Hacks fan since early days. Way back in 2009, when Asha posted about storing hairbands on a carabiner, my only daughter was mostly bald, but already a rabid anti-hair accessory activist. The only efficient place for our hairbands was in the donate box.

A few years and a second girl later, I'm now corralling two sizes of ponytail holders.

A local friend reminded me of this hack. Apparently her daughter had hair in 2009. The hack worked well in holding the bands, but not in sorting them.

Without really long hair, my kids need two bands each for ponytails. Though I have unintentionally left the house wearing one neon green sneaker and one white one, my daughters are a bit more particular about things matching.

I didn't like wrestling the bands around on a scavenger hunt for identical pairs.

So, some of the bands got hitched.

Please excuse the photo quality. These are the fastest pictures I could get, not the best.

1. Do I know you? You look so familiar.

2. Hanging Out Together.

3. Twister?

4. What a cute couple!

5. Finding community.

For simplicity's sake, I keep the two sizes on separate carabiners. One ring for each kid makes morning prep simpler at home and traveling.

A second ponytail holder can be hooked into a singleton already on the ring. It's pretty easy to reunite recently rediscovered bands.

Happy hacking, friends!

***Baby Toolkit is the product of a geek marriage in the middle Midwest. We have also produced three children who cannot under any circumstances agree upon the same meal. We have a periodic podcast about board games and the groups they inspire at GreatBigTable.com. Our opinions are our own, are organically grown if you don't count the radiation from space, and are harvested irregularly at odd intervals. We are Amazon affiliates, but aren't sure about the future of that relationship. If you buy stuff through those links, we make a small percentage that we'll squander on domain names or internet connectivity. Thanks!

Little Packs of Fun: Pack O Game's GEM

Almost actual size.

Any trip out to a restaurant with the Joneses quickly becomes an exploration of what we've just happened to bring along for entertainment. As a family, we often engage with each other as much over games as we do anything else. We like to play together and Adrienne is usually the master of ceremonies or, more appropriately, the game master of these excursions. She has a knack for finding simple portable games that can keep our kids, ourselves, and our friends entertained even through a particularly long wait at a restaurant table or at a side table in any waiting room. Over the years, she's put together a collection of everything from kids' games with handy travel games from HABA to portable push-your-luck dice games like Cinq-o to card games like Cabo.

For these games, portability often outranks playability. After all, it is hard to pack a lot of fun or depth into games that don’t have much use or space for elaborate components. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Witness the explosion of “micro games” in recent years and the meteoric rise of the simple game Love Letter ,  a game of sixteen cards about passing a love letter to a princess. Clever design and well thought out game mechanics can make even the most humble of game components sing in the hands of a gifted designer. Chris Handy is one such gifted designer and his soon to be released Pack O Game line of gum package sized mini-games are further evidence that clever design and thoughtful game mechanisms can carry a game beyond its modest packaging.

I first came across a Chris Handy design, when our community game night received a donation of his game, Cinque Terre, for our game library. Cinque Terre is a delightful game of delivering sets of fruits and vegetables from inland farms to the five coastal cities of the Italian Riveria. The game had a very simple and approachable theme that matched the actions players could choose during each of their turns. All this simplicity and loveliness masked a much deeper game that became readily apparent about halfway through our first play session. Not only was the game pleasing to look at and easy to pick up, it was fun… and challenging. Chris is also known for his horse racing game, Longshot. While I have not played it, by all accounts it combines these same elements; simple and pleasing design matched with remarkable depth.

When Chris put out a preview offer on Twitter to try his one of his new ultra-portable games before their Kickstarter, I jumped at the chance. The Pack O Game lines of games is marked by the design constraint of each game having to fit into a package about the size of a pack of gum (Pack O Game… pack of gum). He had a number of demonstration copies to choose from ranging in complexity from one, Casual difficulty,  to three, Challenging difficulty (I know what you are thinking, “a challengingly difficult game in the package the size of a pack of gum? Yeah, right?” Just bear with me).  I chose to try out a copy of GEM.



GEM is a simple auction game for two to four players that is  played across six rounds and lasts about twenty minutes. Each player is a jewel collector trying to corner the market gaining lucrative sets of gems through properly leveraging their assets. The game consists of thirty cards with each having the dimensions of a very flat piece of gum. Twelve of those cards are Coin Cards, while the other eighteen make up the Gem Cards that the players will attempt to acquire during play. Each card has a green marking at one end with a number inside representing its Invested value (how much it is worth when you spend it in the game) and a red marking on the opposite end that represents its Leveraged value (how much money it takes to recover its value and rotate it to its Invested side).

Each player starts with three coins, worth one, two, and three “money” respectively, face up in front of them with the Invested sides up showing that all three cards can be used to bid on and buy gems during each auction phase. The gem cards are spread, face down, in six random piles in the center of the table. During each round a pile of Levereaged gems is revealed. Then each player bids from their non-leveraged assets, at first coins and later any gems they’ve previously taken, for the right to make a selection from the revealed gems. 

Subsequent players can increase the bid (as long as they can pay for it) or pass. After a couple of passes, the highest bidder takes the gem card that they were eying and places it face up displaying the Leveraged side (red) at the top in front of them. The tricky thing is that the bidder doesn’t have to say which card they want. They can choose any one that is left in the pile. Then they rotate the amount of Invested assets in front of them equal to or greater than their bid (you don’t get change) to those card's Leveraged side to show that the player has spent those assets. After all the gems have been acquired in that round, players can spend any left over Invested assets to turn Leveraged gems to their Invested sides. Coins automatically reset each round, but Leveraged gems do not. At the end of the last round, players earn points for every gem on a card that have its Investment side up. They earn two points if they share the majority of any gem type with at least one other player. Finally, they earn three points if they have the sole majority of any type of gem.

I really have enjoyed my time with GEM. We have a demo copy of the game, which doesn’t usually fully reflect on the final production quality of most games. However, even the demo copy is of incredible quality. It is obvious that Chris has put a lot of time and attention into both the design of these games, but also into its promotion and early marketing. He’s paying attention to the small details that make for great Kickstarter campaigns. When I told him that I was impressed with our copy of GEM’s flexible plastic coated cards as we would likely be playing it at restaurants, food courts, and coffee shops, he assured me that the final production copies would be even better. That’s impressive for a game of this size and it helps with the “table appeal” of the game.

I am a huge proponent of “table appeal.” As many long time readers, and our Great Big Table podcaster listeners know, Adrienne and I put a bunch of effort into evangelizing the board game hobby. To that end, we write about gaming with our children and in our community both here and on Great Big Table. We co-host a monthly community board game night to try to encourage members of our community to play games with each other and with their families. I also run a weekly game group that plays in public places where I work and I have been known to set up games in food courts with signs to invite people to come and play those games with me. “Table appeal” is the quality of a game that gets a non-gamer to take a second look and ask “hey, what is that?” And that’s the question that starts a conversation about board gaming that can potentially introduce a newcomer into our hobby.

There are a number of aspects of GEM, and the other Pack O Game titles that lend to that table appeal. First is the size. Generally larger board games or games with a gimmick, like Rampage for instance, pique the general public’s curiosity. They just have to know what it is that they are witnessing. In some cases, like that of toy furniture or functional miniatures, being small can also get us to take notice. Such is the case with these games, People want to know what those little cards on the table are all about. It helps that the cards are beautiful in GEM. The brightly colored gems on a dark background speak to the “ooo... shiny” magpie nature that lives within many of us. HUE, another game from the line, looks like a proper painting from Mondrian when the game comes to an end. Finally it is the motion of play combined with the groans and celebrations of the players that are the linchpins of, at least, GEM’s table appeal. Few people have seen a game where you slide cards around the table and rotate them to confer some action of the players. From a distance, it is intriguing and if one starts to pay attention they will notice people enjoying themselves centered around that very activity.

GEM is a great game. From its portability to its production values to its table appeal to its devilishly clever and challenging game play, it is a great value in a small package. Chris is launching a Kickstarter to fund the production of a commercial version of the Pack O Game line of games. There are a number of backer levels that can get you anywhere from one game for a $6 pledge to all four Pack O Game titles (plus any stretch goal games that get unlocked) for $24. There is also a 48 hour early bird special that will allow you to get these already affordable games for an even better price. You get even more from there, but I will let you explore those options on your own.

Just head over to PackOGame.com to be directed to the Pack O Game Kickstarter. I believe the Kickstarter will launch on Monday, 8/4/2014, and will run for twenty nine days. You can also sign up for Chris’ email list to be kept up to date about news and information related to the Kickstarter over at www.perplext.com. There’s also a video on the Kickstarter page (which I’ll embed here once it the campaign goes live),  where Chris makes his pitch. It’s worth watching.

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Let us know in the comments if you pick up GEM (just a $6 pledge) or any of the other Pack O Game titles. We’re always looking for new games to add to our portable game library. Let us know what games you keep in your car or backpack or pocket that you bring out to entertain yourselves, your kids, and your friends when you are out in public.


***Baby Toolkit is an assortment of words compiled by two geek parents between the requests, interruptions, and digressions that arise in a family of five. Broadcast from the Midwest, our incremental plan for world domination starts here and includes affiliate links to Amazon.com. A small potion of purchases made through those links goes to blog upkeep. We also podcast about board games at GreatBigTable.com. While we received a free copy of GEM (and all the paper jewels therein), we have no financial interest in or agreements with Pack O Games, Perplext, or Chris Handy. Gold star for reading the tiny print! Should I make it even smaller next time?

Recommended Reading: Thinking about community with Dean Koontz's The City

During the early '90s, in a Blockbuster Video, I first met Dean Koontz's storytelling. Jim and I rented a videocassette of The Servants of Twilight. The movie was a 1991 adaption of Dean Koontz's novel Twilight originally published under his pseudonym Leigh Nichols (I know, a bestselling book named Twilight published in 1984?).

The movie was superb, but it didn't launch me into Koontz readership. Honestly, I have yet to read that specific title.

Decades later, faced with an anxiety-filled drive to a children's hospital with my infant (our first trip), I stood in the library audiobook stacks on the phone with my brother.

"So what will keep me transfixed and awake?' I asked.

And my brother introduced me to Odd Thomas, a golden-hearted, philosopher fry cook with the strange burden of seeing the deceased. While the "seeing the dead" part seemed a little Sixth Sense, my brother assured me the books were top notch.

They were so good that I listened to the remaining discs on my laptop because I didn't want to wait for the ride home. Odd's social commentary is incisive and hilarious. That first book was good company during the long hours of baby holding and bedside nights.

My brother and I shared Odd Thomas news (new book! movie! movie not available in the US! new book! movie finally released here!) and interviews with Koontz as we found them.

While it probably should not be a surprise that a horror writer might have mystical and supernatural beliefs, I found Koontz's social perspective (informed by his religious beliefs and experiences) to be refreshingly generous and positive. In his Odd Thomas series, the hero is nothing without the support and friendship of communities and good citizens.

Koontz's newest release, The City: A Novel strikes me more as suspenseful literary fiction than his typical genres of horror and suspense. A young boy, a third-generation musician with prodigious talent, works to understand and survive a childhood in dangerous urban social upheaval of the 1970s.

As his parents' marriage dissolves, his father's aggression and anger toward his mother make Jonah a highly sought after pawn in his father's schemes to hurt his mother.

As in other Koontz stories, acquaintances and strangers rise to become friends and allies in the struggle against a truly malicious minority. Koontz's characters engage the reader immediately and deeply. At one point while I was reading the book on my tablet, Jim asked me "What's happening? Are you upset?" because I looked stricken (and he thought I was reading something in my email that was deeply bad news).

As young Jonah Kirk comes to age and understanding, he hears, as we do in real life, some incredible observations from mentors and friends on how the world works and how each person can improve things. As in the classics, some of these passages offer such clarity that they are easily adopted into a reader's understanding of the world.

If you're looking for a great summer read that makes the days look a little brighter, check out Dean Koontz's The City.

What fiction brightens your summer?

***Baby Toolkit is the commonplace commentary of  some geek parents navigating Zeitgeist (though only one of us has read this book). We received a free advance reader ebook on loan from Bantam, but nothing more. I only review a fraction of the advance copies I read, so you can trust that I strongly reacted to a book if I took the time to write about it). We are Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase through our Amazon links, we'll get a small percentage of purchases made that we put back into the blog or our board game podcast (greatbigtable.com). Most recently we replaced a six year-old desktop computer with a new tower when the motherboard failed. Thanks!

Halcyon Nights: W. C. Handy Blues Festival

Davina and the Vagabonds bringing down the house. photo credit, WC Handy Blues Festival @HandyBluesCrew

Yesterday evening, when Jim and Ranger got home, I woke up our napping girls and pushed everyone out the door.

The rainy, cloudy day was clearing, turning into a perfect night for sitting in a park on a blanket watching the sun set and the moon rise.

After a short drive to Henderson, Kentucky, we arrived at the W. C. Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival at the city's waterfront Audubon Mill Park.

Even in the parking lot, my reluctant crew started dancing to the irresistible magic of Davina and The Vagabonds. The potent energy of live (wailing) music and early summer evenings caught us all immediately and held us long past normal bedtimes.

I'm not able to write anything about Davina and the Vagabonds that successfully captures the energy and brilliance of their performance and music. Please listen to her newest album, especially Flow, which I hope my kids will love as much as I do.

John Nemeth & the Bo-Keys, photo: W.C. Handy Blues Festival

We're really lucky to live near one of the best blues gatherings in the nation. The only thing more astounding than the line-up and the gorgeous setting is the festival's deep community commitment. The Handy festival is totally free and open to all.

Davina and the Vagabonds yielded the stage to John Nemeth and the Bo-Keys with Percy Wiggins who carried the evening's allure into enchantment with new roots music like "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It."

Barges on the river slowed their pace to listen longer and periodically raised their horns to greet the crowds. Fireflies and children danced as sunset turned to twilight to moon glow.

Cool breezes from the river carried the music to the splash park fountains.

It was a gorgeous night. A night to remember, and a night to repeat.

What opportunities will you seize this summer?

 *** Baby Toolkit is the sporadic story of a couple geeky Midwesterners and their kids. Though we benefit every year from the miracle that is the WC Handy Blues & Barbecue Festival, we have no fiscal relationship with them that they don't offer freely to everyone else. We're Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase through our Amazon links, a small portion goes to us and pays our domain fees every year (thanks!).

Life-saver: Liquid Benadryl, stock it for emergencies

Eyes & lips as swelling reduced. 30 min. after dose.

It's the first week of summer vacation here, so no one expects anything very exciting to happen. We're all reveling in the lovely slowness of life without deadlines.

The placid nature of post-school living made it even more surprising when my friend's son came to her this morning complaining that his eye hurt. Minutes later, his lips, tongue, eyes, and hands were swelling beyond easy recognition.

Somehow, between his bed and a breakfast of the same cereal he regularly eats, this kid with no known allergies was exposed to something that triggered a huge immune response.

His mom, a medical professional, grabbed their liquid Benadryl and "practically poured" the recommended dose down the back of his throat. Almost immediately the swelling stopped increasing, so she didn't have to call 911 and he didn't end up with an emergency tracheotomy or worse.

Later in the morning and after consulting with his pediatrician, as the swelling reduced, she took these pictures (which she is allowing me to share here). Her son is a handsome, slim 8 year-old.

Lips, fingertips swollen 30 min. AFTER Benadryl.

Then my friend started calling other parents reminding us to keep liquid Benadryl on hand to abate an allergy emergency. [For those with known allergies, this may not be enough. Please consult medical professionals, which I am not, for advice.]

I don't have any on hand at the moment, but will have some in stock by this evening.

For years, I have carried aspirin in my bag because it can help reduce the damage of a heart attack or stroke (chew it in case of an emergency). Liquid Benadryl may not make my bag (though I plan to talk to my pediatrician about other forms), but I will be sure to have some on the ready at home.

What are your emergency medical supplies?

***Baby Toolkit is the chronicles of some geek parents, their kids, and their communities. We ARE NOT medical professionals, so please consult some real ones. We have no fiscal relationship with Benadryl or its makers. We just want everyone to be healthy and happy. We are Amazon affiliates, though there are no links on this page, so we do make a little bit of profit should someone order through our links (thanks!).  Be well and do good.

Gen Con meets Indy: No Time Machine Necessary at Conner Prairie

photo: Conner Prairie, all rights reserved

Every Gen Con, Jim and I work on a mental list of Indianapolis opportunities we wish more Gen Con attendees were aware of. Now, we're not so naive to assume that anyone wants to take a gaming break during Gen Con, but if you're coming in early, or staying late, you might want to take a few side trips before you leave the Circle City and the Hoosier State.

It's a mystery to me why no game company (especially Mayfair) has ever capitalized on nearby interactive history park Conner Prairie. I don't know why steampunks aren't booking every Gen Con weekend flight of the 1859 Hot-Air Balloon Voyage for the photo opportunities alone.

Unlike the musty assemblages of ramshackle relics with "a butter churn for the kids," Conner Prairie is a through-the-looking-glass historical experience.

This sprawling park works to reincarnate periods of Indiana history from a Lenape Indian Camp to an 1836 Prairietown to the 1823 Conner homestead to1863 Civil War journey. Despite a wealth of great buildings and interactive exercises, Conner Prairie's biggest selling point is, hands-down, the commitment of the interpreters. Unlike most historical site guides, these hard-core reenactors are immersed in the period they are portraying. They deny any reality beyond their character's "present day."
an

One of my friend's fathers, a history buff, spends his entire visit trying to get the interpreters to discuss things outside of their period. He asks about presidents yet to be elected, inventions not yet popularized, and politics not yet transpired. To his conjoined delight and frustration, it is like getting a Buckingham Palace guard to smile, not impossible, but remarkably difficult.

This commitment to the period's atmosphere breathes life and magic into the expedition.

Conner Prairie is also, like actual history, a dangerous place. The candle maker works, in part, over an open fire, as do the visitors who assist. At the trading post, there is a hatchet throwing competition open to visitors. Safe practices are mandated by staff, but the elements and approaches are refreshingly real.

Conner Prairie shares the story of westward expansion and nation-building. Some of the interpreters (like the blacksmith and the soldiers) are quite conversant in arms-making and munitions. The attention to historical accuracy in costuming will also impress. For the Catan crowd, Conner Prairie includes sheep, wood, wheat (grain), brick, and ore.

Conner Prairie abounds with photo opportunities for cosplay, but the true gem is the 1859 Balloon Voyage. This replica airship offers tethered trips into the skies of the Circle City (reservations required). I cannot imagine a better steampunk portrait location.

This is the first in a series of posts about Indianapolis sites relating to Gen Con.

***Baby Toolkit is the opinionated discourse of some Midwestern geek, gamer parents. We have no fiscal relationship with Conner Prairie. We also podcast about board games at Great Big Table.

Gaming for Good at Gen Con 2014!

Jim and I are hosting a panel discussion at Gen Con Indy 2014 on Friday, August 15th!

With other charitable gamers, we'll discuss "Gaming for Good: An Insider's Guide to Charity Gaming."

Turn your gaming hobby into a force for good. Veteran charity gaming event organizers share their secrets for joining, organizing, promoting & hosting successful fundraisers. Panelists will include Dan Patriss, organizer of Gamers for Cures, and Jamey Stegmaier, co-founder of Stonemaier Games, and Jim & Adrienne Jones, organizers of an Extra Life weekend for Riley Children's Hospital

There are only 9 tickets left (out of 50!), so be swift.

If you're going to Gen Con and just want to meet up (let me recommend Sunday lunch at Scotty's Brewhouse for wonderful family meal), send us an email.

As you know, we love "The Best Four Days in Gaming" as gamers and parents. Our kids love Gen Con too!

Thank you for all of your support of our ongoing Extra Life efforts! We're busy planning our Extra Life 2014 weekend for October 24-26 in Evansville, Indiana (save the date and join our team?).

***Baby Toolkit is the collected ramblings of some Gen Xers about their lives as parents, midwesterners, gamers, and geeks. Our opinions are our own (who would want them?), and you can get even more Jones goodness at our board game podcast Great Big Table.