The Joy of Gaming: My International Tabletop Day & Tween Lock-In Failure

This was my first year back in gaming. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I had taken a huge break and was focusing obsessively on three RPG systems with my husband and our friend. Having stepped back into the fold, I was so excited to share in Tabletop Day again. From looking at my blog over the last month, it should be rather obvious that I have been so excited for this year. I planned and dedicated a whole month to counting down to it! Even moreso, when I was booking days for my Tabletop Game Club to have their Lock-Ins I chose the eve of Tabletop Day so we could ring in the excitement at midnight! That was all planned way back in January!

As the day drew closer, I was starting to have severe pain in my stomach. I was doubled over in pain at work. I even went home on one of the days. Then I didn't have pain and then I had pain again and it was so inconsistent. So on the Friday of our Lock-In, I was feeling great! My day went well and everything was great and I was so excited and putting up my posters for Tabletop Day and I had all my table toppers and stickers for the kids!

The gaming day started off with our 6th Grade incentive. I was hosting a gaming room. I promoted my gaming room with a showing of some of the offerings from our vault and my own personal collection that were being used for my tabletop game creation unit in Literacy.

When school ended, it was time for our Tabletop Day celebration! As with all our Lock-Ins, we start with dinner and roll into gaming. I took a little longer to get my dinner eaten, because a co-worker stopped in and I was showing off a game I was excited about and he just, in general, got a feel for what we were doing.  I was all excited by my toppers and posters, so I HAD to show those off.

After he stole from our snack table, which clearly states "looking for players", he left and I finally sat down to eat. Once I was done, I joined in on a game of Carcassonne Junior and while I played, I felt like a sudden fever had come over me and I was starting to bend over in pain. When the game finished (one of the girls "let me" win), I left the media center and went to the bathroom. It wasn't helping, but the pain was intense. I went to the more luxurious staff bathroom and I literally spent two hours on the floor wondering all sorts of things about my digestive tract. I decided to maybe set up my bed in the back room in the media center where the girls sleep. I'd lay down for a bit and the pain would go away... all I had to do was push through it.

Half an hour later, it was not better. I was in tears and doubled over in pain and I told my husband to cancel the lock-in. Parents were called and kids were sent home at 9PM. I felt so guilty and so horrible. My husband cleaned up a little, but I told the night custodian we'd be back in the morning to clean up everything.

My husband closed up and took me home where I went straight to bed in pain. I had ruined the night. I had ruined my student's weekend. But by the next morning I was feel fine. So we went to pick up my daughter from my friend's house. We decided to go out to eat and took my daughter to IHOP, because she's been begging. I ordered just an omelet, then we stopped back home and went back out to collect our ceramics that we made at a local shop and I wanted to drop off our tabletop summer camp fliers at the local game shop so they could start to promote it. When we left the ceramics shop, I was starting to have pain in my stomach and it got worse after my daughter accidentally tripped me and I slammed straight into the ground. By the time we made it to the game shop, which was literally only 5 minutes away, I was doubled over in pain crying. I was driving and my husband forced me to pull over and he drove me home.

I still didn't know what to do and I went to lay down. My husband brought me some soda to drink and I finally was able to empty my stomach. Bottom line... I'm feeling miserable, but I have no fever so I can't even put my finger on what was wrong.

So I ruined everyone's Tabletop Day, because I could barely do anything and I had canceled the kids' lock-in. I was determined to do something to make my husband feel better, because he was literally devastated. I had him bring up a folding table and he laid it on the bed. While he ran to the store, I quickly ran downstairs for a couple light games and made up the table. So when he came home and came up to check on me, he would see my surprise.

I did the trick and we were able to play a few games.

The weekend went along the same lines... lots of pain... can't eat. I finally could have some yogurt. I hope I can find out what this is soon and get back to my normal life and enjoy all of the gaming excitement that's been going on around me.

*EDIT*On that Monday I finally went to urgent care and it turned out I had an ulcer. How exciting! So now that I know, let's hope things can get better and the next lock-in will be better.

On a sadder note, I did not get to finish my countdown to Tabletop Day due to this health dilemma, but all this happening really showed me that I was putting myself under way to much pressure with everything I was doing and I'm looking forward to hopefully finding a bit more zen.

TabletopEDU

Throughout the last two years as a teacher, I've been having a hard time finding useful resources for Tabletop Games in the classroom in a "single" place. It's mostly been forums where information is shared in a link and then lots of complaining and emojis. Or it's been on Pinterest, where a lot of it isn't about tabletop or board games, it's just playing games in the broader sense of the term.

As I was wrapping up my Calkins & Tabletop Unit of Study, it hit me (after a giant mug of coffee) that I should make a G+ community for educators who want to share their ideas, links, images, etc. on Tabletop Games and the Classroom.

Thus was born TabletopEDU. I opened up a Twitter account so that I can tweet out information. I'm brainstorming ideas to make this more social and interactive, such as a weekly Twitter discussion based on a theme (yes. . . I drew inspiration from @BoardGameHour).

I just really felt there needed to be something out there that was beyond JUST using specifically educational games or exclusively talking in forums about things. I'm even logging my ideas for starting a TabletopEDU "website" so that I can start to invite guest educators to write and share their ideas and experiences.

What I do know for sure is that I cannot run this alone and I'll have to start doing some networking as this thing slowly lifts off the ground. It's now my baby project and I'm beyond excited about what this could mean.

#TabletopEDU

The Problem with Geeking in the Rain

We arrived in Orlando on Friday and it has been an uphill battle the entire time. From my daughter testing her behavioral limits, to sheer exhaustion setting in from the hectic week and travel, to, well. . . Tropical Storm Andrea! How am I supposed to be at my geekiest in Orlando with my mother and my toddler?

Well, forget Universal or the Blue Man Group. Forget being able to just sit by the pool with my Kindle Fire reading. Forget sitting and watching TV or playing games on the internet. What do you do on a budget with a time bomb daughter? Get a two day pass to Sea World and attempt to go to the Everglades for an airboat ride and some gator threats!

One of my geeky moments was my gushing over the 3D 360 degree Turtle Trek at Sea World. See. . . I have issues watching 3D. I can't even begin to explain why. I don't know if its the glasses or what, but I really struggle seeing things in 3D. Always have. No it's not where I sit. I've tried the tricks. For how much you have to pay, you better believe I tried the tricks. It just wasn't happening. I can't see those silly Magic Eye pictures either. Yet, for whatever reason, I was able to see this movie in 3D. The crab grabbing poor me as I'm trying to crawl to the ocean; The dolphins swimming around and the school of fish swimming up from behind me and over. It was awesome! I could see and I even reached out to touch things that passed by, encouraging my daughter to do the same. So did my daughter see it? When she jumped away from the birds and the sharks. . . I knew she was seeing them. And she loved it. So much so that we went both days. It was amazing! I highly recommend it.

Also, at Sea World, I opted to have a geocaching moment. I pulled out my Geocaching app and followed the clues to the virtual cache that was located at one of the rides in Sea World. I fulfilled the requirements, got a picture, and logged my cache! It was kinda cool and I was glad I still had an opportunity to geocache. I was also able to rope my mom and daughter into some geocaching by our hotel on the Fourth of July. It was really fun and it got us out to enjoy what was shaping up to be a beautiful day!

My final geeking moment that I can actually credit to my need-to-nerd was the pool noodle epic battle. My mom and daughter were on the patio and someone had given us some pool noodles (they were leaving and didn't want to take the noodles back with them). And so my mom and daughter were battling with them on the patio and I broke out into Duel of the Fates singing while they battled! Then my daughter started trying to imitate me. My mom didn't get it, but that's okay.

So no love of Harry Potter Wand shopping, Jurassic Park tour, or Beetlejuice Theater. . . not even a little love for Mickey. Luckily, I still had my moments of geek-happiness and couldn't wait to get home to continue on my journey.

A Summer School Lull

My husband commented to me late last night that it's been a while since I updated on my journey. Sure, I've been suffering some major guilt since falling slightly behind my goal, but my guilt was amplified by my frustrations over preparing for summer school. So for all your rapid fans out there (I'm not that deluded) just dying to know what in the world happened and if I am still on my journey, here is a little update with a promise to deliver.

Social Commitments: I had to attend a family party over the weekend, which is always exhausting in its own way when you have a toddler. It was nice to get out in the sun and see everyone and kind of relax, considering it was the day after school let out.

I've also had to plan a trip to Florida and start to plan our family trip to Myrtle Beach, so I've been doing a lot of research on what to do with an old woman and a toddler in Florida without being destroyed by mutant
mosquitoes. Oh goodness and my daughter's birthday party. There's a lot of planning going on. Oh to be social. . . it takes so much effort! j/k

Film Commitments: I might have mentioned it somewhere before, but I'm not sure. I work with the Milwaukee Film Festival's Children's Film Festival outside of being just a teacher. I started this when I moved back to Wisconsin, after having Isabelle. I knew in my heart that I wanted to still be involved in the film community in some  way, even though I had left my post-doctoral dissertation behind with a loss of hope to move forward as a film professor. So I met with the Children's Film director and she saw potential and passion in me and brought me on board. The first year I was a volunteer and led some Talk Backs. The second year I was part of the screening committee for the films, wrote educational curriculum for one of the films, conducted Q&A's with filmmakers and worked one of the festival locations and the craft table. This year I'm doing something similar, but with a little more experience. So Tuesday was my first screening committee commitment. We spend about four hours watching movies for the festival and discussing the potential of screening them. The reason this was such a distraction from my journey was because I have to drive two hours down to Milwaukee now to be part of this and due to it running from 6-10, I also need to stay at my mother's house. So that was a two-day activity. If you have a kid, you know an overnight trip is never just a wham-bam-thank-you-maam.

Essentially I saw a pretty cool feature film that has potential to be shown and some really interesting short films. Then fought the neverending construction that goes on in Milwaukee just to get home to the suburbs. So yeah, I didn't disappear, I was just watching some movies and discussing their worth.

School Commitments: Those who say a teacher's job ends when school ends is so full of it. I was a little behind on my grades, it being my first year and, well, there's a lot to grade in literacy. So I was up early Sunday morning punching in the last of the Poetry Parlor grades and the term and semester effort grades so that the grades could go live Monday morning. Strangely, I was up way too early for a weekend in the summer, but so was my daughter! So that was a doubly hard task to accomplish.

Then I had to head up to my classroom Monday and try to get some cleaning and organizing done. Wow, I didn't realize how much I have to do, but I'm trying to get back to square one and organize everything I didn't get to organize throughout the year. I'll get there. It'll just take a while.

And finally, I have summer school. I'm stressing over how to go about all of this, which isn't good, but I'm still stressing. I have decided the young writer's class will spend their time writing, editing and creating their own hardcover story book. The first week will be creating some fun smaller writing activities. The final week will be constructing their book.

The sixth grade literacy class, though, is a little tougher for me. I have to cram a whole school year into three weeks. I have an idea in mind, but it keeps fizzling, which means it's not solid. So I'm trying to figure out what day one will be and I want to meet the kids before I commit to something. I enjoy creating lessons that are personalized to the kids in my class, but they're wanting lesson plans by Friday with formative assessment pieces for each day! Sigh. . . see the stress coming through already? Yes, yes you do.

And that brings me up to Thursday. I have to go up to the school today to prep for my summer school and get a lay of everything. I really do need to get these lessons unfolding. I have an idea for day 1 to find where the kids are. I already know that one of the kids is one of the "I don't do anything" kind. So I chose a short story I didn't use at the end of my first year and I'll have the lesson on here soon enough.

So hopefully starting tonight I'll be getting in 2-3 episodes of Star Trek a night through the weekend, while also getting outside to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. Goodness knows my geek-of-a-husband loathes the outdoors and all it has to offer. Somebody's got to take our daughter to the park. We'll see how much I get caught up on. I even have some awesome geek stories to post, but haven't had an opportunity to sit down and write them. Someday!