insomnia
Blah. Here I am, up late at night, unable to sleep, taking aspirin and drinking water in some vain hope that I'll be able to follow through on my fatigue and actually go to sleep.
Tonight was a fun game night, even if my wonderful wife had to leave early to put a frustrated and very tired little boy to bed.
2 games of Ticket to Ride, and that was it.
But what made it so much fun is that it made an addict out of one person (she might be invited to my birthday party, where Vim and Minnie can fully indoctrinate her into the dark world of Settlers obsession), and a couple others at least got curious about other games in the Nerd/Euro category. First one's free, kid. None of them had ever been exposed to games beyond the Scattergories/Monopoly/Careers side of things (although another small group that went and played The Barbie Game looked like they had an awesome time -- as the two-time winner said when he was crowned prom queen again, "the secret is to settle!") Not that there's anything wrong with Scattergories at all, but Monopoly is definitely a dentist's drill of a game.
The first game of TtR was with 3 players, and I lost by a big margin to the newbies. The second game was a huge 5-player free-for-all, with lots of cursing, shouting, and back-and-forth (I shared a tie). 5-player TtR may be complete chaos, but man does it bring out the essence of people.
The bad part, though, is that I got quizzed on how many games I actually do have, where I keep them, the rate at which I accumulate them, the size of various wishlists, and uncomfortable questions like that. Yeah, the numbers are pretty scary and definitely extremely embarrassingly nerdy. I also got asked whether I played D&D. It was surmised that I had large numbers of dice with more than 6 sides.
(Answer key: a few times back in junior high school, not really since I don't normally like dice games, and I fully own my dorkitude, thank you very much.)
However, I've made a pact with myself: the collection will never grow beyond what the Dork Closet can actually hold. This will certainly come as a great relief to my wife. I can certainly trade away or sell some to get more, or I can put in maybe 1 extra shelf in the thing, but the collection is slowing up, and that's a good thing. LM is getting more fun by the day, and he'll need all sorts of cool books read to him, and all sorts of fun activities.
Well, that and his own Dork Closet.