I admit to having a strange sense of humor. Part of my own humor has to do with a bit of self-denegration. In other words, I don’t mind making a fool of myself. Christmas night I took a video cam in front of a mirror and shot 41 pictures of myself making faces. My son laughed when he saw the photos played one after the other. It made me think that it would be fun to set them to music. So here is the video, or rather slide show I made. The background music is from Carmena Burana, by the way:

My birthday recently passed me by. My son picked out a video game for me called Galactic Civilization II. When I got the disk, I set it aside and progressed with normal life. A few days later my son asked me to install it. I did.

I enjoy strategy games that include the ability to control economies, military expansion, etcetera. I did not realise that this game was going to absorb my life for two weeks. What a fantastic game! Galactic Civ II is the most accurate portrayal of nation or empire building I have ever run across. Its facets include economy, government, military, foreign policy, technological development and more. Heck, you can even design your own spaceships based on the technologies your planetary research centers have developed. There is a profusion of starbases, ships, and planets. The game is populated with a wide cast of characters infused with artificial intelligence that makes them worthy opponents for even the best strategy gamer.

I was so absorbed in this game that I suspended all other activities, including sleep until I could defeat the game. It took two weeks, but I did it. The effects of my total absorption are still with me. If I close my eyes, I can see images of space ships flying through space. Once I defeated all of the AI enemies (only on a medium level, by the way) I had to force myself to foreswear any more game playing for a while (at least for a week).

Working for myself, and existing on the dividing line between wealth accumulation and depletion, it is important to keep working. Just keeping up with trends on the web and inflation keeps my income about equal with my expenditures. This is not to say that I can’t carve out some time away from the grindstone. It must simply be kept within reasonable bounds. Fortunately, I don’t get sucked into a gaming black hole all that often. Also, in our house we don’t have the distraction of a cable or satellite connection.

So, what is my recommendation to those of you who are into strategy games, but don’t need the distraction? Well, if you don’t want to be totally immersed in a game that will challenge your intelligence and instincts for hours on end, with infinite possibilities, then don’t get Galactic Civilization. But I must say, you will be missing a great gaming experience. 

I know it may sound early working on Valentine’s Day Recipes for Holiday Cook, but to stay ahead of the yearly cycle, I had to be thinking like a Februarian in December. What was really funny was making a heart-shaped cake and bringing it to a church pot luck. This was supposed to be a Christmas celebration, but I thought, “What better place to try out a recipe than a pot luck?” This is the place where you get a completely honest poll.

I am happy to say that the heart-shaped cake recipe, with strawberries right in the cake came off rather well. In fact, by my own estimates, more of the cake was consumed than any other dessert, with just a piece or two left-over to bring home.

Getting myself in a Valentine frame of mind was not easy. In fact, it began a bit laboriously just before the Thanksgiving Holiday. I really did not want to think about flowers, candy, and love notes. To prepare, I wrote a history of Valentine’s Day. Being a trained historian, I feel compelled to write a history of almost everything. I have even written a history article about drywall, believe it or not. Writing history was a good start. But what really go me into it was contemplating Valentine’s Days past. One particular menu I developed is based on a meal my wife prepared on our first Valentine’s Day together. She grilled a steak for me, which was very thoughtful of her. It was one of the three meals she prepared in our first ten years together.

I have to admit to being a bit droll in writing about Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, my mind has a sarcastic twist to it; so there are subtleties… Wait, what is the opposite of a subtlety? How about an obviousty? There are many obviousties that I found entertaining in a self-indulgent way. For example, when creating the recipe for a guy to make for his gal, a shrimp pasta dish, I say the usual, “prepare the spaghetti as per package” and then assume that the guy has never prepared spaghetti before and go into infinite detail revealing the little things about making spaghetti that they don’t tell you on the box. Well, you know what they say, “You can’t please everyone; so you’ve gotta’ please yourself.”

By the time I got through with the Valentine section, it proved far longer than I had anticipated at the beginning. But it was fun to do, and I hope, fun to read.