Announcing Monthly Wrap-Ups

This blog has always been a hodge-podge of opinion pieces, reviews, personal updates, and other posts that typically fall in the food and board gaming spaces. It's also been somewhat of a diary at times over the last almost 7 years. I've previously written in posts that I really enjoy sharing what's going on in my life. Writing yesterday's post really reminded me how much I miss spending time creating new content for the blog. I've been flirting with starting a regular posting schedule, but couldn't quite settle on what I thought would be realistic. It's not so much for a lack of ideas or things to write about, it's really more about time and my reluctance to commit to something because I'll eventually find it to feel like work.

With that all being said, this post is to announce and preview my new Monthly Wrap-Ups. During the first week of each new month, I'm going to post a wrap-up of everything that happened the month before. I don't think there will be a strict format, but I do have a bunch of ideas for little segments that I want to make an appearance each month. I have no plans to stop writing long form posts, in fact the wrap-up will be a good place to link to anything I've written that month. I want these to be a compendium of my interests and thoughts from month to month, an easy way to look back at was going on at the time.

As a little preview of what a post might look like, here are a couple of segments that I have in mind: 

Whatcha Snackin?

A blatant rip-off from one of my favorite podcasts, Spilled Milk, which I mentioned on the blog back in 2017. The show is still going strong and has had a variety of segments over the years. As I've been getting caught up on episodes, the hosts have shared what they've been snacking on recently. We tend to do a lot of snacking in our house, which is a major contributor to me missing certain health goals over the years. But that's neither here nor there, let's talk snacks.

Recently I've been enjoying Kettle Brand Jalapeno potato chips. I think kettle cooked chips are the gold standard of potato chips. To quote my post about my favorite chips: "Kettle cooked chips have a far superior texture to that of regular chips. They're crunchier and not at all wispy like those that are traditionally fried." The jalapeno flavor has the right amount of heat, which isn't spicy but does provide a nice burn.

Bored Board Games

This segment will probably morph as the months go on, but the plan is to highlight what games I played during the month in one place. I'll still be posting pictures on my social media profiles as well. I might also use this space to do mini reviews on games I really enjoyed or link to longer reviews that I post if I end up getting back into that. Now that I've built a small gaming group again, I've been playing a lot each month. I've also been participating in Solotober again this year so watch out for that post. 

I didn't want to spoil my amazing month of gaming right now, so I'm just going to give a shoutout to a game I've played many times and think everyone should own. Whether you're a gamer or not, No Thanks! is an absolute gem and a ton of fun. It couldn't be simpler to play and it produces some hilarious and heart breaking results, especially with the right group. On your turn, you either take the available card or put one of your tokens on it (if you have any left) to pass. The goal is to have the lowest score, which is comprised of the values of the cards you have minus the number of tokens you have once all of the cards have been taken. 

The real hook of the gameplay is the ability to reduce your score by drafting cards in sequential order because you only take the lowest value in a chain. For example, if you have taken the 18 and 16 but then are able to grab the 17 before the game ends, you would only take 17 points from those three cards instead of 34 points from having just the former two.

These posts will likely be fairly long, so feel free to pick and choose which parts to read. They'll also be quite fluid for a while as I play around with the structure and topics to cover. I hope you'll find these interesting because I want to keep this format going forward.