Question to Robin:
 

What do you do with your spare time?

It's obvious, sports are not your cup of tea, nor does it sound as if exercise defines you, so without sports, exercise or Church, what do you do?

I suppose there might be voluminous activities, but everybody I know, trains physically, loves some sort of spectating and is involved in a Church or a synagogue. If those activities were eliminated, we would either travel the world and earn beaucoup bucks.

As you don't love sport, Church or exercise, how you expend energy?

I design things. I putter around the house and the internet. I play games with friends (games like Puerto Rico, and Settlers). I read books. I study for licensing exams and I take licensing exams. I take photographs. I scratch my dogs. I play with my son. I kiss my wife. I go camping and hiking. I ride around on my motorcycle. I worry that I'm living beneath my God-given talents, and dream of how to do more good in the world. Sometimes I get out of the house and do more good in the world. I think about working on a great screenplay. I listen to Great Lectures on CD. I talk about stuff with people I care about. I talk about stuff with people I don't know, because the people I care about get tired of talking. I watch the Sopranos. I watch movies. I watch Six Feet Under from Netflix. I read the Dalai Lama. I play the harmonica to accompany my wife who plays the guitar. We sing. Sometimes I dance for my son, so that he will think that dancing is a normal joyful thing that people do. At night, when I want to go to bed, but still have some restless energy, I drink a beer and watch cartoons.

Doesn't seem as if that's enough to consume somebody's time, but to each his own.

It doesn't sound as if there is a design or purpose to that sort of thing.

I mean with training, you have weekly, monthly and yearly goals. These goals get transferred to monitoring children's training goals.

Church causes one to set goals, and you can monitor children's church goals.

Education once complete needs new goals, with structure and design.

Those who do not make sport or exercise part of life can certainly achieve wonders. I doubt Thomas Jefferson was a sportsman, but perhaps I err.

Thus, I wondered how people fill their time, if they don't have race and exercise or church goals.

That was the cool thing about education. Work this much to get this grade and this degree. Yes I'm conscious of knowledge for knowledge's sake, but that usually doesn't happen without structure.

So perhaps a follow up question.

Without competition goals or church timetables, what motivates you to finish something by such and such a time?

Another question: do you fill unfulfilled making sport no part of your life?

Do you have a job, or are the rumors about welfare true?

I work. No welfare, except for the deal we have on our house, which some people consider to be welfare. I also had some Pell Grants. That was welfare. The state of Utah also paid for the birth of our son. More welfare.

At the moment we aren't really getting any welfare. No food stamps.

Hey someone else here knows the game Puerto Rico?? Excellent, excellent game. I own it, Settlers, and several other German imports in that vein but in the last year have not been able to play much. I even have a small profile/membership on www.boardgamegeek.com under a different name. :)

Well done.

Boardgamegeeks is awesome.

We play quite a few German-style games. We hardly touch settlers any more. The friends that we play with own HUNDREDS of these games, and we play something new every time we go to their house. We own El Grande, Settlers, Citadels, Bang, Lost Cities, and a few others that I can't thing of right now.

Los Angeles is very good for gamers. We have regular games days once every couple of months. I manage to get to about two/year.

Cool :)

I will be buying El Grande when it gets re-released. We too have passed on Settlers in recent years, but it was one of the first German games we learned and I still like it every once in a while. We have the Cities and Knights expansion which also is fun. Citadels is a blast, easy to teach, never heard anybody not like that game. Lost Cities my wife always wins and I always get upset, but we keep playing.

Other faves of ours include Memoir '44 (not German but a VERY good 2-player wargame based on WWII history), Tigris & Euphrates, Modern Art, Lord of the Rings, Amun-Re (noticing a Knizia theme here), Carcassonne plus several of the expansions, Princes of Florence, Hera & Zeus, and a few others.

We used to play a lot with family and friends, got a lot of other people hooked on the same games and it was a blast. Then we moved to Iowa and mostly the games have collected dust. Next move (in a couple months) I vow to start trying to preach the gospel of euro-style boardgaming yet again. :)

You list some good games. The most I ever got into war games was Axis and Allies. I remember mopping up the floor with Mike in that game. I'm sure he remembers differently. But I am unstoppable as Japan.

I love Modern Art. We own Lord of the Rings. I never became a big fan of Carcassonne. We own Hera & Zeus. We have been playing a bit of Amun-Re lately, and I like it. We have also been playing Power Grid, Ticket to Ride, and so many others I can't remember them all.

Nice to see there is a fellow Boardgame Geek on CG. Maybe we can add a few games to the inevitable meet and greet mix that might happen some day in the desert of southern Utah, if I have my way.

Cheers,

R.