Reply To: [unofficial weekender] Hiding in the bushes

[blinky465 17208xp 0]

I think buying a house is really anti-climatic. Like getting a new phone. After about five minutes with either, you end up thinking… ok, now what? You’re just like the old one really. Then you start to miss the old one, because the new one is configured differently and nothing quite works in a way you’re familiar with. Then you get used to it and wonder what all the fuss was about.

We bought our current house without much knowledge of the area, people etc. It’s a great house. I converted the garage into a workshop (which my wife has taken over with her pottery) and next year I’ll be building Bungalow 2.0 at the bottom of the garden for my hobby stuff. But it’s in an area that most people familiar to south Birmingham recognise as “a shithole”.
There’s only so much you can learn about something before buying it, so we just went with the nicest/best/biggest house we could afford! (I’m telling myself we’re slowly gentrifying the area… we’re just the the very first, and ten years ahead of everyone else).

There’s too much to think about with big decisions.
I could either stay at my current job, with the limited security it offers, or make a risky move and go contracting – but in six months time, not know where the next pay packet is coming from (though even at my current job, there’s no guarantee I’ll still be employed in six months time!)
If I go contracting, it gives me freedom to spend a month or so at a time visiting other places at the start/end of each contract (I’d love to rent a flat in Barcelona for a month or so, for example). But if I go down that route, there’s no point buying a canal boat (and wouldn’t be able to afford to keep one anyway). But if I stick with the current job, and can’t afford/have the time to visit new places semi-regularly, I’d love to be able to spend the odd weekend just pottering about on the waterways.

Or I could just sack both ideas off and stuff a few quid under the mattress each month (the least satisfying option, but at least I don’t have to commit to making a “wrong” decision). One choice that’s definitely off the table is “do neither and bank the money”. When unemployment inevitably comes, wrapped in an AI-cloaked “efficiency saving” I’d much rather have an empty bank account and head full of nice memories.
At this stage, it feels like the best way to make Really Important Decisions is to flip a coin and commit to whatever comes up!

@sundancer – as @limburger says, One Hour Skirmish Wargames is a system more than a ruleset for specific setting/genre. You can use it for anything. A few “house rules” on when to shuffle the deck can really make a game come alive!
Some games might not work as well as others – I can imagine it being pretty useful for Star Wars themed games, for example. But also pretty disappointing, if you want to play more RPG-type roles and keep “special characters” alive for longer (it’d be pretty disappointing to have Luke Skywalker go out on turn one because of a bad card draw, for example). Use it for skirmish firefights (where everyone on the table is cannon fodder) and it’s great fun.