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One of our favorite family games (sorry Mom!) is King of Tokyo. Last night we were playing, and Zaque managed to get a few power cards early in the game that led to a cascading flood of cash (well, technically energy) so he could buy more cards. By the end of the game, he was sitting on so many powers he had to review them every turn to figure out how much damage he was doing…

I’d been eliminated at this point. Laralee almost beat him with a strong roll of five claws, but Zaque managed to squeak out of certain death and eventually win. The funny part: he won with 20 stars, which is (in his words) “the coward’s way”. He was actually forced to win that way, rather than by slaughtering everyone else.

I don’t remember seeing anyone sit on that many power cards at once. I guess last night, he truly was the King.

True to what we said in our riveting work conversation the other day, both Noah and I ordered the Cat Riding a Rainbow-Barfing Space Shark shirts. They arrived yesterday, and we both wore them to the office today.

I will say this: it’s a surprisingly comfortable and apparently well-made shirt. My expectations were pretty low, so I was pleased that it turned out well. And now I have a shirt that’s breathtaking to behold, and sure to start conversations.

A few days ago, Laralee and I disagreed about something (I don’t actually remember what it was, but certainly it was of enormous importance). We bet on it, and the loser had to make homemade hot fudge.

I won.

Today, as I’m working on taxes (whee!) I figured it was time to cash in.

Out of the blue, Noah suggested at work (via our Slack channel) that we should have “uniforms” at Zing. He directed us to a company with an Amazon page, where they sold the most breathtaking sweatshirts imaginable.

I bought one.

So did he and Ben… and maybe, just maybe, Nick decided to go with the “90’s disposable cup” pattern. We’ll see if, one of these days, the Zing office is a place that will make visitors’ eyes bleed.

Here’s the entire hilarious conversation.

Today I was running some errands, and I had a Kohl’s coupon. I dropped into the store to see if they had some ties that caught my eye. It’s been a while since I bought a tie. My collection is pretty impressive, but I’m always on the prowl for more.

Anyway, I ended up buying four of them:

When I showed them to Laralee, she raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You have plenty of ties. I think you have a problem.”

Problem? I wear a tie six days a week, always with a white shirt and black or grey slacks. I need something to liven up that wardrobe!

A little over seven years ago, I shaved off my long-time goatee. This is pretty much how I felt:

To this day, most people can’t guess how old I am. To my surprise (and, I must admit, my great pleasure) they generally pick something in the mid-30’s. There’s something to be said for a babyface.

Today in seminary I was teaching about faith, and how sometimes we’re asked to believe in something we can’t see or even understand. For example, take quantum tunnelling: we hear that it’s possible for an electron to literally teleport from one side of a wall to another, without covering the distance between. That’s so far outside what we expect in our world that it’s hard to wrap our brains around. But it’s absolutely true, backed up by experiments and a whole bucketload of math.

So, I thought it would be fun to show the class the “bible” of quantum mechanics, my old college textbook!

I wrote out an equation describing tunnelling and potential wells and stuff, but the class screamed in horror. Math at 6am doesn’t go over well.

Zaque, talking about his friend Lainey, who he beat in an epic game of Exploding Kittens:

A couple of days ago, a meteor streaked across the sky in Michigan and slammed into the ground (technically becoming a meteorite at that point). This is an awesome photo supposedly showing it:

It reminds me of that classic quote from Aliens: “Nuke it from orbit– it’s the only way to be sure”. Yikes.

I’m in Washington, D.C. tonight for a business trip, and after finishing a day of meetings and an awesome Italian dinner, I decided that hanging out alone in my hotel room wouldn’t be all that exciting. So I grabbed Steven (my fellow Zinger) and we headed over to the National Mall.

We walked along the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument, which looked really cool all lit up in the cold winter night.

Nearby was the World War II Memorial:

We continued on to the Lincoln Memorial to see Uncle Abe.

We had planned to stop by the Jefferson Memorial as well, and maybe even walk past some of the other federal buildings (Smithsonian, National Archives) but it was so frigid that neither of us could feel our fingers any more. And I was wearing gloves! So we packed it up and headed back to the warmth of our hotel rooms.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll drop in on a few other landmarks. It was cool to see these after many years, and be reminded of the inspiring history of our country.