Daniel J Isom

The year is almost over, which means I've always got a lot of going on due to the holidays. I thought this month's post might not be as long, but I think it's actually longer than the first one. I'm going to try to keep them from getting out of control, but I added a new segment that will likely stick around and have more ideas for others. Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy! Blah Blog Log November was a fairly busy month on the blog. Here are the links to each post, if you haven't already read them: Solotober 2023  - I covered my participation in the solo gaming challenge known as Solotober. October Wrap-Up  - The inaugural monthly wrap-up post that is formatted similarly to this one. The House On The Hill - Reading, PA - A great getaway spot that Christine and I stayed in for a couple nights. Bored  Board Games November was a tough month to meet in person because of the holiday, but I still found a way to get a lot of additional plays in tha

  Christine and I decided to do a mini-getaway recently to get a break from our normal adult/parent responsibilities. As nice as our trip to the Virgin Islands was a couple of summers ago, leaving three kids for a week isn't the easiest thing to do for a variety of reasons. However, we learned from that trip that we definitely need to take more vacations as a couple to decompress. We were itching to spend a few nights away and wanted to find something that wasn't too far from where we live in Delaware. Christine suggested the Poconos, so we started looking in northeastern Pennsylvania for an Airbnb that would provide us with a quiet space. We've used Airbnb a handful of time to find other places, like the  tiny house  and the Fairwinds Cottage we stayed in for our 7 and 10 year anniversaries, respectively. I eventually found a fairly new listing that has only been on the site for about a year in Reading, PA. Reading isn't as far north as the Poconos, but it's still

This is the first monthly wrap-up post in what will hopefully be a great series of posts that I keep going for years to come. October was an incredibly busy month, so there is quite a bit to cover. I'm sure there will be months where I'll have less, but that'll be a good opportunity to try out a new segment or share something different. If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions regarding what I'm covering, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post. I'd really like to start interacting more with my readers here. If you came here from social media, you can always interact there as well. With that, here's what was going on in October: Blah Blog Log I thought the name of this segment was funny when said out loud. My assumption is that you just said it out loud as well and found it as comical as I did. If you didn't then you probably weren't an Arrested Development fan. Anywho...here are links to the posts on the blog for October if you haven

I did almost no solo gaming after the  Deep Dive December  challenge in 2022, so I made a last minute decision to participate when Solotober was coming up this year. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle the challenge going into it from a planning perspective. Last year I played 10 games 3 times each, which worked very well because the plays on the second and third days went much smoother once I was more familiar with the rules and strategies. However, I ended up doing something completely different this year and was able to follow the same format as my  September Solo Gaming Challenge  from 2022, where I played a different game each day.  I've been sharing pictures of all of the games I've played on my social media profiles (like Twitter ), but here are links to the BGG page for each: October 1 - NMBR 9   October 2 -  Point City October 3 -  The Game October 4 -  Herbaceous   October 5 -  Friday   October 6 -  Verdant October 7 -  Crown of Emara Octo

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

Today marks 30 days in my new position as the Primary Care Office Director for the Delaware Division of Public Health. It's been a whirlwind of activity over the past 30 days and I've been learning a lot because of that. It feels very similar to my previous position in that way, with the main difference being that I'm happier than I have been in a long time. As I alluded to in my previous post , I greatly appreciate the knowledge and experience I was able to gain but the work I'm doing now is more in my wheelhouse. That's not to say it hasn't come with its challenges, ones that have taken me outside of my comfort zone. However, at least these new challenges are good for my own personal growth.  I've attended two career fairs in the last month where we had a table advertising the various student loan repayment and scholarship programs my section helps facilitate. Having to talk to 8th and 12th grade students, as well as other members of the public, certainly

If it feels like I just wrote a post about changing jobs, this isn't a Groundhog Day situation because I did in October  of 2022. I'm changing jobs for the second time in less than a year, and while that kind of frowned upon in the professional world, it's an incredible opportunity for me. I've spent the past 10 months with the  Emergency Medical Services and Preparedness Section  as a Management Analyst III doing fiscal work and special projects in Smyrna. My tenure with that office will end just two days shy of 11 months. Staying there at least a year would have been optimal, well not leaving at all would have been the best case scenario, but I couldn't pass up applying for my new position. There were a lot of factors that went into the decision to even apply and even more that had to be considered before accepting if it got offered to me. My time in my current section has been an absolute whirlwind and as I like to put it "a crash course in fiscal and grant