Daniel J Isom

  The school year is over and I've been working from home since the end of May. Being so focused on work stuff and just not feeling like writing only allowed for one blog post last month. We have a very busy July between vacations and a week long work trip for me, so that trend may continue. Gaming goals have been chugging along and one of my favorite shows has returned.  Blah Blog Log May 2024 Wrap-Up  - Gaming, a fantastic documentary, and a crunchy snack. Bored  Board Games It was a very heavy BGA month because I was only able to game with  my regular group  once. July will likely be similar, but I want to try and at least play more with people I know on BGA over the next few months. I'm still trying to figure out how I want that to work. For June, I logged 60 plays across 16 games, 7 of those being new for the year. That brought me to 61.8% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 72% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). This month's highlighte

The school year is wrapping up so things were busy both at home and at work. If there is one thing you take from this month's post, please check out the documentary that I wrote about last month and is featured in the I'm Watching segment. It's really important. Blah Blog Log April 2024 Wrap-Up  - Gaming, hockey playoffs, and a duo of dill pickle snacks If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Health Crisis  - A documentary about the crisis in rural healthcare in Appalachia. 2024 Delaware Rural Health Conference  - One of the best conferences I've attended for work and proud to be partially responsible for. Bored  Board Games I was all over BGA this month, playing a lot of lighter games but having a ton of fun doing it. Part of me knows that summer will be tough for in person gaming my regular group . There was also some in person gaming with some really beautifully produced games that hit the table. I logged 76 plays across 24 games, 14 of those being new for the year. That bro

Yesterday I attended the 2024 Delaware Rural Health Conference: The Face of Rural Healthcare Access, Quality & Innovation, being hosted by the Sussex County Health Coalition. Our section, the Office of Healthcare Provider Resources , is tasked with holding an annual rural health conference as one of our State Office of Rural Heath Grant requirements. For the first time, between my previous tenure in my section and in my current role we used a new vendor (SCHC), and the result was amazing. For years it seemed like the same fairly dry conference with a lot of the same faces; attendance was okay, but never great. This year there was almost triple the amount of people and a lot of first timers, many of which had never heard of our conference in years’ past. While some of the content was similar to that of previous years, it makes sense since a lot of the subject matter around rural health hasn’t changed. What was refreshing was having a national keynote speaker, a panel of federal part

A couple of weeks ago, I found out about a documentary called  If Dreams Were Lightning: Rural Healthcare Crisis  while listening to  Death, Sex & Money , one of my favorite podcasts and one that I still need write a post about. The documentary is by the award-winning director Ramin Bahrani done in collaboration with PBS  and focuses in Appalachia, where American communities are left with limited or no access to healthcare. Since rural health is a key subject in the work that I do, I was very interested in watching it after listening to the interview from podcast episode. Two nurse practitioners, Teresa and Paula, from The Health Wagon were interviewed on the podcast and are featured in the documentary. A lot of it centers around how they travel throughout the parts of rural central Appalachia providing care to those who have been left behind and have little to no other options for quality healthcare. In the very tight 26 minutes, you hear from different folks from various backgro

Between my birthday (which is never really a great time) and being sick for nearly a week, April had some real downs. However, I have a little more content than last month. Blah Blog Log March 2024 Wrap-Up - Gaming, a trip to Bingham's, and continuing to watch the dead walk. Turning 39  - A reflection as I enter the final year of my 30s Bored  Board Games April saw a slow down in overall plays and number of unique games when compared to the first three months of the year. I logged 26 plays across 16 games, 11 of those being new for the year. That brought me to 39% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 58% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). I'd like to highlight one game that I really enjoyed and so did others in my game group: Scout  - I've always loved games that feature "cards with numbers". The theme in these games is normally fairly thin and only really for aesthetics. These types of games can be equated to those played with a t

As I enter my final year of my 30s, it feels like a good time to reflect a bit. I wrote a similar, yet incredibly long winded, post entitled  Turning 32  back when I turned...32. I don't think this will be nearly as wordy, but it's a stream of consciousness type post so we'll see. Unlike 32, I've started to feel my age. So if you were to ask me the question "Do you feel older?" today, the answer would certainly be yes. It's not a bad thing, it's not that I feel like my body is breaking down or that I see the world in some significantly different ways. My life has just transitioned so much since that last post, especially in the past 2 years or so.  Going back a few years, I'm so thankful for my weight loss journey and being able to mostly keep the weight off since. Had I not done it in the first place then I think mornings would be harder, but I still feel pretty good when I get up. I've been in maintenance mode since the end of COVID and have

  March was an odd month, especially with Easter being at the end of it. Not as many segments in the post, but it was still a pretty productive month overall with some good stuff to share. Blah Blog Log February 2024 Wrap Up  - Great television, a podcast live show, and "The Cracken". Bored  Board Games March saw an uptick in number of plays and the same number of unique games of the year as played in February. I logged 64 plays across 32 games, 19 of those being new for the year. That brought me to 34.83% of the way to part one of my goal (600 plays) and 50.67% of the way to part two of my goal (150 unique games). There are four or five games that I wanted to highlight from this batch, but two really stuck out and both happen to be new games (one isn't even published yet): Let's Go! to Japan  - I don't own this game, but my friend Eric from our game group got this recently and I liked it so much after the first play that I requested a second play the following me