Daniel J Isom

After the absolute slog that was the month of January, I felt like February kind of flew by. Sure the month is shorter than most, but the ending came so quickly despite not being that busy. We did have a small snow storm that dropped enough to give me a day off. The kids and I got out and played a couple of times since it was perfect packing snow for snowballs. We decided to visit the National Aquarium again in Baltimore before our yearly membership runs out. Other than that it was a lot of our usual schedule and I was thankful for some simple weekend days. Blah Blog Log There were a couple of posts early in the month and there may be more coming now that I'm inactive on Meta owned apps. January 2025 Wrap-Up  - TikTok ban, a psychological triller miniseries, and a board game I've wanted for many years. 100 Games 100 Plays  - A new long term gaming goal. Bored  Board Games I set a new personal record of number of plays in a given month with 220. While I was still doom...

  The holidays came and went and while there were some good times, December wasn't exactly the best month of the year. In an effort to not drag down the New Year energy, I'm going to focus on the good stuff in this last wrap up post for 2024. Blah Blog Log I snuck in a couple of year end gaming posts on the last day of the month to actually hit my resolution goal after months of not getting there. November 2024 Wrap-Up - New single month gaming record, my favorite breakfast, and a new snack. Top 10 New to Me Games of 2024 - These were my favorite new to me games in 2024. Deep Dive December: Under Falling Skies - A summary of a solo board game challenge Bored  Board Games Sickness ravaged my household so plays saw an overall dip. I ended up having to cancel all of the in person meetups of our local gaming group. I'm hoping we can pick right up in the new year. For this month's highlight, I'm going to share the game that has my second most logged games of all time:...

The year is over and this is a snap shot of the busiest month of the year across the board. Blah Blog Log December was a very busy gaming month and the posts reflected that. Here's what you may have missed. November 2023 Wrap-Up  - The second wrap-up post of the series. Top 10 New to Me Games of 2023  - These were my favorite new to me games in 2023. Deep Dive December 2023: Scythe - A summary of a solo board game challenge Bored  Board Games Despite only having three in person meetups, I did more gaming in December than any other month thanks to  Board Game Arena . These are a couple of games I'd like to highlight: Sea Salt & Paper  - I played this after writing my  Top 10 New to Me Games of 2023  post and this would have slotted in close to the top 5 had I played it before. I've played about a dozen games on BGA of this really smart hand management and set collection game. The hook of the game is how the scoring happens and how players can deci...

The beach, a quiet nook of a bookstore, snuggled up in bed, fishing on the water; the list of peoples' happy places is infinite. It doesn't necessarily have to be a specific place or activity, it could even be a memory or an imaginary space one makes up. You can even have multiple happy places, anything that helps you recharge or reconnect with yourself. Finding and spending time in your happy place lowers stress levels and boosts our sense of well-being. Sometimes it can do the complete opposite, if things don't go as expected, but in general it's something you should search out if you don't already know what works for you. I've always known that the kitchen is where I'm at my happiest. I'm in there everyday preparing food at least once a day, but that doesn't mean I'm in my happy place daily. Sometimes it's really stressful because I'm normally making two, three, or even five different plates of food and timing them all can be difficult...

  I was very ambitious with my goals for 2021 . There were some great successes, some decent accomplishments, and only one real failure. It's clear that with just how awful this year end up being, that this amount of stuff was just too much. My attention had to be in too many places, which is why I'm only setting a couple of goals for next year. Here's how things ended up:   Make 12 Pies I did a great job with this goal and successfully made at least one pie a month, ending with a total of 13. Here are the remaining 6 pies that I made. To the see the first 7, please check out my first update . From left to right: Cocoa Crispy Rice Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse Pie, Apple Pie with Cheddar Crust, Pumpkin Pie , Mississippi Mud Pie, Tomato Pie, and Fresh Blueberry Pie . Read 12 Books I was confident during my last update that I'd get back on track and grind my way to get this goal done. Well that didn't go according to plan, but I am happy that I at least got halfway throug...

  The final recipe from the cookbook that I made for the year were the Molasses Cookies. I ended up making five different cookie types for Christmas this year and these were a perfect addition. They contain the warm flavors you'll find in gingerbread cookies and they come out just as soft and chewy as a good gingerbread should. The big difference is that they come together incredibly quickly. From start to finish, you could be enjoying one within 30 minutes. I was a little concerned with how much they spread because they ended up being quite a bit larger than the other cookies I had made. If I were make to them again, I would use a smaller scoop to get around 1.5x-2x the yield of 24 that the recipe says you should get. This will be one of the recipes that I make again in the future, maybe with some added orange zest or something to give them just a little bit more.

  Having pie recipes in the cookbook allows me to meet two resolutions every time I make one. This pie is the 9th of the year, which draws me incredibly close to my goal of 12 for the year. It is probably one of the easiest pies I've ever made. Normally you bake filling in the crust, but the naturally high levels of pectin in blueberries combined with cornstarch allow it to thicken without needing time in the oven. The crust gets baked until completely cooked and then you allow it to cool before pouring in the filling. After a couple hours you can cut picturesque slices that hold together incredibly well.  The recipe for the pie crust has a crap ton of steps and I just wasn't feeling doing all of them. In the notes it said you can use whatever crust recipe you want, so I decided to use the listed ingredients and just make it the way I normally make crusts. The only substitution I made was using vodka instead of cider vinegar. Both of them will curb gluten development and make ...

  We're officially at the halfway point of the year and I figure it's time to do an update of the ambitious number of goals for this year. If you read the original post , you might remember that I am trying to complete 6 goals in two different categories. In the first category, each goal averages doing that thing once a month. The second category are more projects that I want to get done. Each of the goals are individual goals that don't require anyone else to be a part of them, so there are to be no excuses if I fail. That being said, I got REALLY busy at work shortly after setting these goals. It killed some of my interest to do anything, but I'm still doing a decent job across the board. 1) Make 12 Pies I'm ahead of the game when it comes to making pies. I've made at least one pie each of the first six months in 2021. All of them have been pretty good, but some haven't come out how I'd want them to. The nice thing is that I've been able to try out...

Rather than lumping my recap of the previous year's accomplishments and failures with my goals for the new year, like I've normally done, I'm trying something new. You can see how 2020 went for me and the things I wanted to accomplish by clicking here .  With that out of the way, this post can be focused on my goals for 2021. I'm going with "goals" this time around to set some hard numbers that I can work towards. I did this last year with "accomplishments", but that phrasing always sounded a bit off to me. I'm going to be very ambitious this year and set 6 goals in 2 categories. In the first category, each goal averages doing that thing once a month. The second category are more projects that I want to get done. These are all focused on me and take away any possibility of blaming others as to why they don't get done. No excuses. Find the time. Do the things.   Make 12 Pies Let's start off with the tastiest of the goals. Last year I wante...

      December followed November with 2 blog posts, no games, and lots of baking. The year as a whole went really well for blogging and baking. I was successful of doing at least two of each of those activities each month, but we didn't make it on the board game challenge. It was a bit of a risk including that one, but it's given me some perspective going forward regarding my board gaming goals. Overall, I'm happy with what I was able to accomplish in 2020. For 2021, I decided to be very aggressive and set 6 goals. You can read all about them here . For now, here is what I accomplished in the last month of 2020: 1)  Write at least 2 blog posts each month I stated that  Christmas is Canceled . Wrote a recap of the unplayed games I was able to get to the table in 2020. 2)  Complete the 10 x 2 Board Game Challenge As I stated in the intro, we didn't get anything played in December. It was part giving up and part canceling gaming with friends because of COVID....