Cover Reveal: Prey

There’s nothing quite like the laughter and fun a good family or party game creates. And we discovered two games this summer that have brought hours of pleasure.

The first is Just One. It’s for 3 to 7 players and takes about 20 minutes to finish.

Now, I was skeptical of this game at first because it’s a cooperative party game.

I mean, come on. Cooperation?

No teams?

No competition?

What were we going to do—hold hands and sing Kumbaya?

I was fully expecting to be bored out of my mind. Boy, was I wrong. There was suspense, laughter, and loads of fun.

There are 13 rounds in each game. In each round, one player blindly selects the number of a word on one of the game cards. The other players each write a one word clue to help that player guess the word. However, if two or more players write down the same word, they have to remove that clue.

So you’re trying to come up with one-word clues the others won’t that still help the guessing player. Some clues lead the guessing player off onto funny tangents. Others are just funny. And then there’s the suspense of whether someone else wrote your word and whether the player will be able to guess it from the clues that are left.

Your goal is to guess all 13 words selected. And there’s a little score card that ranks what it means if you get 13, 12, 11, etc.

As an aside, it’s crazy to me that the score card provided motivation. But it did. It was a delightful little brain hack.

One Word is a quick, fun game. We’ve played it with a few as 3 and as many 8 players and had a ball each time. We are so happy to have it in the family game closet.

The next is Fish Bowl. It’s for 4+ players. What this game does is take favorites like Taboo, One Word, and charades and mixes them together in a competitive game between two teams.

Here’s how you play it. Each person writes up 5 to 7 different words or phrases on separate slips of paper, folds the papers, and puts them in a bowl. Then you do 3 rounds.

Round 1 is like Taboo, where you can describe, but can’t say or act out the word or phrase on the paper. You select a team to go first. One person on the team selects the papers from the bowl and then tries to describe the word or phrase. The team has 30-45 seconds (you decide) to guess as many of the words as possible. When the time is up, it’s the other team’s turn. Back and forth you go, selecting a new team member each turn to give the clues, until there are no more slips of paper in the bowl. Then you count the number of slips each team got and move to round 2.

In round two, you put all of the slips of paper back into the bowl. The team that went second in the first round starts this one. This time the person giving clues gets to share one word. That’s it. And the team has to guess it. Again, the team has 30-45 seconds to guess as many as they can.  Then it goes to the next team. And you switch back and forth just like you did in round 1, and when the slips of paper are gone, each team counts up their score.

In round 3, you put all of the slips of paper back into the bowl. The time the person giving the clues has to act them out. No words allowed. You run this round just like you did the first two with  30-45  second turns, switching back and forth between the teams until all the papers are gone. At that point, the teams  total their scores for this round and then for all 3 rounds together to see which team won.

If you don’t want to use paper, you can play a version online.

Either way, it’s another fast, fun game. In fact, we played it last night. And laughed and laughed when one daughter was trying to get the other to guess “sling” and nailed her teammate in the head trying to act out a rock hitting Goliath.   Movies are great. But sometimes what you need is some delightful game fun. And I’m betting you’ll love these.

I love the sunny winters we get up at Bear Lake. I hate the snow that my car brings into the garage. Because the snow melts, and the water runs to the bottom corners of the garage and pools there, creating a huge mess until I get out there with my cement squeegee.

Who wants to continually be moving crap in and out of the garage so you can squeegee it? And in the winter when it’s freezing?

Not me.  

For years I’ve wanted to do something about it, but what can you do after the concrete of your garage is poured?

Well, this year, after the first big storm, I got sick and tired of traipsing through the water and mud and cleaning all that crap up. So I put my massive Google-fu skills to work. And, lo and behold, I discovered a product called TruContain.

It’s a car mat for your garage. It’s made of thick vinyl and has raised edges.

I bought one.

The UPS man delivered it not many days later.

The installation instructions were simple. Two steps. The perfect number for me to manage. Step one was to let it warm up in the house for twenty-four hours so it was easier to unroll. I did that. Step two was to unroll and position it in the garage where we park our car. That took about a minute. So far so good.

No soon after the mat was deployed, we had another snow storm. The van went out for daily driving and came back with an undercarriage covered in ice and snow. We parked the van on the mat. The ice and snow melted. And the mat caught it and contained it.

I was delighted.

The next day the van went out for another day’s use and came back all covered in snow and ice again. The snow and ice melted, along with a bunch of dirt. And the mat caught it again!

I was whooping for joy.

I’m still whooping for joy because my garage is dry!

If we get a lot of water on the mat, I’ll use the shop vac to suck it up. I took out five gallon of dirty, cold water the first time. Five gallons that would have flooded my garage! If there’s not too much water on the mat, I’ll drag the mat out with a helper and dump the water on the lawn.  

I love my TruContain garage mat.

If you have winter water mess in your garage, you’ll want to consider it. I got mine from the manufacturer garageflooringllc.com.  

One word of advice. If you get one, don’t get one bigger than you need. If it’s too big, then the mat will stick out from the sides of the car, and when you go to step out, you’ll be stepping out into your mini garage lake.

#

I enjoy books about Army Rangers, Navy SEALS, Special Forces soldiers, etc.  Almost all of them are written from the point of view of the operators. But I just found and enjoyed one, not about the operators, but about a guy who helped them in Iraq.

The book is called Code Name: Johnny Walker and was written by the guy the SEALs called Johnny Walker with the help of Jim DeFelice.

Who is Johnny Walker?

He was a resident of Mosul and was what they called a “terp”, an interpreter who went with the SEALs on their missions. He went on hundreds and hundreds of missions with them. And he offers a fascinating glimpse into what life was like in Iraq during the Iraq War for those Iraqis who helped the coalition forces.

The SEALs appreciated his service. I know this because a host of them have blurbed his book. Furthermore, they helped him eventually immigrate to America. That’s how grateful they were for his service.

If you like these types of books and would enjoy new insights, I think you’ll really enjoy the book. Johnny Walker does swear a bit. But I tend to take people as they are. And it was well worth time I spent listening to him.

#

For Christmas my daughter received a number of seasons of The Great British Baking Show. It’s a competition baking show. I’d heard about it before, but I’d seen episodes of American competition cooking shows and didn’t enjoy them at all.

However, my daughter said this was nothing like the American shows, that it was awesome, and it was so awesome she wanted to the DVDs for Christmas so she could watch the episodes again. I needed to give it a try, she said. So I gave it a try.

I’m happy to report that I and my family have are enjoying the heck out of her DVDs.

The British folks that are competing in the challenges are down-to-earth and interesting. Some of them are funny. The tips about baking are interesting. And, best of all, the British show makers know how to create suspense.

They start each season with a group of twelve amateur bakers. Two professional bakers give them a baking challenge with a time limit and then judge the bakes. After a series of three challenges, the pros name a star baker for that series and then also announce who was at the bottom of the pack and will be leaving the show. If you like cooking or have ever found yourself watching a cooking program all the way through, I think you’ll really enjoy these fun, British bakers.