Daycare, WTF

I had never realized how expensive daycare was as this is not something I had heard most of my parent friends discuss before I had my own child. But because there is no national childcare subsudies and public daycare like there is for elementary school later, we were forces to pay over $2100 a month for 3 days a week of daycare. The place we have our daughter going is not even a fancy place, this is pretty standard nationwide. If instead, we had gone with 5 days a week, it was $3000 a month. When you are paying that much, you wonder whether it would be more cost affective to stay at home and do your own child care, before remember that even with 2 incomes, you would not be able to pay the mortgage and other bills. Only paying basic necessities, I always wonder how the working class is able to survive and why its so important to struggle against the owners of capital and wealth for a better life.

Parenting is difficult

Ever since I can remember, I always thought I would make a good father and hoped that I could be anywhere as decent a parent as my own parents were in raising me and my brother. So it came as no suprise when I was settled down with my partner and we thought ourselves financially able that we also decided to have a kid. Despite having such a nice, precocious, funny, and cute baby, the whole process is still exhausting. Sleepless nights, getting pooped on (both when changing diapers and sometimes in blow outs), having to plan childcare during all waking hours and having limited time to pursue other hobbies is hard. I still find the whole process worthwhile, as our daughter has quite a funny personality, but there is a general attitude that every generation has troopered on without a whimper so there is nowhere for existing parents to kvetch and complain. (other than to therapists). It has to be one of the most difficult responsibilities there is, so it is always nice bumping into friends with kids and discussing the madness and chaos of parenting. That being said, I do feel that the experience is different when my mother came to visit as for once there was an additional hand in watching Elena while one of us cooked or napped and I can see how large extended families willing to help out really ease the burden of childcare. How anyone can attend to twins, triplets, or other multiple kids of the same age, seems like a massive achievement, haha.

My Review of "The Court of Broken Knives"

The Court of Broken Knives by Anna Smith Spark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First, I want to say that I definitely enjoyed this book. It felt a little bit like Black Company, but more modern and the first half of the book really captivated me with its world building. Of the grim dark series I have read, this is definitely up there for grim... which I appreciate when done well.

The political maneuvering of both the mercenary company which is the open focus of the book as well as court intrigue definitely hooked me right from the beginning and I am already in the second book excited to see more.

My only issues with the series so far are that the battles/fights are described almost as fever dreams and its difficult to know what else is going on other than killing (sometimes enemy, sometimes own people), which can be done for certain things, but I think starts to feel a bit repetitive and removes a sense of urgency when you repeat "killing...death...death..death"

If you are a fan of the First Law series, broken company, or the broken empire series, you will want to read this!

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Baldurs Gate 3 is a Masterpiece and I am only 6 hours in

I have been looking forward to Baldurs gate 3 since it was announced. A combination of Dungeons and Dragons and Divinity Original Sins 2 seemed like a winning combination and it is. Four of us have been playing a new campaign and two sessions in, we have already come to the understanding that there is so much customizability in narrative where different characters can opt to resolve an issue in a wide multitude of ways.

The most interesting story so far is we came upon a spider boss, a giant spider with underlings. It looked like we were going to lose and that we would end up as lunch for the beast. All of a sudden the monky in my party pushed the thing off a precipace on the cliff into what seemed like an unending cavern. While it appeared we had won, we didn't get any experience for killing the thing. The rogue in the party asked if I could pause it because he wanted to try something. He then jumped off the precipace also and fell to his death. However, when landing on the ground, he noticed he fell next to the spider. I then suggested we should use feather fall so that we could gently land next to the body and after a quick restart we did just that. After looting the body, we were set upon by giant scary minotaurs who killed us all. Thats how we ended the last session of the game and I am beyond excited to see what is in store for our party next!!!

Playing Dominions 5 Again

First of all I have to say that I have loved this game ever since I started playing. There is an indepth god design, magic system, character progression, monsters, research, and item system. You also have a number of different nations with unique units and mechanics. I am playing a 5 player multiplayer game (with 12 AI factions) currently with some of my brother's friends on a discrete server. Because the game is turn based, people can take their turns whenever they have time and then all the actions happen simultaneously after the turns are made. In this particular game, I am playing as EA Niefelheim, who are Frost Giants. My design gives the giants regeneration and though this normally would have meant I had a pretty solid start against independents and other factions, I accidentally had my main army stuck in a cave, frozen, and unable to move out of it. Haha, I will post any fun updates as they happen.

A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5) Review

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As someone who saw the show first, this book is exquisite. It goes deeply into the plotting of Dorne, the many other characters around Daenerys. It is deliciously complex, and includes the many sell sword bands. I dont want to spoil anything, but some of it ends differently than the show and does a much better job at conveying that with nuance.

For a long time I have heard people talk about how the show goes off the rails and you can definitely see that in many ways where it differed from this book it lost a lot of the complexity.

I will say that Ramsey Bolton is far worse in the books than in the show, that its a shame how little Greyjoy characters made it to the screen, and that some characters did completely disappear after a while and never made it back in the Books, and now I want to know what happened to them!

All in all a brilliant read and I want to have faith to read the finale.

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Dune Spice Wars: Review

After spending several hours playing this game, I have to say that I was presently suprised. I thought it would be a game of massing and sending forces at the enemy like Warcraft or Dawn of War, but the game is much more of a combination of Stelaris and the Dune boardgame. There is politics (though basic when playing CPs) trade, technology, a balancing act between resources and trying to reach one of the many objectives, and a unique combat system. Early on, I found myself invading numerous neutral villages to utilize their resources toward my economic goals. Later, despite progressing well into the game, I never found myself with a huge army. I always had to balance where to send my troops at any given point with the conditions and many places I would get raided. In the deep desert, you lose supply, sandworms swollow units whole, and neutral raiders ambush you. Manpower or water supplies dwindle and you feel a need to keep expanding to prevent your enemies from one-upping you.

On top of everything, the setting is very cool for me because I got to role play as the Fremen and do suprise raids on the colonizing powers of the plan. While, I have yet to finish a game yet, I would love to end up in a 4 player game with freinds as I think the potential is really there (and this is only an early access game). Definitely recommend it for new players, though the first 30-40 mins will throw you right in as there is no real tutorial yet.