The Games We Play
Happy Belated New Year. I still mean to do my annual book review/flashback sort of thing, but right now I've got other things on my mind.
I like to play games. I grew up playing the typical board games with my family; Monopoly, Life, Scrabble, checkers, chess, backagammon. I had kid games that I played with my friends and cousins, too. Things like Cooties, Don't Break the Ice, Trouble, Mouse Trap, Operation, Hungry Hungry Hippos, and even a fun Star Wars board game I adored. The extended family played card cames like Rook, while my dad favored Hearts. My Granny and Aunts are mad about Yahtzee, and when I was in about sixth grade I might get a chance to take a turn at an early pc version of Donkey Kong, provided I could pry my mother off of the game.
Most of these games were fun, social sorts of activities. There was nothing that I would play by myself really until I discovered Tetris on a roommates gameboy. Tetris hit my happy spot of gaming. It's a skill game that is best played by reacting and not thinking. I've since dubbed this sort of game "zen gaming." When I was pregnant with my six year old I found a PopCap game that hit that happy spot even more so than Tetris: Zuma. Hubby bought the expanded version for me and I played like mad until pregnancy induced carpel tunnel syndrome interfered. Then I had the baby and started up again. With the various upgrades to computers and new machines over the past seven years, that original digital copy of Zuma is long gone...but that's okay because they came out with a sequel that we found for my birthday in '09 called Zuma's Revenge and *that* one we bought on disk! In the past few weeks a Facebook version has popped up that is just different enough to captivate but enough the same to tickle my sweet spot. It was an early Christmas present!
It's funny to me that the games I find most relaxing to play are the ones that force me to NOT think, to just react. They make me turn off my brain and tune out everything around me. I guess this is something I need. There are some evenings when this appeals to me even more than reading! Crazy, but true. I'm an introvert by nature, and it's begining to seem that I even need to take time away from my own thoughts to recharge fully. Ha.
Don't worry, though. I haven't stopped reading or posting. Things have just been busy. I look forward to looking over the books i read in 2010 and anticipating the new releasess of 2011. Until then...Kahonga!*