The Syndicate

What is your favorite seasoning?


What is your favorite salad dressing?


Coffee or wine with dessert?

What size shoe do you wear?


Have you ever seen the Northern Lights?


Would you rather live secluded from the rest of the world or close to relatives?

Where and what is home to you?


What’s your Bucket List destination?


How challenging is it to make lasting friendships doing the cruise contract scene?


Were you ever contracted with the Carnival Fascination?

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 9:58 pm

G-Man wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 9:56 pm

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 8:40 pm Do you track any of your media consumption?

Can you elaborate on this question?

Are you asking if I keep tabs on how much of a particular source I turn to for news?

Do you track the movies and TV shows you watch? The albums you listen to? The places you've been?

Yes for movies, and also books.

My freshman year of college I took a special comp & speech class where all we did was watch movies, discuss them, and write papers about them. We started our own class rating scale and I kept with it after the class was over. According to my master spreadsheet, I have seen and rated 866 movies in almost 20 years. My goal is to hit 1,000 before August, so I plan on cheating a little and watching a lot of short films over the summer to get me across the finish line.

I have a master spreadsheet for a project I'd like to start soon. I have every album listed for every artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on a spreadsheet. It's sortable by artist, album title, and release date. My goal is to listen to them all in order of release. It might be a fun idea for a podcast as well, but I'll settle for another crappy Blogger site like I have for movie reviews.

I don't keep a detailed list of shows that I watch, but I also don't watch much TV anymore. I thought about trying to rate episodes, but it never took off.

I'd like to get one of those world maps with color-coded push pins to show where my wife and I have travelled over the years. It won't be very impressive for a while though, and it also feels a little showy at the same time, so maybe I won't get one. Who knows.

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 8:40 pm Were you born in the faith or did you find it later?

I was born and baptized into the United Methodist denomination. My dad never attended church except on Christmas Eve when I was a kid. Now he’ll show up when the girls sing in the junior choir a few times a year. My mom took us to church every week, but she didn’t reinforce it at home. I grew more serious about it on my own accord as a teenager and in college, where I stumbled into picking up a Religion minor almost by accident.

I am still United Methodist. I like the Wesleyan-Arminian concepts of Grace. There is also a thing called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral that I dig as well. This makes me a heretic to some more fundamentalist circles, as I am prima scriptura instead of sola scriptura.

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 8:40 pm Do you track any of your media consumption?

Can you elaborate on this question?

Are you asking if I keep tabs on how much of a particular source I turn to for news?

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 8:40 pm What is your favourite tree species?

Hmm. I’ve never thought about it. Sequoias are pretty awesome- large and old. That serves as a perspective check against us humans.

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 8:40 pm Have you ever met anyone from the internet?

Not yet. Some day I want to show up randomly at Epi’s door.

Syn wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 8:40 pm Do you want your kids to go into any specific fields of study?

No. I want them to figure out what they want to be and I will support it, so long as it is not impractical or achievable.

My parents got pregnant with my sister when they were teenagers, so their professional prospects were jacked at the start. They also weren’t the most studious in school, so they really pushed my sister and I to do well in school and pick fruitful careers so we didn’t end up like them. As a result, they sometimes cared very little about what we were interested in if it didn’t further their goals for us. My sister figured out early in high school that she wanted to become a speech pathologist. I had lots of interests but my parents never invested in them, so I was adrift through my freshman year of college. Even then, I didn’t pursue my real interests.

Long story short, I want to do the opposite with my kids, so long as they don’t want to be anything with super-limited prospects.

Any last questions?

Syn wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 7:20 pm Is there a cuisine/meal you have yet to try that you'd really like to?

I’d like to branch out and try authentic Indian cuisine. There is a sizable Indian-American population not far from me and there are two restaurants and a market that I’d like to explore.

My wife’s grandmother was born to Dutch-American missionaries in India and grew up there until she was in her late teens. She made curry for us once but I’m eager to try the real deal someday soon.

Syn wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 7:19 pm What is your number-one tip for relationships and how to ensure they remain healthy?

Communication- both speaking your thoughts and listening to the thoughts of your partner.

Syn wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 7:19 pm Do you still get butterflies over your wife?

Not really butterflies, but a sense of warm calm.

There is certainly still an eagerness and excitement at times, and I’m still prone to stare at her from time to time. Touch is a mutual love language of ours, so playful touches are very much still a thing. Sorry, you all may go puke now.

Syn wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 7:19 pm Why "G-Man"?

G = Galen, my first name

Man = Man, because I’m a guy


Back when I was a senior in college, Lost was in its second season and I got into a spoiler site called SpoilerTV. The comments there could be made through a Google account, and I thought nothing of it. Early into my spring semester, I read an article about employers doing Google searches on their candidates’ names. I Googled my name and the search results were flooded with my snarky, punchy comments on the Lost site because my Google handle was defaulted to my real name.

I knew I had to change it fast, so I came up with G-Man. It had personal meaning for the G, but it wasn’t a terribly unique name, so it blends in with all the numerous other folks who go by G-Man online. Within a few days, all my comments on the Lost site had converted from my real name to G-Man. If I ever had to change my handle, I have a few in mind, but G-Man has stuck and works well.

dunya wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 1:56 pm hah brutal.

did you just decide 2 was enough? or has 2 always been the plan?

do you miss anything about life pre kids?

do you miss anything about life pre marriage?

1) Two was always our limit. My wife has one sibling and I have one sibling, so it was a number that felt whole to us. We got pregnant with our first very quickly after my wife stopped taking birth control pills, but our second took longer than expected. We were almost at the point of being content with the thought of just having one and them bam!


2) Generally speaking, there was more free time for ourselves and more time to focus on each other. Now that the little one is six, we’re getting to the point where all four of us can go do more interesting stuff as a family without the kids being too dependent.

This is an amusing coincidence that you ask this question during this given week. You can hold your future husband to this nugget as well- At Christmas I gave my wife an empty journal that I write a weekly love letter or note to her in. I did the same thing 11 years ago. This week I am looking back at the first journal’s entry and providing updates about its contents, which was a “miss list” of things we used to do before I lost my job in 2009 and had to start working evenings and weekends. It’s been interesting to revisit that list because we haven’t been able to reclaim some of those things because we have kids now but didn’t then.


3) No. I knew after two or three weeks of dating that I was going to marry my wife. Being married to her gives me a sense of wholeness that I lacked before.

dunya wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 10:24 am Are you thinking of a 3rd child at some point?

No. About a year after our youngest was born, steps were taken to prevent any additional pregnancies.

If my wife gets pregnant, I’ll be getting a divorce attorney.

dunya wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 4:52 am when you make it to europe, let me know! i'll give you some cool must-sees!

you mentioned about raising your daughters differently in that you want them to grow up knowing they can be anything they want. which is inspiring and cool. but being a girl's dad means your worst nightmare is coming: the dating age :P do you have any cold hard rules planned like "home by 8pm" "i have to vet every guy that takes you out" or are you gonna be the relaxed girl's dad?

I guess that I hope that I have set a high enough bar that my girls would only bring home a boy who won’t disappoint me. We have and will continue to have specific rules for the girls, but we explain our rules pretty well to them. That may all fly out the window when they are teenagers, but I’ll resort to mean dad if I must at that point.

Sloonei wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 11:39 pm What's the best birthday treat in the world?

Also you mentioned that poor grammar is your biggest pet peeve. So I am obliged to ask, what is your biggest grammatical pet peeve?

1) Ice cream cake and Swedish Fish?


2) It’s a bit technical, but I flip out and judge harshly most grammatical mistakes that I come across in published works. If you can afford an agent and an editor, I should not be spending money on a book that contains grammar errors.

Syn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 10:05 pm Is there something from your childhood that no longer exists? A place or product you really enjoyed?

The house my parents rented when I was between the ages of 1-7 has been torn down. I don’t have many memories of it now, but most of my earliest memories occurred there.

Syn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 6:18 pm Do you feel a lot of nostalgia?

Not really? I’m old enough to not care about much new music, but I don’t look back at the music of my youth as the apex of rock and roll & popular music. My generation is responsible for the rise of several obnoxious boy bands, autotune, Creed, and Nickelback, so we early Millennials were far from perfect.

However, I did grow up in a golden age of Saturday morning and weekday afternoon cartoons.

Scotty wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 6:07 pm

G-Man wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 3:49 pm

srceenplay wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 3:02 pm Happy birthday.
Mine was yesterday. I'm now officially OLD.
Are you?

I’m 38 today. I’d say that makes me old compared to the average player age around here. But I’ve still got two years left of my 30s so I probably shouldn’t complain.

I would say though that I always mentally feel about five years younger than I really am.

One can only imagine how you felt at 4 years old

What is your biggest pet peeve?
Would you look to wait until the kids are out of the house before going to see the world with your wife, or do you feel like that could be feasible with the kids at a certain age?

1) My biggest pet peeve might be poor grammar. I worked in communications for a few years and I was in Toastmasters for a while, so poor grammar irritates me when it is especially lazy. I worked with a woman for several years who would always say “I seen” among other phrases and it always bothered me, but I was too polite to correct her (she wasn’t a pleasant person to begin with, so it was for the best). I like to correct people who say ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer.’ Mostly I just correct people I know very well. I realize that no one is perfect at grammar, and that language is constantly evolving. I make plenty of mistakes myself.


2) I want to get the girls to a few significant places in the US as a family, but they’ll probably have to wait until their out of the house and able to pay their own way for any international adventures.

srceenplay wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 3:02 pm Happy birthday.
Mine was yesterday. I'm now officially OLD.
Are you?

I’m 38 today. I’d say that makes me old compared to the average player age around here. But I’ve still got two years left of my 30s so I probably shouldn’t complain.

I would say though that I always mentally feel about five years younger than I really am.

dunya wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 12:10 pm have you travelled abroad any? where to? where would you LIKE to visit?

do you play any instruments?

whats your fav type of wine?

1a) My wife and I went on a Caribbean cruise for our 10th anniversary back in 2018. That's the first and only time I have been abroad. We spent a day in St. Thomas, St. Lucia, Antigua, St. Maarten, Barbados, and St. Kitts. I started sharing pics from that at one point and never finished. My wife got bit by a stingray in Antigua and lost a little bit of skin on two fingers. Ask me about the travel nightmare we experienced on the way to the boat another time and I'll give you the gory details.

1b) I want to travel the world with my wife. She has been to Europe, Africa, and Australia. I have been to the Caribbean and Pittsburgh. I want to hit most of the European continent, the Holy Land, Tibet, Australia & New Zealand, and Machu Pichu. My bucket list destination, though, is Rapa Nui (aka Easter Island). I did a report on it in middle school and I have wanted to go there and see that massive moai statues ever since. Polynesian history and culture is fascinating to me because it's so daring and unlikely.


2) As much as I love and am passionate about music, I never learned how to read music. In college, I decided that I wanted to learn an oddball instrument, so I set out to buy a banjo. When I got to the music store, I discovered that banjos are pretty expensive, so I bought a harmonica instead. I have two now that I never play- one is in the key of G and the other is in the key of C. My oldest daughter is learning to play violin and I love to watch her learn and practice. If I could take up any instrument, I'd be a drummer. That's pricey too, so I may take my grandmother up on giving us a keyboard she has in her basement and maybe I can try to learn piano.


3) I'm not a big wine drinker. I prefer whites to reds just because a lot of reds I have tried are just to overwhelming on the flavor. I haven't drank enough varieties to have a preferred label.

Syn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 5:32 am What are you doing for your birthday?

Nothing really. My daughters had their annual pediatrician's appointment scheduled for this morning, so I scheduled an afternoon eye doctor's appointment for myself so I could use a sick day to take the day off. I'm out of family illness support time from taking days off earlier in the school year to stay home with sick kids or I'd have just taken a half day for the morning.

So far the day has been pretty meh. I did get to sleep in over an hour longer than usual, which was nice. The pediatrician's appointment was a mixed bag and it ran long, so the whole morning was lost. In about a half an hour, our church council chair is going to call to review a meeting she and I had (I'm the vice chair on council this year) with a congregant who is basically starting a civil war within our church over a welcoming statement that she is reading way too much into.

Maybe I'll get over to my parents' house to work on my taxes before my eye doctor's appointment, but I'm not holding out much hope for that at this point. Maybe late afternoon. Taxes are annoying and they always take too long because we're able to itemize deductions.

If I get through all of that unscathed, we'll see what the evening brings. I know my wife wants to do something special for dinner, but we didn't talk about where we would pick up from.

To top it all off, I left a bit of a bombshell for my boss to find yesterday. I had hoped she would check her in-bin before the end of the day, but she hadn't. She's too busy scrambling to start the candidate search process to replace our department's administrative assistant, who just told us on Monday that she'll be starting a job with a new educational entity in three weeks. I'm in a major funk about our administrative assistant quitting because I trained her and we had a really good bond. I guess I trained her too well, because she's leaving for a position that is a little closer to what I do with the accounting. I've also been nervous about how my boss will react when she sees what I left in her in-bin.

So yeah, the night needs to be pretty awesome to avoid this being my worst birthday in a long time.

Syn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 09, 2022 2:09 am Accounting's a good degree. I keep trying to pressure my teacher friend into switching to that.

Do you do any auditing?

No. I am an accountant for a school district. Auditors come and make my life miserable. I did a tax and audit internship before I graduated, but an opportunity fell into my lap to bypass the CPA world and work as the controller for a very small business for six and a half years before they unceremoniously dumped me. School accounting is sort if a relaunch for me. I started just over two years ago.

Syn wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 10:49 pm What did you go to school for?

What was your favourite subject pre-college?

1) I have two bachelor's degrees, earned at different times.

My first time through college as a full-time student yielded a degree in Digital Communications. I started college undeclared but selected DigiComm during the spring semester of my freshman year. I briefly considered being a Math major as well as a Religion major. Back then, the DigiComm program was new and was a sort of catch-all for internet and new media. Now they do far cooler stuff like app development, 3-D printing, and interactive design. Within the DigiComm program, each student had to pick one of four 'cognates'- programming, graphic design, web business, or communications. I chose the communications cognate. This served to kind of make me a glorified English major without be so obvious about it. By the time we graduated, half of us couldn't even remember how to code a website in HTML. My cognate lent itself to doing a lot of business writing (proposals, RFPs, technical specs). This helped land me a job in the communications department of a company after I graduated in 2006.

Then the recession happened.

After my prospects dried up and growing tired of odd jobs, I went back to school part-time for a degree in Accounting. I went to the same college the second time, starting four and a half years after getting my first degree. Going part-time and being an alum got me a steep discount on tuition, which helped make up for the daily 50-minute one-way commute three to five days a week. I finished my accounting degree in the spring of 2013.



2) I was and still am a nerd. I love to learn a very broad array of subjects. Pre-college, I think I had an equal drive for English language arts, history, and science (chemistry and biology more so than physics).

Syn wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 10:49 pm Do you like coffee-based drinks like iced cappuccinos?

No. The flavor still doesn't agree with me.

dunya wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 7:48 pm if you don't like coffee: what do you like to drink as a "hot drink"?

why the resistance to the greatness that is coffee?

1) My go-to hot drink is hot chocolate. I also enjoyed hot apple cider and hot spiced cider.


2) Honestly, it’s probably due a lot to the fact that my parents didn’t drink it when I was a kid, so it was foreign to me. I’ve had two cups of coffee my whole life- one black and one with creamer and sugar in it. The aroma is great but I can’t get past the flavor even with extra stuff in it.

Syn wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 6:29 pm What is your ideal climate? What temperature and weather makes you happiest?

Mediterranean climate is probably ideal for me. The older I get, the less I like winter. Perfect weather for me is probably 74 degrees Fahrenheit at low humidity with a slight but perceptible breeze. Some clouds should be in the sky for lightning and temperature variation. That’s deck and hammock weather!

srceenplay wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 11:07 am What's your next vacation plans

We don’t have any for this summer yet. My in-laws are being a little annoying about it though. My wife’s sister is pregnant and due in early June, so we won’t likely do a full-crew beach trip. The in-laws still want to glom onto whatever we decide to do, but I’m trying to break away this year, as we plan on going to Disney World with them in 2023.

I have an idea to do some shorter trips- maybe just a day or even an overnight. I have Fridays off through most of the summer, so that makes it even easier to do shorter trips without burning up too much vacation time at once. I told my wife that it would be fun to do a North-South-East-West series of short trips. We just have to hash out what places to visit in each direction. Our girls’ ages have to be considered, though, as our youngest is still only six.

dunya wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 11:47 am how do you drink your coffee?

what's your least favorite chore to do?

how long have you been married/how did you meet your wife/how did you propose

thanks for being awesome!

1) I don't.



2) Washing the floors. I've got the elbow grease required to give it a thorough clean, but it's murder on my knees.



3a) My wife and I got married in July of 2008, so we're coming up on our 14th anniversary this summer. It feels weird to put that large a number to it, because married life with only one kid feels like a lifetime ago, married life without kids feels like an eternity ago, and life before we were married feels like it never existed.



3b) I first met my wife when her father was appointed to be the pastor at our church. She is a year and a half older than me, so she was actually friends with my sister first, and hung out with her circle of friends. The first time I truly met her in a meaningful way was when she bounced up to me after church one day to say hi after she found out that I was enrolling at the college she was attending. She promised my sister to keep an eye on me around campus.



3c) This is a fun story! My wife didn't want just the standard proposal over dinner or in a park, so she made me promise her that I would propose to her in a way that gave her a unique story to share. I decided to give her more than just a story- I was going to capture the proposal in a picture.

My first thought was to come up to her apartment for a weekend, but surprise her early at her classroom after the kids had left for the day. I thought I could tell her we should snap a picture together with my digital camera's timer and I'd pop the question as the camera went off. The logistics proved to be too tricky, as I couldn't guarantee the perfect angle, timing, or even a good looking picture given all the stuff my wife had in her classroom.

My next thought was to propose in a place where they take your picture. My wife taught in a town called Palmyra, Pennsylvania at the time, which is right next to Hershey, PA- home of the original Hershey's chocolate factory and home to both Hersehypark and the Hershey's Chocolate World attraction. At Chocolate World, they have a ride you can go on that serves as a fake factory tour that also takes you through the entire process of making a Hershey bar. At the end of the ride, they take your picture.

Having grown up and lived less than an hour from Hershey my whole life, there's very little appeal to riding the Chocolate World ride. My wife had just been there a few years earlier, so I had to lie to her and say that they had recently made changes to the ride. She reluctantly agreed and I guess thought it was at least a cute date. It was mid-April and the night before the proposal, I was back on campus DJ-ing a dance. It was a very chilly night and the forecast for the next day seemed to be cool as well.

The next day, it was 70 degrees and sunny. All I had to hide the ring box was my wool coat, otherwise I would have looked like I had a tumor growing out of my hip. I wasn't about to risk the ring sitting loose in my pocket, so I lied to her again and say that I was feeling a chill so I needed my coat. I was boiling! I tried to sneak on the AC during the car ride to Hershey but she called me out. When we got to Chocolate World, the line for the ride was loooooooooooooooooooooong. I'm sweating bullets by this point.

Maybe 45 minutes later, we're at the front of the line. I had taken my coat off to cool down, but I had my hand discreetly in the pocket to protect the ring box at all times. When we were being ushered to the car for the ride, I was dismayed to see that we weren't going to be alone. Another couple was in the front seat, and we'd be in the back seat. I couldn't do anything about it, so we got in.

The whole way though the ride, my wife is looking around trying to figure out what might possibly be new. Meanwhile, I'm focused ahead looking for the flashes of where they snap your picture. When we finally got to the right spot, I tried my best to get down on one knee and I popped the question.

My wife replied with three words: "Are you serious?"

I told her that I was.

She replied with one word: "Really?"

Finally, while saying yes and waving the open ring box in front of her face, she said yes.

We quickly got the ring securely on her finger so we could get off the ride. We ran up to where you can see your picture from the ride and paid $10 or more for a grainy picture of our big moment. I don't know why I don't have a scan of it handy, but I will post it here once I can get my hands on it.


EDIT: Found it!

Syn wrote: ↑Mon Mar 07, 2022 1:02 am Do you have a favourite holiday spot?

I assume you mean vacation spot? If so, no. I did not grow up going on family vacations when I was a kid because my parents couldn’t afford it. My sister and I would go camping with my grandparents a week each summer and with my great-grandparents a week in the summer as well. My great-grandparents had a year-round camp trailer reserved at a dinky little place that was fun to explore, but my grandparents took us around to a different place each summer.

My in-laws have a long history of going to Avalon, New Jersey, so we have gone for a beach week a few times with them over the years. Avalon is fine, but it’s too ritzy for my tastes and there’s no boardwalk. Maybe in another two or three years I’ll force my wife to cut the strings so we can forge our own summer vacation traditions. I kind of like the idea of doing something different each year rather than going back to the same place.

Syn wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 9:45 pm Do you consider yourself physically fit? What is your favourite form of physical activity?

I consider myself skinny-fat. It's a term I came across a long time ago. It means you're on the thin side but not necessarily healthy. I'm 5'11" and 185 pounds. Technically, basic BMI measurements rate me as overweight, but I also have very broad shoulders that make me look proportionally skinny. I have strong legs but little upper body strength. I want to be in better shape. I signed up for an employee wellness program at work that ran the month of February, but I had to stop because a legit health curiosity came to light that still isn't resolved yet.

Generally, walking is my go-to physical activity. I'd like to get back into hiking more often, but our 6-year-old gets tired a little too easily for us to do a family trek.

Scotty wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 4:01 pm No, It’s refreshing to hear that you do have a favoritism towards one of your kids. Like, I’m sure every parent would want to be equal in their treatment of each child. But what you said makes sense.

1. What’s your view on pets in the household?
2. What’s your favorite alcohol and or cocktail?
3. What’s your least favorite type of rock?
4. Would you rather fight 4 marmot-sized humans or 1 human-sized marmot?
5. What is the worst trouble you’ve been in (criminal or otherwise)

1) My wife is a dog person and I am a cat person. As such (and the fact that our girls are both skittish at best around animals), we have no pets. Maybe a small fish tank someday. Never a bird. If anything, I'd be down for having a chinchilla again.


2) I'm big on hard cider right now (though I rarely actually buy any). My wife and I still haven't been out to a restaurant since last summer, so we haven't had a chance to indulge in cocktails. I like a good Screwdriver, especially with raspberry vodka for some reason. We're just not big drinkers in our house.


3) Soft rock.


4) I have big feet and strong legs. Bring on the marmot-sized humans.


5) I only ever got detention twice in middle school, so I'm not much of a rebel. I did get into a car accident in college that was my fault and I got maybe two points put on my license for it. I was speeding up an alley and didn't stop at an intersection with bad sight angles (despite there being no stop sign, which is the law in PA) and I nearly t-boned an old lady's car. I made a split-second decision to swerve into her front quarter panel instead of the driver's side door. That probably locked up her front driver's side wheel and my front passenger's side wheel, preventing either car from continuing on out of control.

Syn wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 4:00 pm Were there ever any moments in your life that you felt were changing points? Where the choice made irreversibly set you on a certain path?

The most irreversible decision that I may have ever made was the decision to give up on finding a communications job during the Great Recession and go back to college part-time to pursue an accounting degree. After a year-and-a-half of being told I either had too much experience for an entry-level position or not enough experience for the next level up, I opted not to accept a life of being underemployed at odd jobs to pay the bills. I was very fortunate to be in a position to make that choice.

Syn wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 3:59 pm What is something you believed as a teenager that you no longer do?

I grew up in a conservative family in conservative suburbia. As such, before I went off to college and actually met open LGBT people, teenage me believed that homosexuality was a choice.

Scotty wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 3:55 pm

G-Man wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 3:32 pm

Do you dream?

7) Indeed I do.

Oho!

Prove it.

I still have the occasional dream where I find myself back in high school or college and I realize that I haven't been to a particular class in days/weeks and there's either a test that day that I am unprepared for or an assignment due within a few days that I haven't even started yet.

I also have dreams about dying 'young' and seeing either the pain that it causes my family or a black void of nothingness that makes me freak out about nothing coming after this life.

Then there are dreams that I can't tell you about.

Scotty wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 9:28 am GMAN what is the best part about being a father?
Which child is your favorite and why is it me?
What has been your biggest mafia accomplishment over your storied career?
Are you really nearing retirement to forum mafia? If so, what was the catalyst? Do you just think you’re better than us plebe addicts?
Beards or mustaches?
What is your ideal dessert on a hot day? On a cold day?
Do you dream?

1) As a father of two daughters, the best part of being a father is the relief of knowing that it's my wife's job to teach them how to be proper ladies and that my girls will take most of their teenage angst out on their mom instead of me.

But really, my favorite part about being a girl dad is tied between teaching my girls that it's okay for them to be interested in and talented at skills and subjects that the world still views as "a man's profession," and that I get to set the bar extremely high for both of them as to what a good and loving husband is (if they identify as heterosexual).


2) Yes, Scotty is my favorite, though I don't recall the adoption paperwork finalizing...

Tough question, because there is a four-year age difference between my daughters. The older one is 10 and the younger one is 6. We always tell them that we love them both equally yet uniquely, as no two children are ever completely the same (unless they're creepy hive-mind Twilight Zone twins). There is certainly a 'second-child syndrome' at play, where we put a lot of more effort into our oldest daughter's development during her first four years of life simply because she was the only child. That still shows signs of a slight favoritism for our eldest, sadly. She's now at the age where she's getting into higher-level things so more time has to be spent with her to help her through learning some of that stuff. When she's doing independent stuff (reading, LEGOs, drawing), we try to spend intentional time with our youngest. She's just as bright as her sister, but it's a different situation because she is learning a lot from seeing her sister do "big-girl stuff." Probably not quite the answer you were looking for.


3) Well, I've never been an elite player of mafia at any of the stops along the way (STV, LP, Piano, TS), so there's nothing I can point to and pound on my chest about. My posting antics here have yielded some unexpected fruit. I directly or indirectly inspired both Haiku Mafia and Image Mafia. I may also still be the only Syndicate member whose picture appears on a winner's badge. As a host, I am now infamous for hosting the non-game Mafia, and hosting a game that ran for three months. I don't know if either of those are very good accomplishments as a host. Maybe my proudest accomplishment is the fact that 90% or more of the games that I've played here on TS were done so without my wife ever knowing that I was playing mafia.


4) Yes and no. Retiring from playing, yes. Once I finish my alphabet-posting series, I'm going to set a firm number of additional games that I will play before I call it quits. I don't know what that number is exactly, but it's definitely fewer than 20. I just can't keep up with the pace of the modern game, and RL pulls me in too many directions anymore to really try to devote the right kind of time to honing my skills again. I'm not a better player than the vast majority of people who play here, so I don't think I am better than anyone. I'm hopeful that I won't retire from hosting for quite some time, but I have to learn how to adapt to the expectations of the current player pool.


5) Beards. A stand-alone moustache feels a little too high-society to me. I grew a playoff beard once for the NHL playoffs. I was glad to be rid of it.


6) On a hot day, a DQ Blizzard always hits the spot. On a cold day, I enjoy a Campfire Smores sundae- it's ice cream, but it's also got hot fudge, gooey marshmallow, and warm gobs of graham cracker and brown sugar drizzle.


7) Indeed I do.

fingersplints wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 7:54 am If you were given the option of pushing a button in a game again, would you push it?

Absolutely.

dunya wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 7:50 am G, do you have any regrets about [redacted name] mafia game? i'll leave it to your interpretation which game i mean

what's the coolest superpower to have and most useful?

what's your fav sandwich condiment?

what's your signature dish to cook for guests and or family?

are you watching a lot more tv since you guys got the new setup?

1) I regret every little mishap in every game I have ever hosted, whether it was a host mistake or things jut getting out of hand between players. If the game doesn't run perfectly, I have regrets. I also regret my behavior in a few games I have played in the last few years. Sometimes stress and frustration that was built up in RL got released in games in inappropriate ways. I'll speak to two specific games though, to leave no ambiguity about things. I have some regrets still about Mafia, the game with no antagonist faction that really wasn't a game. I feel like it damaged people's ability to trust me as a host. Rightly or wrongly, I still attribute that to my recent games struggling to fill up. I also have some regrets about Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3. I didn't realize that a second Job-sized game would not be run at the same time, which held a lot of talented hosts up, as the game ran for three months. I regret trying to do it all by myself- a co-host would have been a life-saver. I also regret the way that CC123 contributed to the departure of Ricochet.


2) I'm torn between three- super strength, the ability to heal others, and the ability to travel super fast/slow down time. Super strength is probably the most useful to have in all contexts. The other two are most useful in times of emergency.


3) I don't really put condiments on my sandwiches (as far as lunchmeat sandwiches go). I do put a little mustard on a turkey & cheese now and then.


4) Pizza Casserole or Aunt Julia's Casserole. Both are egg noodle-based and feature red sauce, meat, and cheese. Each one is a little different, but they're quite yummy when complimented with a salad with berries and some fresh bread.


5) The girls have been watching several "older" cartoon shows from when I was a kid on Disney+. My wife and I find ourselves tuning into reruns of Happy Days and Three's Company on PlutoTV, or we watch Buzzr for some 70s and 80s game show action. We've definitely been watching more movies for sure now that we have Disney+ and movie streaming apps at our fingertips. My goal is to watch and rate my 1,000th movie by the end of August, and this will help me reach that goal.

fingersplints wrote: ↑Sun Mar 06, 2022 7:42 am Do you have any fun plans for your birthday?

What is the best part of being a parent? Worst part?

What is your favourite game you have hosted?

1) Nope. It's a mid-week birthday, which makes it hard to do anything. I've also become like my father a little bit more and I no longer really care about birthdays.


2) My wife and I are very involved parents, which greatly impacts the answer to your questions. The best part about being a parent is watching your child(ren) discover and learn new things, no matter their age. Sometimes my wife or I are the impetus for the discovering/learning, but not always. The worst part about being a parent (an involved one especially) is the lack of time to pursue your own interests. At the end of the day, I'm often too tired to dig into anything I am passionate about after getting the kids in bed.


3) That's probably a tie between the original Secret Mafia and Mad Max. Secret Mafia was such a risky concept, but it worked so darn well and it was embraced by The Piano gang. Mad Max also flowed so darn well and it was similarly warmly received. I haven't felt as accomplished as a host since Mad Max.

What flavor always takes you to your happy place?


What color(s) fill you with joy?


What instrument do you listen to when you want to feel yourself rising out of your own body?


What texture makes you feel warm and happy inside?


What smells inviting to you?

Will you forgive me if I ask you a question that has already been asked?


Which of the four seasons of the year do you prefer the most?


What is your least favorite meal to make?

Yes! Sign me up!

What do you fear that people will say about you after you are dead and what steps can you take to prevent that from happening?

If a mime falls in the woods, and no one else is present, does it make a sound?

Would you rather be a virtuous martyr or a starving artist?

dunya wrote: ↑Wed Oct 30, 2019 10:05 am @G-Man he only wants want question per post or he wont answer them all choose your most pressing question lol

Noted and amended. Thank you.

What is your favorite three-word phrase?

What do you hope your grandchildren will remember you for and tell their grandchildren about you?

What will they actually remember you for and tell their grandchildren about you?