Posted on by Jed Fowler

Euro Lands in Arena!

Breaking news from–uh–a few weeks ago (I’ve been distracted) Arena has swaggy Euro lands available for basic land usage! AIRHORN

The backstory behind the lands can be found here or here, but the upshot is that they were a promo run by Wizards in the year 2000 highlighting iconic terrain from throughout Europe. The White Cliffs of Dover are most easy for us Americans to recognize but here’s the full list: locations

Anyway, since I’m officially too old to figure out microtransactions, I had a pile of gold in my account. That just turned into 15 classic lands with the old school border! Right now I’ve been running the White Cliffs of Dover, Amsterdam Lowlands, Nottingham Forest, the Pyrenees, and the Ardennes swamp. A nice touch of flavor.

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Post-Game: 11-4-20

It does make me wonder why sitting through election results is *ever* a good idea. It’s the equivalent of someone taking the scores from a game, randomizing the order, and then slowly telling you “A TD… then four field goals, nevermind about that touchdown…” It’s insanity.

However, I did hear a good line, “Now the only way for Trump to reach 270 is to lose 40 pounds.” Heh heh heh.

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Posted on by Jed Fowler

One-off Books

As our earlier entry, often it’s great to find a toddler book that you know you can reliably find several dozen more of to keep your brain from melting into a puddle of goo. However, it can also be great to find a good “one-off” book. Either for a gift, or change of pace, or just some elephant and piggie fatigue. Here are some winners in the Benalish household:

Escargo

Bonjour! This is an adorable story of a snail and his journey across the book and the sadness of how no one ever chooses the snail to be their favorite animal. There is a salad at the end of the book, a perfect salad with a light vinaigrette and *no carrots*. Or are there?!? Fun fourth-wall breaking and a great opportunity to try out your best French accent. “Au contraire! I can be very fast! I am the wind itself!”

Dragons love Tacos

A staple, so this is hardly an “under the radar” book, but a fun story of dragons, their well-known love for tacos, and best practices on holding a taco party to befriend said dragons. Just make sure you don’t have any spicy sauce. Has some fun “act along” bits “Hey dragons! How do you feel about spicy sauce??” that remain a hit.

The Rabbit Listened

This is a little more on the “let’s all just have a good cry together” spectrum, but it’s an adorable story on listening, frustration, feelings and all the rest. Frankly, it’s a pretty instructive read for the non-toddlers too. You mean I’m *not* supposed to leap straight to solving a problem? Sometimes I should just listen? Cosmic.

What do you do with a Problem?

I’m cheating slightly since there are some “sequels” (What do you do with an Opportunity, etc.) but another one of those, “Fun to read… yet also a very good reminder to adults on best practices of Being an Adult.” The art is really solid too: evocative to read and a good page turner.

The Five Forms

A young girl finds a book of ancient Chinese wushu (“kung-fu”) and chaos ensues! The author’s son is apparently a serious practitioner of wushu so the physiology of the difference stances and philosophy of the forms are all quite accurate. And while I’m probably at one extreme of enjoying a toddler practicing “Heron” and “Dragon” forms, I suspect many others might as well.

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Post-Game: 11-1-20

I want you to know that I am PERFECTLY CALM leading up to this election. I am not doomscrolling, pointlessly refreshing politico.com. While I believe that there are major, *major* underlying factors that make this election very different from 2017, I am not so confident where I am going to make a prediction. I can barely make an observation before the Benalish Momma starts yelling at me, “Yeah?! You were baking cupcakes with blue frosting last year!!!! I don’t want to hear it.”

I don’t think the cupcakes were the causal tipping-point, but it’s hard to refute her emotional truth.

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Post-Game: 10-25-20

The goal of the day was to have low stress. I suited up for a good cold-weather run (only to have the sun burst through and promptly make me sweat through all the layers). I read all about Theranos, the blood testing scam from a few years back. Holy moly, late-stage capitalism might need to call it a day.

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Post-Game: 10-24-20

This was a week where quarantine and general COVID-ness finally wore me down. While I did learn the origin of the word “quarantine” came from the 40 days that England required shipping from the Baltic Sea to wait offshore due to the plague outbreak, that wasn’t enough to get me excited for the day. And usually historical trivia is my jam! A dire sign.

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Post-Game: 10-23-20

A second coaching session with Ethan from Lords of Limited! Incredibly helpful coaching session, both reviewing some old logs as well as a co-pilot (or maybe “check run” would be the more apt metaphor). A couple of big “ah-has” from the draft review. Fist, fight hard for single color bombs, as even if you are getting cut, you can probably still cobble a secondary color on pack 2 alone. Note that this isn’t true of gold bombs, since you really need your lane to be open (or have a splash-enabling format). Also weighing flexible creatures higher in this format seems quite good.

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