Geeky Catholic Dad

This past weekend, I finished a project that's been in the works for over a year: a custom box for The Han Solo Card Game (referred to within the Star Wars universe as Sabacc). I've written in the past about my love for tabletop games . Occasionally, that hobby has inspired me to dip my toes into the DIY world. I made a few custom inserts for some of our board games (one for Legendary: A Marvel Deck-Building Game and one for Killer Bunnies). But this project was by far the most extensive. So if you'd like to see how I did it, just keep reading.

Back in December of 2017, The Greatest Showman was released in theaters. At the time, I paid very little attention to it (because I was busy watching, rewatching, and digesting Star Wars: The Last Jedi ). Fast forward six months to June of 2018, when I finally had the chance to see it. And it blew me away. I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and listening to the soundtrack over and over again. It got me wondering - what was it about this movie that grabbed me? How was it able to deliver such a sense of joy?

Several months ago, my sister-in-law and her husband lost a daughter to miscarriage. When I heard the name they gave to their daughter - Maria Esperanza - I was inspired to write about the virtue of hope ("esperanza" is Spanish for "hope"). I have been struggling since then to put this post together. There are so many questions to answer. What does it mean to hope? How can you have hope in God when it seems like He only sends you suffering? Does a miscarriage prove that your hope was in vain? But after months of putting it off, I've finally put pen to paper (finger to keyboard? electrical impulse to web server?). I'd like to dedicate this post to Maria Esperanza and her parents.

I will conclude my trilogy of Firefly -related posts with a board game review of Firefly: The Game. After I started getting into tabletop games (see my post Adventures in Tabletop Gaming ), I started listening to a board game podcast called Meeple Nation (find out more at their website ). One of the board games they mentioned frequently, and featured on one of their episodes, was Firefly: The Game. As a huge fan of all things Firefly (see my reviews of Firefly and Serenity ), and a growing fan of board games, this game sounded right up my alley. I added it to my Amazon wish list, but didn't think I would necessarily buy it any time soon. One day, I saw it being sold for less than half the retail price, so I quickly ordered a copy. I'm glad I did.

Back at the end of February, I published a post about the TV show Firefly - a space western that was tragically canceled before its time. As I mentioned in the post, the strength and loyalty of the show's fandom was such that Universal Studios green-lit a movie to continue the story, and that movie was called Serenity . In today's post, I'll take a look at that movie.

I was introduced to a lot of new things in college. Oh sure, I gained a new appreciation for my faith, and I learned how electricity worked, and I met my future bride. But I'm not going to write about those things today. Thanks to a Netflix account and some fellow geeky engineering students, I discovered a show called Firefly . Between the show, the movie Serenity , and a Firefly board game my wife and I have greatly enjoyed, there's too much for me to write about to fit it all in one post. Today's post will focus chiefly on the television series, and I'll cover the other material in subsequent posts.

As many of you probably know, Charles Robert - our fourth child - was born a few weeks ago. He is our second living child. Between Timothy (our oldest) and Charles, we had two miscarriages. We lost Lucy at 11 weeks and Elliot at almost 17 weeks. Because of this, and because of the circumstances of Timothy's birth (see Timothy's Story here), this pregnancy and delivery was very different than our first.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my introduction to the Rocky series, and I discussed Rocky and Rocky II . Today I'd like to continue the story with Rocky III .

I recently watched all of the Rocky movies - and 2015's  Creed - on Amazon Prime. It was only my second time seeing Rocky , and my first time seeing the rest of them. So admittedly, I am late to the party here. These movies are fantastic, and after seeing them I just had to write about them. I was originally going to write about all seven films, but once I got started, I ended up writing a lot more on each movie than I'd planned. So we'll just keep it to Rocky  and Rocky II . This post will have spoilers, but I figure that's not a huge deal, because these movies are over 30 years old.

You might recall from my Lord of the Rings post last month that I really like a literary device Tolkien uses, which he calls "eucatastrophe." I'd like to use this post to explore that concept a bit more, and tie it together with the meaning of Christmas.

The following is a letter I wrote to all fathers who have suffered a loss. It appears in a new book, From Father to Father: Letters from Loss Dad to Loss Dad , by Emily R. Long, which was just released on Monday. In honor of the book's release, I would like to share this letter with all of you, and encourage you to pick up the book to read the rest of the letters.

When people ask what kinds of things I do for fun, I usually include "board games" in my list of hobbies. But then I worry that they don't know what I mean by "board games." Because, let's be honest. If I asked you if you wanted to play a board game with me, and you assumed I was talking about Monopoly or Risk, you'd probably picture a multiple hour experience, which starts out fun, but devolves into one person slowly winning while everyone else excruciatingly approaches defeat. But, as I learned several years ago, the tabletop gaming is so much bigger and better than Snakes and Ladders, Candyland, Monopoly, and Risk.

Those of you who have read my first blog post, or the "About the Blog" page, know that my wife and I have lost two babies - Lucy and Elliot - to miscarriage. You may also know that we are now expecting our fourth child (due at the end of January). So with everything we've gone through, and are going through now, there are a lot of thoughts - hopes, fears, frustrations - going through my head.

My favorite books of all time are J.R.R. Tolkien's books about Middle-earth. I'm referring not only to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit , but also to The Silmarillion , and Tolkien's earlier writings about Middle-earth, collected in Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth . Tolkien created more than just a story, or a collection of stories, or even a mythology. In his works, he created an entire world, with its own history, geography, cultures, and languages.

I wasn't initially sure how I would approach the following post. I knew I wanted to write about Liturgy of the Hours, but what should I write? A full account of its history? Well, I don't really know all that, and I don't know how interesting that would be. A full, step-by-step description of how to pray it? Again, I'm no expert, and that isn't really what this blog is about. So I'll just tell you about how I came to learn about the Liturgy of the Hours. I'll probably sprinkle in some tidbits about the history of the prayer and how it is prayed, for those who are curious.

Father and son, making faces When Jess and I were engaged, we had several discussions about how many kids we wanted. Ultimately, we settled on at least three, and at most twelve. Really, we just wanted to have as many kids as God would send us. After we got married, we started trying to get pregnant right away. But month after month, we were unsuccessful. Jess had been told previously by a doctor that she probably had endometriosis, and might have trouble getting pregnant. So she asked her OB at the time about it. But everyone she talked to said that we would have to try for about 2 years - or 1 year at the very least - before they would even start investigating any possible causes of infertility. Meanwhile, the endometriosis was also causing Jess to have very painful periods once a month, but her doctors refused to look into it.

For my first post-prologue blog post, I figured I'd dive into one of the things I geek out about: Star Wars. I'll talk a bit about how I got into it, how my life impacted my fandom, and how my fandom impacted my life.