I love  GAMES!  All of them.  

Board Games -Life, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Scrabble and Carcassonne. 

Dice Games- Yahtzee, Snarful, Bunco, and Craps. 

Card Games—> Mormon Bridge, Gin Rummy, Phase 10, War. 

and night games— Sardines, Tag,  Snipe Hunts. 

(Exnay on these games: 52 Card Pick up and Freeze Out)

One of my favorite all time games is Ticket to Ride.  We got it from Chad’s sister for Christmas 2 years ago.  I loved it so much that I went online and set up an acct so that I could play it with others across the world. 

If you don’t know about Ticket to Ride here’s the Dealio-

The board is a map of the U.S. (or Europe if you have that version)

First you collect Destination cards. Then you collect Train cards on your turn.  Either from the deck or from the pile.  When you’ve collected the right train cards for the track that you need to get from a certain city to another certain city you lay down your cards and lay down little trains to cover up the tracks.  When you’ve connected point A to point B… I.e.  all the little routes that take from say L.A. to NYC you get points.

But then there are others who try to take your routes and block you as they are also trying to get to other places on the map.

Okay so I got online and played it all the time.  It got really bad at one point. You know how when you play Tetris for a really really long time that even when you close your eyes you see pieces floating down and you move them around to make them fit? well…  It was kind of like that. 

 Except whenever I drove anywhere I thought about how I could get from point A to point B.  Like I could see the road I was driving on as the actual game board.  SERIOUSLY.  and I felt like I was in a little train.  It was sooo freaky.  I’d even have dreams about it. (Like kinda how I dreamed I made out with Harry Potter after reading books 1&2 in 2 days) 

The funny thing was that a lot of people that play TTR (Ticket to Ride for you muggles) is that there was a lot of Mormons.  They had screen names like “TruBlue” and “Cougarette” and “I’maMormon”  (my screen name was…  Shellie27) 

So when you’d get into a game there was an option to chat. 

TrueBlue- Hi

Shellie27- Hi GL  (Hi Good Luck) 

TrueBlue- Thx (Thanks)

Shellie27- YWNI (You will need it)

TrueBlue- ASL? (American Sign Language)

Shellie27- My son use to watch signing times?

TrueBlue- no where are you from?

Shellie27- Oh Georgia… let me guess you are from Utah?

TrueBlue-How did you know!!!

 and then I’d start just dishing out all my skills and cutting people like TrueBlue off left and right and basically making them Furious and they’d all respond like

“FREAK!”

“DangIT!”

“DurnIT!!!”

“EFFFFFFNO!”

and I’d be like

“Sorry Better luck Next time :)”

and they’d be like

“Go suck on an egg why dontchya”

It was seriously so fun.  I laughed all the way to TOP level and had tons of experience until one day my 6 month membership ran dry and I had no mo deniro’s to buy mo membership.  Now no one (eh hem CHAD) will play with me because I’m just that good.  It really is rather depressing.

Its probably how Micheal Jordan feels when he sees some neighbor guys playing BeeBall outside.  So he goes to join them, and they see him coming and they hurry and chuck the basketball into some trees and pretend like they were all standing around shootin the breeze.  Its like HE LOVES THE GAME and HE’s SO GOOD… but no one will let him feel the glory days anymore… so he just has to go home and watch Space Jam over and over and over just so that he can sleep at night. 

Thats exactly what it feel like.