• PERSONAL

2024 Year In Review

January

January was pretty quiet! I did have the pleasure of having a jam session at my friend Joe’s house. After a too-long break from playing music, it was very nice to play music with the only goal being to have fun. I also got to see his recording/synth setup, which I am incredibly jealous of. The Flesh and Blood set Heavy Hitters released in January as well, so my friends Adam and Ian carpooled and hit up a gauntlet of prereleases around West Michigan, which was a wonderful time.

February

February was mostly marked by taking shifts with friends visiting another friend in the hospital. (Thankfully she’s doing okay now!) Never a “fun” time exactly, but we all enjoyed spending time with each other despite the circumstances, and in an odd way it was a nice reminder of the great friends I’ve made here over the years. Amongst all that chaos, some friends and I started back up our journey to play through all the Arkham Horror LCG campaigns in earnest, which kept up throughout the year and has been a blast (even if I all I want to do is make jank decks and Nathan keeps telling me I need to actually “win the game” or something).

I have also been trying to get back in the groove of going to concerts after the pandemic really killed my momentum on that part of my life. My first concert of 2024 was seeing Jonathan Coulton open for Aimee Mann at the St. Cecilia Music Center. While I had certainly heard of Aimee Mann, I had never really listened to her music outside the one song she has on Rock Band. (Yes, Rock Band is a distressingly large portion of how I discover more popular music, don’t judge.) I of course loved finally getting to see Jonathan Coulton, but I really enjoyed Aimee Mann’s set as well!

I also apparently snapped this picture of Kirby during this month which I feel needs to be shared with the world.

March

Early March I once again judged a local Flesh and Blood Road to Nationals tournament for the local game store I regularly play at. I have apparently become the de facto head judge for these type of events at the store, which I am very grateful for. Judging for a trading card game is not necessarily something I expected to become a part of my life, but I’m so happy it has - it’s afforded me the opportunity to travel much more than I used to, and has helped me meet and make so many friends from around the world.

I also drove down to Indiana to visit my brother and sister-in-law for my brother’s birthday and, more importantly, meet their new kitten Richie. He was very cute (see picture below), but the visit was cut short because of my own cat - Zach texted me that Kirby was throwing up a lot of clear liquid, so I had to drive back home that night to take him to the vet. After a few vet visits throughout the week when the only thing we could determine was wrong was possibly his food not agreeing with him, he suddenly got better without me even having to change his food. Cats!

April

April always surprises me with the gauntlet of birthdays in my friend group. I don’t know why it does, because it happens every year, but… I don’t know, I’m not great at keeping track of time. It’s why I write everything down to remember! But I made it through the gauntlet of birthdays, including my own where I once again had my yearly “have friends over to play Eldritch Horror all day” party. This year we fought Yog-Sothoth in the deserts of Egypt. (We did much better than last year, where half of our team got knocked out and someone had to sail alone into the ocean with a lightning gun to kill Cthulhu.)

I also got to floor judge a Flesh and Blood ProQuest tournament alongside my friend Leah, who head judged. I gotta say, it’s kinda nice judging instead of playing because you’re guaranteed to get paid… but I do miss playing at the bigger local tournaments sometimes. I still get to play at the tourneys, just not as frequently. (We’ll get to how I did actually playing later in the year!)

May

I mentioned earlier how I love Flesh and Blood as an excuse to travel. Well, May was the best example of that - I used my 5th anniversary bonus from work to go to Tokyo to play at the world premiere for the new FaB set Part the Mistveil! Flying across the world by myself to Tokyo when I spoke zero Japanese definitely made me a little nervous, but I’m so glad I went.

I could probably fill an entire blog post with my experiences, but I’ll just say that exploring Tokyo for a week was both incredible and not enough time. I came home with numerous photos and souvenirs though, so I’ll leave a selection below with some captions.

Side note: I got to meet the creator of Flesh and Blood, James White, at Tokyo! I was incredibly unprepared for him to recognize me and call me by name when I walked up to say hi though, and I was so flustered I think I stammered my way through the entire conversation before he had to dash to a meeting. He also had a feature request for The Fab Cube, which was incredibly validating, ‘cause, hey, it’s cool that the creator of the game has used my website enough to have a request! (If you’re reading this James, thanks again for making such a great game, and hopefully I will not be so flustered next time we meet.)

June

Only 3 weeks after getting back from Japan, I turned around and traveled to Minneapolis to judge at Flesh and Blood US Nationals. This time it was with a large contingent of local FaB players who all road tripped down together and stayed at an AirBnB, so luckily it was not another solo trip! We arrived a few days early so everyone could have time to explore the city and prep for the tournament, so some of us took the opportunity to visit the Mall of America. I did not join in the amusement park rides (as I’ve aged I have become more susceptible to getting sick on rides), but I enjoyed exploring the mall and playing mini golf! I also had a chance to grab drinks on two nights with various friends from online who I usually only get to meet up with at FaB tournaments, which was wonderful. And to cap it off, one of our local players made top 16 and another made top 8!

Near the end of the month, I also met up with my brother in Kalamazoo to see Ben Folds on his Paper Airplane Tour. Dan and I both love Ben Folds and try to go to see him whenever he’s in the area. A very good concert as always! (Also ran into Joe and his partner while we were there!)

(Photo credits for the 3 pictures of me judging go to John Brian McCarthy)

July

In July, some friends and I started doing semi-regular Physical Crafts Nights where we would get together in my basement and hang out while we all worked on putting together Gundam models or painting miniatures. It’s been nice to have nights to work on hobbies while still hanging with friends, highly recommend doing craft nights!

The big event of July was my mom coming up for her late birthday present from my siblings and I: tickets to go see Cody Fry and Ben Rector with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. It was nice getting to have my mom visit for the week and just relax and hit up restaurants. Sadly, it wasn’t as relaxing as it could have been, because this was the same week that Crowdstrike took out what felt like half the computers in the country, so her flights to Michigan and back were very delayed. The silver lining of this is that because I had to drive alone to Detroit to pick her up after she was rerouted to land in Detroit after delays, I had time to brainstorm a board game idea which I ended up implementing a prototype of a few days after she left. Unsure I’ll pursue developing the board game further, but playtests with friends were a lot of fun!

August

My friend Nathan’s birthday party was in August and his yearly tradition is having friends over to play what we call Chaos Sentinels. His favorite board game is Sentinels of the Multiverse, so we set up multiple games around his house and then every 5-10 minutes roll a d6 dice - whoever’s seat gets called takes their character and swaps into the next game (on a 6, the villain and environment decks rotate). Repeat until every game is finished. We usually do this for an entire day with breaks for food. This time, however, his wife Robyn added a secret twist - everyone dressed up as Nathan (with assistance from Robyn smuggling out various clothes of his throughout the previous week). Watching his reaction as 1 by 1 about 20 people showed up all dressed as variations of him was incredible. (I had Robyn steal his favorite shirt so that I could wear it - he apparently was looking for it the day of to wear, so the punchline of me walking in wearing it was perfect. And we look similar enough that a few people said happy birthday to me first before realizing their mistake.)

August was capped off by a family gathering at Daniel and Anna’s to celebrate Sarah’s 4th anniversary of her brain surgery to remove her brain cancer. We met up in Indiana at Daniel and Anna’s place and explored their town. It was really nice getting to spend time with family (this time without Kirby having a medical emergency).

September

During September Zach’s mom came up to visit him. Whenever she does so we have a potluck with a bunch of his friends and her, which is always a very nice time. She also got along really well with Kirby (I was sent a picture of him curled up on a blanket in her lap - apparently they stayed like that for hours).

September also marked the last concert of the year for me: La Dispute’s 10th anniversary concert for their album Rooms of the House. I only got into La Dispute once I moved to Grand Rapids (fitting, given they’re from here), and so it’s always special getting to see them play their hometown. Their song Woman (In Mirror) is one of my favorite songs, so getting to see them play it live was a treat. Also was surprised to see that one of their openers was a friend of a friend, which was very cool!

October

Started off October with my coworker hooking me up with 2 spare tickets to go see the Joshua Redman Group at St. Cecilia Music Center, which was incredibly kind of him. I had never listened to Joshua Redman before, but as a fellow (much less skilled) tenor saxophonist, I was excited to hear him live and… wow. That dude incorporates niche saxophone techniques just flawlessly into his improv solos. He even used the low A trick! (To play a low A on the tenor, you play a low Bb… and then stick the bell into your thigh to lower the pitch to an A.) It was an absolutely incredible show; if you ever get a chance to see him you should absolutely do it. I took Adam with the other ticket, and poor Adam had to listen to me gush about it all the way home.

I also had the “pleasure” of having to replace some boards in my back deck that had rotted through. Well, I type “pleasure” as if it was sarcasm, but Adam and Karson helped me, and it was honestly a lot of fun with their assistance.

October was also the competitive ProQuest season for FaB, and I only had the chance to go to one ProQuest since I was judging the ProQuest at my regular LGS. Adam and I carpooled down to Kalamazoo for it… and met each other in the finals! I had never top 8’d a local competitive event for FaB before, so making finals against one of my best friends was a huge shock. Whoever won the finals got an invitation to the Pro Tour in London next April, and I was pretty sure Adam was going to destroy me, so I told him if he won I’d go with him to London.

(He won.)

So, looks like I’m going to London next year! I’ve wanted to visit London for a long time now, so I’m very excited.

November

November started with a slightly delayed Halloween party - every year my friends Anna and Kat host a Halloween party and Anna makes an escape room in her basement. This year she made a bunch of mini video games that people had to find clues in the basement to unlock (it was themed around fixing up a spaceship you’re stuck in), and it’s always so fun to see what she comes up with!

Daniel and Anna (sister-in-law Anna, not Halloween party Anna - I’m lucky enough to have 2 cool Annas in my life) also came up for a day to go to a pop-up bakery that Anna’s college roommate was holding in a thrift store in downtown Grand Rapids. I met them there, we bought way too many baked goods, and then we hung out my house all day while we sampled the baked goods. (They were very good.)

With my parents and Sarah moving to North Carolina a few years back, I no longer do Thanksgiving with them since I save traveling for Christmas. Usually Zach and I do Thanksgiving together instead, but this year he had different plans, so I took up Nathan and Robyn’s family’s open offer to join them for Thanksgiving and had a wonderful time. I made sweet potato biscuits (my favorite Thanksgiving side), which were a hit. I also fulfilled the traditional Thanksgiving role of “someone at the party passed out on the couch” by falling half asleep after stuffing myself on turkey and wearing myself out playing with Nathan’s sister’s very sweet dog.

I also started raiding in Final Fantasy 14, and discovered I really liked it! Daniel and I are trying to put together a raiding party with our friends Patrick and Asu, so while we work on finding friends who want to join us, we’ve been throwing ourselves at a Criterion Dungeon without looking up a guide. I have found out I love figuring out the puzzles and making diagrams for them which… is on brand for me, to be honest.

December

And finally, December! Adam and I were supposed to go to Chicago to attend a big Flesh and Blood tournament, but sadly he had some family stuff come up that meant we had to cancel our trip at the last minute. I was looking forward to seeing people at the tournament, but it just means I’ll need to go to another big US tourney soon to see everyone. The cancellation meant that I could help Nathan and Robyn do house projects in their new house to prep for their move. The process of moving isn’t exactly fun to me, but there’s always something kinda beautiful about so many friends and family coming together help. It’s a nice reminder of the community you’ve built.

Sadly, the house projects couldn’t stay localized to my friends - I had the wonderful experience of putting my foot through my shower floor, because apparently the previous owners of my house DIY’d my bathroom and… just didn’t put any waterproofing materials underneath the shower? I would not rate myself highly on the “good at house projects” scale, but I feel like even I would know that anything involving water needs waterproofing… Anyways, I have that fun project to look forward to as I kick off the new year, so if you follow me on social media, expect grumbly posts about that in your future.

But to cap off the year in a more positive note, I got to spend a little over a week in North Carolina with my family for Christmas. Most of it was spent hanging out at their home, but they took me to the brewery they play bingo at every week, which was just absolutely beautiful. We also went to the North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival, which was incredibly cool.

Wrap Up

And now I’m home writing this up just a few days before the New Year! I have friends coming up from Illinois to visit and join some of my Michigan friends and I for NYE, so will likely be hitting publish on this sometime on the 1st or 2nd without going back and editing, so barring anything wild happening over the next couple of days… it’s been a pretty great year!

I continue to feel incredibly lucky with the community I’ve found for myself, both here in Michigan and throughout the world. Thank you all to everyone I’ve spent time with this year for helping make it a wonderful year!