I’m an entrepreneur, whether I like it or not. I am co-running a web solutions company, I am creating and selling mead commercially, and I am looking to start a business and career based in using role playing games in education, and yet… I find myself watching TV late at night almost every night, and I am not doing the legwork necessary for even one of these businesses to truly be successful, much less all three. I am literally wasting 2-3 hours a night that I could be using building my businesses, and I need to switch my priorities. I should be reading trade books and blogs, I should be blogging, cross-posting, reviewing, and generating content and value.

So, it is my resolution to outlaw TV during the week. That’s right, from Sunday night through to the weekend, there is to be no TV. I have a DVR, and all the shows worth watching are being recorded. So I might have a marathon on Friday and Saturday nights – that’s where it belongs. And eventually, I might find that I fall behind and I can’t keep up on all of the external media. That’ll be just fine, if I find I’m really moving my dreams forward.

So folks, I’m looking to you all for support. Help keep me on track – instead of asking me if I watched that episode of Lost, ask me what I did this week to further my business goals and my personal dreams. I’d much rather answer that question, and it’s liable to be a much more interesting conversation.

Thanks all, here’s seeing you on the other side of the passive media divide!

For those who know me, it’s no secret that the last few months have been both the hardest and the most transformational of my entire life. I’m facing aspects of myself that have been with me almost my entire life, and are finally coming out to be noticed and counted, and finally (hopefully) resolved.
As a part of my ever-growing activities to heal myself in both body and mind, I went to an acupuncturist/nutritionist/Chinese Medical Practitioner yesterday, and it was an opening and affirming experience. Some of the things that are surfacing in my therapy were reflected and confirmed in her diagnosis, and some root causes that stretch all the way back to being 5 years old were evident in my current condition. Health history was read and confirmed through her observations, and I feel like I’m going to be in strong and able hands moving forward in my discovery of health and who I need to be in the world.
My first treatment was an interesting experience – I barely felt the ten needles that went into my body, some not at all, but as I sat there and allowed the treatment to do its work, I did feel a difference in my mood and my body feelings come over me, but what perhaps was the most surprising were the visions I started to have.
One strong vision, was my flying like a super-charged hawk up the face of a cliff, the edge of a mesa, until I reached the top and landed. I turned and looked back over the precipice down what appeared to be a mile or more of distance. It was as if I were at the top of the Empire State Building, leaning over the edge and staring down into the drop. Now, normally I have vertigo in such a situation, and I wouldn’t trust myself not to go toppling over the edge or feint or both. However, in my vision, I was unafraid and excited by the drop, and after staring over the edge for a time, I dived into the air and plummeted down the cliff face like those fly suit base jumpers, and cruised my way out and over the horizon.
Upon returning to reality, I felt as if a layer of carried fear had been lifted from me, and that I was somehow more integrated than before. An exciting first step into acupuncture healing, for certain. I’m not going to question the source or the nature of my experience — I will accept the gift, and move forward.
Sometime in the future, I know I have to go skydiving.

Hello everyone,
I took the weekend off of computer interactions starting Friday evening for Julia’s 40th birthday party (a fun time was had by all, with mead on tap and karaoke craziness – Julia had a wonderful time), Saturday was spent recovering and Sunday we took the boys to watch the Harlem Globetrotters at the Oakland Arena, and last night I played the Battlestar Galactica board game
from Fantasy Flight games with a couple of friends (totally awesome game – very well made). All blogworthy in their own special way, but mostly I used the weekend to unplug from the computers and destress (although I did have an IT emergency that had to be handled – can never get away from that when you’re in the hosting business).
The truth is, it’s healthy for me to unplug as much as I can, so therefore I think you shouldn’t depend on weekend blog posts. However, I do not exclude their possibility. This week is going to be grueling, as we have a beta launch Wednesday and a full launch at the end of the week. We’re still wiring the technology together, and it’s a day-by-day process. Late double-shift nights in our future, I’m afraid. I’ll be in touch.

Hello my friends, it is I blogging in the last minutes of January 2nd, 2009, and remembering the midnight runs to make the entries each day. Usually it means shorter entries with less depth, but something is better than nothing.
For tonight, I will merely comment that it’s the last day out at Stinson for my family and I, and it’s been just long enough. Today I was having serious I’m-done-with-this-vacation feelings. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being out here, or spending the time with family, but mostly I’m just feeling like life has to move forward, and I can’t be out of it any more.
For example, today we had some server slow-downs, and I had to manage all of the issues remotely, with my IT contractor in another country, and my employees waiting on me to fix the problem so they can continue to develop our clients’ websites, that are all tight on schedule at this point and need to be worked on over the weekend in order to meet our target deadline this week. I’m being forced by necessity into making some big business decisions around hosting and services, and it’s making my head swim, and…I had to do all of this in the company of 4 stir-crazy children indoors all day for a rainy morning and cold afternoon.
I need to get back to the office, so I can get some work done. And I need to get away from the crazy holiday eating before I completely undo all the work I achieved during the fast. Time to clean it up. The plan was to start a mini-fast this month before we go away to Hawaii. I wonder if I’ll go through with it. I’d have to start sunday, if I do. Hmm. talk to me tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, we pack up and head home tomorrow, so I’m gonna hit the hay now. And looks like I’ll even make it in before midnight. Yay!
Breaking news – one of the few meaderies that I consider to be anything close to a competitor just moved in to Point Reyes Station (where I want to have *my* meadery), and to me, this is a good thing. The more we can raise mead consciousness, the more we might be able to fenagle a napa-west Mead culture along the coast on Highway 1. I’m going to visit Cowgirl Creamery in a few weeks to give the manager a taste of our product line. I hope he likes it enough to sell some in the store.

Hello folks,
After a large haitus, I’m rededicating myself to be back on the blog wagon. I may not always have a lot to say, but I need to have the daily outlet and the platform to talk about what’s on my mind these days, because, frankly I’m doing a lot. My wife and I have been running a web business now for over a year (http://www.archerwebsolutions.com) and we’ve been doing very little marketing, because we’ve been overwhelmed and just trying to finish the things in the pipeline right in front of us. Now, we’ve taken the plunge to get an office and hire employees, and so it’s really important for me to start to get myself out there, and I think that getting my blogging skills back up again is going to be a key factor of that. Not that I’m going to use my personal blog as a platform to promote my business, but rather, having the daily output of ‘what i am doing’ will drive my ability to write better copy and to blog in a professional capacity on our business blog. So, it’s the morning and I have to get to business needs, but I thought I would drop a line and say ‘hello again’.
Also, let me leave you with things little fun nugget:
Click to see my Star Wars Personality!!

This is really fascinating, and tells us a little bit more about the human experience:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/when-a-brain-scientist-suffers-a-stroke/

Check it out, and tell me what you think. No matter if you are a hard-core materialist, or a spiritual believer, I think there’s a lesson here about finding out what it is to be human.

It’s been a while since I’ve last spoken to you all, and for that I apologize. Starting a business and being as involved with my day job, raising a family, and time donated at the Synagogue, not to mention trying to take a little break for myself now and again has left me little in the department of disposable time. That being said, there are entries that have to be written because of their philosophical import, and this is one of them (at least for me, which is all that really matters at the end of the day – I’m the one writing it!)
For those who have been following the sparse chronicles of my life, you are aware that this year is different from all other years in that I’ve become a Jew, and now am faced with the interesting and novel activity of identity work around that shift. For the most part, this was not a process that seemed overly difficult for me, seeing that I had given up my Christian identity over 15 years ago (more like 20), and I had been walking side-by-side in a Jewish lifestyle for the last 14 years. In most cases, taking on the Jewish identity wasn’t requiring me to do any more than I was doing already, or if it were something new, it was an additive practice, and as a long-time universalist, adding practices is not something that bothers me – on the contrary, it’s enriching for me. As for the practices that could prove to be restrictive, I’ve been for the most part non-participatory or willingly complicit. As a Reform Jew, I have a tremendous amount of flexibility about what Mitzvah are relevant to a modern life, and which are ritual artifacts of ancient thinking.
Now I am faced with the first interesting choice of my conversion, and that is my treatment of the Christian holiday Christmas. Ironically, when I talked to my parents about conversion, my mother’s single question was “Will you still celebrate Christmas?” At the time, I didn’t really process this question, and figured that we’d just keep doing what we had been doing, giving tacit acknowledgment to this mostly commercial holiday that the majority of the dominant culture acknowledges, if not religiously, then at least culturally. We had incorporated into our family ritual and practice all of this holiday, the tree, the stockings, the Christmas morning presents and the myth of Santa Claus. For Julie at first, it was odd, having not been a part of this process or practice for her entire life, but in respecting my personal practice and background, allowed our familial adoption of all the trappings of my youth. In truth, she became to enjoy certain parts of the ritual, such as the decorations, the tree, and we even created a few of our own traditions, such as new pajamas to be worn on Christmas Eve. Being a mixed-background family, we accepted this additive practice of Hanukkah and Christmas as a universalist celebration of the winter solstice, each reflecting older pagan origins of kindling lights in sympathetic magic for the return of the sun. Things felt multi-cultural and modern, and we were open and appreciative of each others’ traditions. And yet, I know part of Julie’s mind always lingered on the fact that all of this practice was more than just not her practice, but something that was symbolic of that which was denied and refused by the Jewish tradition.
And this year, I am a Jew as well. In my life-long intentions and participations of universalism, I’ve chosen a particularist path. In my desire to go deeper in a single tradition, I have chosen a tradition which not only does not practice this holiday from the dominant culture (and my childhood), but views that holiday as symbolic of a cultural and political oppression, and exclusion. In truth, Hanukkah itself, has its roots in a militaristic event denying assimilative practice and the winning of religious freedom and authenticity against a dominant culture which wished to impress on the Jewish people its own religious customs and practices.
Now, I’m not ever one to be cowed by the demands of the groups that I may participate in, in fact I can be somewhat of an iconoclast, however I find this moment the first time I’ve been given a choice about the practice of tradition that I had for the most part just assumed for the entirety of my life. It gives me a moment to evaluate what this holiday means to me, and whether or not (or how much) I want to participate in a cultural meme that I’ve just been infected with at birth without choice or decision. For anyone in the dominant American culture, saving those who owe religious allegiance to some non-Christian sect (Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindis, etc.), not participating in Christmas is equivalent to being a humbug and somehow cold and uncaring. For the dominant (Christian) culture, this is the season of peace on earth, love for the common person, charity, etc. Whether worshiping the birth of a tiny baby god, or just a pudgy overgrown elf in a red suit, Christmas is a sanctity in America. We devote so much to this season, and many retail institutions couldn’t survive without the irrational spending driven by the season. All in all, it’s a benign (and perhaps even benevolent) practice, and it helps us as a nation and a people focus on our families, and casual mass consumption that drives our economy. On the other hand, that irrational consumption is a symptom of a society that is driven by values that are responsible for much harm around the country and the planet. Teaching our kids to expect mass gifts without responsibility even if once a year embeds a meme of wanton consumption that leads to oils for war and global warming.
Okay, perhaps I’m being a little over-dramatic, but the point is, I’ve never been given the gift to fully analyze what I am participating in. And it would be disingenuous to suggest that Jews are free from this cultural meme, as they’ve overcompensated in inflating a small nothing of a holiday into an eight-day orgy of gifts in order to heal their cultural wounds around being a minority in a dominant culture in which they cannot fully participate. I’m also not trying to insinuate that gift-giving is inherently evil or the root of all of our problems — on the contrary, what is life for if not to make our children and loved-ones happy, and one way to do that is to gift them with things. I am trying to say we’re out of control in this impulse and need to severely moderate our impulses. This is why in our family, we have ensured to embed charity into our celebrations, and we choose one night of Hanukkah for the express purpose of Tzedakah, or participating in the just cause of equaling the balance between those who have and those who have not. It’s a slightly different concept from charity, which is about giving from the heart — this is considered obligatory and not something that is dependent on something so capricious as how you feel. However, that is a different blog entry.
The greater point for me is not to deconstruct Christmas as a practice, but just my relationship to it, and whether or not I need it in the same way I’ve participated in it in the past. Really, the only thing for me to do is to break down the pros and cons, and to consider the situation rationally.
To break down Christmas just a little bit more, here are the elements that pertain to me:

1. The tree
   I have to say, the tree is a very strong symbol for me, and it’s the hardest for me to consider to leave behind. On one hand, they’re kind of a pain in the ass – expensive, unwieldy to handle, they leave sap on the fingers, you have to water the bastards, and eventually they die and you are left with a pile of pine needles to vacuum up, and a tree you have to throw away. On the other hand, nothing speaks stronger to my sense of tradition and my nostalgia of childhood like going and getting the tree – the crispness of the air, the smell of the pine, the sketchy-looking lot workers, and the wrangling of the monstrous tree into the house and into its stand, to be decorated with ornaments and lights that you only see once a year. I think we’ll keep the tree, as it’s mostly ornamental, and certainly not Christian in origin. In fact, I’ve found some evidence that in ancient Judaic practice, there was worship of the wife of god, Asherah, which was symbolized by a pillar or tree. Being in a family that wishes to balance the masculine and feminine, the tree can be our way of bringing a feminine symbology into the house during the season, our ‘Shekinah’. It’s a little unorthodox, but so be it.

2. The wreath
   The wreath, even more so than the tree, is just a seasonal ornament. I see no reason not to keep the wreath, even if it does make a declaration in its presence. I think we can adjust some of the decorations on the wreath to make it more Hanukkah related.

3. Stockings
   Stockings, though decorative in nature, are directly related to the Santa myth, and the Santa myth is directly related to the practice of Christmas, so I think this will be an aspect I decide to close down. It’s no great loss, and it rids us of one of the stresses I often would experience in the holiday season anyhow — what to put in the danged stockings.

4. Lights
   Hanukkah is the festival of lights, so this I think is a no brainer. We can keep the lights.

5. Santa Claus for the kids
   To tell you the truth, this is one of those myths I’ve always felt a little uneasy about anyhow. The perpetuation of Santa dilutes the message of gifts being given by loved-ones, and creates some strange merit system designed to keep kids in line during the winter season. Eventually the kids find out that Santa isn’t real (sorry for the spoiler) and you’ve taught them instead to be distrustful of the stories adults tell them. We’ve already clued Eli in to the fact that Santa doesn’t exist (he took it in stride), and to tell you the truth, being raised a fundamentalist Christian, my parents clued me in on the Santa thing early on, because Christmas is about Jesus, not about a Jolly gift-giver. Luckily Isaac is too young to get it, so I think we’re safe to throw out the old man.

6. Participating in a custom that links me with the dominant culture
   It sure is easier to just practice Christmas like everyone else, but what good lessons have ever been learned by following the pack. In making ourselves separate and distinct from the dominant culture, we bring things into relief, and gift our children (as well as ourselves) with a little perspective. Besides (as you will read later), we’ll still be celebrating with my parents and family to pay respect for THEIR holiday, but we just will no longer be observing it in our own house. And to tell you the truth, we’ve downplayed it for years, so this is only a minor adjustment.

7. Charity, peace on earth, good will towards people, etc. etc. yada yada yada
   We as Jews have our own versions of these ethics, and frankly I like ours better. We engage in them all year round, not just in the winter, and so I feel justified in saying we don’t need to get them from Christmas. We will of course participate in the general feelings of cheer and good will, since it’s always nice to smile and be smiled to. And of course we will contribute to charities – our goal, however, is to do this year-round and not just when the dominant culture tells us it’s time to think of others.

8. Christmas fiction (Movies, stories, etc.)
   I still plan on watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” every year, and stories are just stories, after all.

9. Spending Christmas eve with my extended family
   Still plan on having family over for Christmas Eve, just because it’s a good excuse to have them over and share a little love and cheer. We just don’t have to really express it as a Christmas gathering. Not that we do now, anyhow.

10. Spending Christmas day with my extended family
    As long as my family still celebrates Christmas, I will bring my family to celebrate with them. It’s about family, after all.

11. Taking my decision seriously about conversion to Judaism
    That’s why I’m laboring over all of this in the first place. I need to be able to tell myself a coherent story about why I do the things that I do. And I also feel that for me, I need to make a ritual shift in some way to acknowledge my decision and my commitment. In declaring myself a Jew, I’m given an opportunity on defining the parameters of that identity, and deciding whether or not to continue to celebrate Christmas is a definitive part of that framing. If I give up Christmas as a ritual practice, I lose part of my childhood tradition, and I set up a potentially uncomfortable situation with my parents, but I gain a certain amount of intentional integrity around my identity as a Jew.

12. Creating a clear message for my children
    I think that in our intentions to raise our children in a Jewish home, it’s important to make clear what are our holidays, and what are not ours. We do not celebrate the birth of Jesus and more than we celebrate the birth of any other ancient Rabbi, especially not one that has become the god for (in my opinion) misguided followers, hundreds and then finally thousands of years after his death. Some of his teachings are worthy of study and acknowledgment, but I certainly don’t need to practice ritual in his name. What I do in my family affects the identity of my children as well I could decide to continue to practice Christmas in the capacity as we have over the last dozen years, but not only are the justifications no longer the same (before it was because I was from a different tradition, but now I proclaim identity that does not have the tradition of Christmas) and I would be creating a potential cultural confusion for my boys. They would be coming from a Jewish family that for some reason practices Christmas, but with no good justification. I think in a way it’s just easier and simpler for the kids to drop the holiday.

I know that some of my friends think that I’m totally over-thinking this whole thing, and others might not get what the big deal is all about. The only thing I have to say is, dude, I’m a philosopher, what did you expect? For me, this process is illuminating, and leaves me feeling better and stronger as a person, not deprived or limited. I will navigate this process of identity deftly and come out the other side more sure of who I am and desire to be. Wish me luck, and Happy Holidays, whatever they may be for you.

I’ve owned a guitar ever since high school, when I fell in love with Led Zeppelin, with the idea of playing guitar, and worked my ass off to learn how to muddle through Stairway to Heaven. In high school I even took two semesters of classical guitar at the local community college, and learned how to arpeggiate with the best of them (them meaning beginning guitar students). Truth be told, I haven’t really played it with any sort of proficiency for 15 years, and mostly my acoustic and my electric are little more than decoration for the room they live in. The rubber on the stands they sit in is so old that it’s vulcanized and is breaking off. So much for the spirit of music.
What is true of the entire time that I have been involved in playing guitar, is that I always approached it from a technical angle, trying to learn to play songs I liked, trying to learn chords (though I never managed to get the musical theory into my head, so I can’t walk the fretboard with the ease that’s necessary for a true guitarist), but never did I become possessed by the music and played from the heart. Or at least, I don’t remember having done so — it’s been a while, maybe it was like that for me in the beginning.
Last night, late after all were in bed, after a casual drink or two, I picked up the acoustic sitting quietly in the library, waiting like a forgotten lover for the touch that says they’re still important, still wanted. I try to keep the guitar in tune, even if I don’t play it, and thankfully it still was. I casually started to strum the lovely beaten old friend in the three or four chords I still remember, and found myself entering into a new space with the guitar. I was moving between rhythms and chords in a conscious way, not conscious of the technical notes, but conscious of connecting the actions with the sounds I heard in my head. I was phrasing intentionally, and I was moving… with love. It was an emotional experience where I felt the rhythms and the music, and for once I finally get why people play music. I have been a singer in my past, and know the rapture of a well-performed choral piece, but for the first time I felt the joy of playing a stringed instrument. I am by no means a professional, nor can I repeat the sounds reliably that I make, but as a past-time I jazz it through and have a great time, and perhaps this is the hook I finally need to really learn to love to play. I know that whenever I pick up the guitar, my kids absolutely love it, and it’s fun for me as well. What isn’t fun is not knowing HOW to play, and I haven’t been motivated to learn.
Maybe now is the time.

I have been getting this compliment a lot lately, and frankly I haven’t really processed it, or figured out what to do with it just yet. It appears that one of my special talents is the ability to express myself well, in exact and clear language. It might even be my super power. I don’t necessarily consider myself especially articulate (although I love the compliment), and in fact sometimes I feel absolutely tongue-tied. There are some words that I just can’t seem to pronounce, and I have been known on more than one occasion to invent vocabulary (just ask Julie).
And yet, I cannot deny a certain joy that I get when I’m explaining something hard to someone that I understand, and when I can roll it around in my hand and make it more simple, or adjust the explanation to the person I’m talking with. It’s a fire that wells up inside of me. I really should have been a teacher professionally, because I’m really good at it. I guess being articulate is part of being a good teacher. I suppose my B.A. in philosophy trained me to be precise and clear in my speech and writing, but honestly I’ve learned so much more about communication since then.
For example:
I’ve learned it’s more important to listen than to speak, and it’s more important to be understood than it is to be right.
I’ve learned that conversation is not about being correct or precise; it’s about communion between speakers.
I’ve learned that it pays to be compassionate in conversation, and to give your speaker the benefit of the doubt when they say something that is obviously incorrect but simultaneously relevant. It’s arrogant to correct people in casual conversation.
The list goes on…
What does all of this have to do with being articulate? It means that I value my ability, and I value that others value it, but it’s only one of many possible and valuable skills in communication, and probably not even the most important one. One thing is for certain–my ability to be clear and concise sharply declines when it’s 2:30 AM and I’m exhausted.
I’m falling asleep at they keyboard. Good night.

This is from Trey’s Blog, he tagged me.
1) I belonged to a secret ancient spiritual society for about ten years of my life. Yes, I was a Rosicrucian. Read ‘Faucault’s Pendulum’? Perhaps ‘The Divinci Code’? Well then, you’ve heard of us . Of course it was not nearly as sensational as made out, but there were some very interesting things learned and an entirely private history of the world.
2) In fact, I was brought up fundamentalist Christian (I was sooooo born again, it was ridiculous. Watch out, sit still for too long and I would convert you!), and have been in my spiritual journey – pagan, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, philosophical existentialist, Wiccan, and have contemplated conversion to Judaism. These days, I’m not even certain if I have a belief structure – I sorta just take it as it comes.
3) When I was in kindergarten, because I didn’t engage with my classmates and didn’t participate socially with the class activities (and because I couldn’t tie my shoes), my teachers suspected I was mentally deficient and wanted to place me into the special education track. In reality, I was completely bored by kindergarten as I already could read and could count to several hundred more than they required in the class. My parents fought my categorization and eventually got my IQ tested which ended up being somewhere high enough for the school to immediately move me into the gifted classes. If I hadn’t had activist parents, I could have ended up in a completely different reality.
4) While I enjoy the film, I personally think that Ferris Bueller is a pussy and a lightweight, as I skipped 69 days my Junior year of high school, and 94 days of my senior year. All that, and not only did I pass high school, but I was ranked sixth in my class academically, and was a nominee for the equivalent of homecoming king (‘Mr. Viking’). Of course, this sort of ‘dilligence’ didn’t fly at UC Berkeley, where I did very poorily in my classes my first semester and had to drastically change my approach.
5) When I was ten, I ran my own BBS out of my room on my apple IIe and six floppy drives. It was over a 300 baud modem, and I heavily modified the BBS which was written in basic. It’s amazing what you can eke out of 48k of memory. I took all sorts of computer programming classes from the community college, and became quite proficient in programming. I wanted very much to be a computer game designer as a kid, but because of a singular comment from my grandparents that discouraged me (‘Programmers don’t make any money — you should be a professor’ — laughable today, but back in the 70’s and 80’s, it was kinda true), I reoriented my entire interests towards the physical sciences. It’s ironic that now I make my living writing software.
6) In high school I was on the JV football team as a left guard. I did all the practices, and even went to football training camp. I never played a single game, however, because 1) I just didn’t have the necessary killer instinct, 2) I severely disliked the way they handled an injury I got while in practice (ice and heat and back in the game), and 3) because of a singular conversation I had one evening over dinner with other members of the team. They were all concerned about their GPA not being high enough to continue to play on the team (you needed a 2.0), and when I was suspiciously silent, someone asked me what my GPA was. When I told them I was getting a 4.35 cumulative GPA (love those honors classes), they asked me ‘what am I doing in football?’. I took that question seriously, and quit as soon as I got back home.
7) I’ve never seen E.T. all the way through. My family went to see it without me when it came out in the theaters while I was away at summer camp, and ever since I just have never been in the right place at the right time to make it happen. I’ve even rented it explicitly to watch it, and only got through 20 mins before I got distracted by whatever it was. Because of a number of factors from childhood until adulthood, I don’t know much about sports and just can’t wrap my mind around it. I enjoy watching sporting events w/ friends who know a lot about them, but I would never elect to watch a game of anything by myself. I never played any sports (other than almost being on the football team, and even then I didn’t really like the game as much as I was trying to get something on my transcript for college), and while I enjoy the casual game of just about anything, I’m a complete novice at every single sport. Instead of playing sports as a kid, I played Dungeons and Dragons during recess (starting in the 2nd grade and playing all the way up, off and on, until the present day).
Rebecca, Matt and Julie, I tag you.