New Year's Resolution, Decisions, Advice, 100th DN Game

I know I'm slightly early on the topic, but I thought I'd talk about my New Year's resolution for the coming year. In the past I've always had the traditional resolutions that virtually everyone has such as losing weight, drinking less, spending less money, and what have you. It seems like resolutions are all about giving something up; why should I have to give anything up? This year rather than picking something that I know I'll simply give up on later on in the year, I decided that I'd pick a realistic yet meaningful one (at least for me), and that is to: play more Yugz.

I admit that sounds kinda funny, but again I wanted a simple one that I thought I could reasonably do. With my current workload and simply being married, I really couldn't/can't play all that much. About once a week tops with very minimal testing in between. I'd like to change this and say I'd like to play in real-life tourneys twice a week and utilize Dueling Network a lot more during the week. The primary alteration I need to do is simply bring my laptop to school and hop on DN in between classes. I still get a lot of joy out of playing this game, so why not enjoy it on a more regular/frequent basis? I won't allow it to get to the point of where I used to be when I played in tourneys like 4 days a week though; that negatively affected my school grades and stuff too much. I'll probably also do the usual crap like "lose weight" and "spend less money", but those are back-burner resolutions for me.

So last night I checked Uncle's websites to see if either location was going to be starting tourneys again. I noticed on the Valley one that they'll be starting them back up on Monday. What's really annoying is that this tournament is the exact same time and day as the Northtown one. Why can't one of them wise up and simply shift it a day instead of directly competing with each other? All that's gonna do is make the attendance of each tournament lower, since the likelihood of there being a unanimous decision among the players to play at one place over the other, virtually non-existent. You'll probably get a majority of people switch back to Uncle's, while the stragglers hold on to playing at Northtown because it's closer to them or whatever. Good job, instead of running potentially two 20-man tourneys during the week, there's gonna be one that'll be like 14 and the other around 6, struggling to get those last two people to hold a full tourney. See how this was even more problematic when BGN was around, who also had Monday @ 5 tourneys? Is there something about Monday that just screams "Yugioh tourney!!"? Speaking of BGN, I checked on their facebook page and sure enough they officially closed down on Christmas Eve but the guy is gonna have "Thursday Board Game Night" or some crap while he's trying to sell the building off. Such a shame, that store had a lot of potential to do really well but poor location (next to a used car lot with really nothing else nearby) and a poor business mind-set caused another closure of a game/hobby shop for Spokane/Valley.

So with that being said and trying to fulfill my new 2-tourneys-a-week resolution, I obviously have to pick between Uncle's and Northtown. Naturally this leads to a pro/con list. I'll continue going to Lightning on Saturdays.

Uncle's
Pros: likely to have more people, is much closer to where I live
Cons: more than likely Andrew will be running it, very close to where my wife works (ie if she happens to see me I'm dead)

Northtown
Pros: realistically no chance of my wife seeing me
Cons: farther away, may not have as good turnouts

I know I've talked a lot about my wife in the past, usually in a disgruntled manner, so I should probably elaborate a little. Long story short, as far as my wife knows, I don't play Yugz anymore and haven't for the past year + some months. When I was living in Texas she essentially forced me to quit and throw away (literally, in garbage bags into the dumpster) my entire collection (worth ~$2000 at the time), so now I simply play behind her back and hide all my cards/binders/etc. I didn't even really care about the cards themselves, but the one thing that had sentimental value to me, the team mat that I received the day before I went to boot camp, I had to throw away as well. I know it seems kind of shady/sneaky and it's kind of a terrible way to live, but she simply isn't a rational person when it comes to the game, or actually, a lot of things in general. I have never told her once that she couldn't or isn't allowed to do something that she truly enjoyed because it differed from my beliefs/interests, but I guess she thinks it's ok for her to do that to me. I could easily say "well I have no interest in going to church so you're not allowed to go anymore" but I obviously don't. I don't cheat on her, don't hit her, don't gamble all our money away, not an alcoholic or anything like that. I pretty much wait on her hand and foot and do things a lot of men in general will outright never do, so she doesn't "have it bad" in the slightest. So for me, it's not about doing anything out of spite and "playing behind her back", it's simply "doing what I have to, to do something I enjoy." I don't have the widest range of interests and hobbies, never really have throughout my life, so this is why I have to put so much focus and worry on her randomly seeing me at these mall-based tournaments.

Pro-tip: don't get married. Women change almost instantaneously pre and post-marriage. I don't know what it is, but there must be some kind of built-in "nag" switch that gets flipped on when the ring comes on. Like most other guys, I too thought "nah there's no way she'd change like that, she's so cool and everything is chill". Uh no. Trust me that shit goes away in a flash, and it's obviously more than a coincidence when every other married guy I've talked to has said similar things. You even hear about these stories from time to time where a couple lives together for like 10+ years, very happy, then once they get married it all goes to shit and they get divorced. Wtf? It doesn't happen "just because"!!

I finally got in my 100th Rated game of DN today. I know that isn't really a feat or anything since so many people have hundreds upon hundreds of games, but like I've said in the past, I can only tolerate that shit for so long until I just have to log out. My win-loss ratio is 72-28, which I'm happy with since I've always wanted to maintain at least around a 3-1 ratio. Some of those losses I had to incur upon myself when I was playing and my wife almost walking into the room so I'd have to exit out without hesitation. The last time I did that I Trish'd and was +3 on him, obviously going to win that one, but had to exit out in a heartbeat. That and losing to some crazy OCG shit, or other random lucky OTK crap. I've gotten quite a few wins off scrubs too so it probably all evens out in the end. Oh DN, how I love to hate and hate to love thee lol.

Still waiting on Turbo Pack 7 reveals which were supposed to happen today. I'm sure we'll be getting them within the day or so. Anyways long post, but hey that's nothing out of the norm right? lol. Happy New Year to everyone and stay safe :)