Ken Newquist

Off the Bookshelf: Late Summer 2016 Reading

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A saucer-like starship looms large.

It’s a more than a little strange to be writing about the last of my Summer 2016 reading list in Winter 2017, but damn it, I told myself I was going to write this column and I’m not letting myself off the hook. As I wrote in updates to my “Summer Reading List 2016” column, … Read more

The Nuketown Migration, Part II

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Geese inflight against a grey sky.

The Nuketown Migration continues. All of the posts have been imported and I’ve completed my first pass through the content, visiting each and every post from the last 16 years to do some light editing, add or update images, and purge radically outdated content (like two-sentence posts promoting a site that doesn’t exist any more). … Read more

Nuke(m)Con 2016

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Plastic miniatures of the frog-like monsters known as slaadi stand on a battlemap. In the background can be seen several figures representing player characters.

Nuke(m)Con. It’s my gaming group’s homegrown convention which was first held in 2004 as an alternative to going to GenCon. It’s schedule was never formally defined, but for a while we had an every-other-year schedule going with conventions in 2006, 2008, and 2012. Then came the convention drought. It wasn’t for a lack of trying … Read more

Ticket to Ride: Europe

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Multi-colored train pieces represent different routes that have been completed on the Ticket to Ride map.

My extended family started playing Ticket to Ride years ago. It’s one of our go-to games after holiday dinners, and we’re all comfortable with the mechanics, the strategy, and the map. We’ve mixed it up a bit by adding in the 1910 expansion, but for the most part,  the game’s been the same for years. … Read more

Fitness Update, Winter 2017

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A back country road, with a thin line of snow on the right shoulder.

As I work my way through my old posts as part of Nuketown’s migration project, I struck by how many times I tried and failed to maintain an exercise routine. I had a few good runs, but all of them ended prematurely. I’d settle into a routine, lose some weight, and then falter (usually because winter … Read more

Meet Hank

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A small puppy sleeps curled up against a cloth bacon chew toy. The puppy is a yellow Labrador retriever/golden retriever mix.

Meet Hank. He’s a Golden Retriever/Labrador Retriever mix that my family and I are raising as part of the Seeing Eye’s Puppy Raising program. The Seeing Eye is a non-profit organization that breeds, raises, and trains puppies to serve as guide dogs for the blind and visually impaired. We got Hank when he was just … Read more