A mysterious figure emerges from the shadows

[Scott]

Greetings from the Ghost of Christmas Past!

Dan contacted me this morning to make sure that I was aware of the recent announcement regarding the transfer of ownership of this website. He also encouraged me to stop by the forums again to see how things have fared in my absence. I'm not sure how many years it has been, but this place has never faded from my memory, and I was never fully and completely gone either. Throughout my absence, I have continued to make the occasional post to the CarcassonneCentral Facebook page whenever I received something in the mail.

I have missed you all, and although I am not returning in full capacity, I am back to a limited extent. I will try to visit somewhat regularly, but I won't be reading everything.

The reason that I left was to focus on my search for a wife, and I'm happy to report that in four months we will be celebrating our third wedding anniversary. I began my search very close to home, but the ladies in my town were too scared to date anyone. I then expanded my search south of the border to the United States of America. I travelled from northwest Washington to southeast Georgia and many points in between, but didn't find the right person there. I expanded my search again to include the rest of the world. I met people from the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and South America. It was in Africa that I finally found the most amazing woman for me. She shared my values and enough of my interests that we would be able to have fun together for a very long time, but with some differing interests so that we would also have fun introducing each other to new things. We became friends in January 2018, started "dating" in May 2018 (7-hour Skype sessions!), and by December 2018 we were pretty sure of what we wanted, so I got on an airplane and flew to South Africa (via London, England which is a long story in itself). We spent two weeks together in her country where I got to meet her friends and family and see the places that were special to her. We got engaged while I was there, and then in January 2019 I went back to Canada. In May 2019, I was back on an airplane heading back to South Africa for another two weeks to get married, have a short honeymoon, and help my wife get ready to move to Canada. Getting her here was quite the process, but we made it. For the remainder of 2019, I got to show her some of the places that were special to me, with the expectation that we would continue doing that in 2020, but the pandemic put those plans on hold. We hunkered down, became reclusive hermits, and focused on getting through the global crisis.

One constant throughout everything has been that I'm still working for the same employer. I went from working full-time in an office to working full-time from home, and it has been fantastic being able to have lunch with my wife every day. While waiting for the Canadian government to give her permission to work, she focused on maintaining social contact with friends and family back in South Africa, and staying active with daily exercise. While we were thriving in some aspects of our lives, our 1100 square foot apartment was starting to feel claustrophobic, so last summer we decided it was time to buy a house. The area that we were living in was very expensive, so we could not afford to buy a house there on my salary, so we moved to a more affordable city. Although we are not far from the city where we used to live, the friends from our previous city are not as much in our lives anymore, which is a bit sad, but we have made new friends in our new city. My wife was able to start working this past October, which was very exciting.

Yes, I still play Carcassonne when I can. My wife enjoys the game very much. I have done my best to continue collecting as new mini-expansions were released, but I've certainly missed some opportunities along the way. In our new home we have a dedicated game room, and my Carcassonne collection is on prominent display.

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5675.0

[Decar]

It's wonderful to hear from you Scott. And congratulations on finding a wife. It sounds as though you have both found a deep bond together. I wish you all the very best and many many happy years together.  Especially with the world's problems at the moment, it must have been difficult at times, but it's wonderful news.

Good luck in your new house too!  I can imagine moving to a new location must be difficult, but it sounds like you've both got positive attitudes and will be making new friends shortly.

+1 from me Scott. I hope we continue to see a bit more of you! 

[Meepledrone]

Hi Scott!

Great news about your wedding and your new house. Best of lucks!

+1 Merit for keeping up with your collection despite all the changes going on in your life.

PS: You can now also show your wife how deep the Carcassonne rabbit hole can go...

[Scott]

Hi Scott!

Great news about your wedding and your new house. Best of lucks!

+1 Merit for keeping up with your collection despite all the changes going on in your life.

PS: You can now also show your wife how deep the Carcassonne rabbit hole can go...

Haha, when the movers saw how many of my boxes said "board games", they asked if I was a game designer.

[Willem]

Welcome back Scott! Nice to see you back, and doing well!
I'm sure those 7+ hour Skype sessions were needed to start explaining the history of Carcassonne to your wife

[Meepledrone]

You will never be able to share the truth outside this forum...

For your peace of mind, we all signed an NDA.

[Willem]

(which stands for a Non-Dragon-Agreement, as our new rulers don't like to play with that expansion )

[Meepledrone]

I like the dragon... My playing group doesn't... >

[Challa007]

Hi Scott, I am fairly new here so for me, seeing a "live" message of THE "Scott" is like wow, what is happening ...   

I am active in both Forums CCentral and CarcF and am just developing my first own fan expansion. So when the German mods explained that I had to use a specific template for the rules, I discovered, that in the Acknowledgements of the CarcF template I had to thank "Scott" for something he had done a long time ago.... In combination with the picture of your Avatar ... guess what, I thought, you were so old that you had one foot in the grave already ...   

So its nice to finally get to know one of the persons to whom we owe so much here. (+1 merit from me) Thanks a lot for that and for coming back, even if it is not full time....
And congratulations for your marriage, now its time to think of children ... ? (just saying    ... )
(I mean, really, we NEED the next generation of Carcassonne payers...)

[Scott]

Hi Scott, I am fairly new here so for me, seeing a "live" message of THE "Scott" is like wow, what is happening ...   

I am active in both Forums CCentral and CarcF and am just developing my first own fan expansion. So when the German mods explained that I had to use a specific template for the rules, I discovered, that in the Acknowledgements of the CarcF template I had to thank "Scott" for something he had done a long time ago.... In combination with the picture of your Avatar ... guess what, I thought, you were so old that you had one foot in the grave already ...   

So its nice to finally get to know one of the persons to whom we owe so much here. (+1 merit from me) Thanks a lot for that and for coming back, even if it is not full time....
And congratulations for your marriage, now its time to think of children ... ? (just saying    ... )
(I mean, really, we NEED the next generation of Carcassonne payers...)

The man in my avatar is unfortunately already in the grave. His name was William Conrad and he was an actor who played Detective Frank Cannon on television. I don't know much about the man William Conrad, but the fictional character he played was a favourite of mine and I am slowly resembling him more and more as I get older. 

We would very much like to have children so that we can pass on our love of Carcassonne and other board games to the next generation. There are some challenges in accomplishing this which may or may not be surmountable. Time will tell.

[kettlefish]

... In our new home we have a dedicated game room, and my Carcassonne collection is on prominent display.

Does the wooden tile tower still exists, which I had build it for you?

[Challa007]

We would very much like to have children so that we can pass on our love of Carcassonne and other board games to the next generation. There are some challenges in accomplishing this which may or may not be surmountable. Time will tell.

I wish you all the best of luck and support with that! Hope it will work out!

"Keep your best wishes close to your heart and watch what happens"
    Tony DeLiso

[Bumsakalaka]

Hi Scott. Thanks for this forum. And it's happy that it's going to continue in it's life. And say hello to your wife. Mine is also fan of Carcassonne, we changed our vacation in 2019 when she discovered that's real city which was rebuild from ruins. That she is fan of France, French and history, flying tickets was changed to this destination.

I like the dragon... My playing group doesn't... >

Haha, I'm only one in my group who want to play Barber-Surgeons ...

[Scott]

Does the wooden tile tower still exists, which I had build it for you?

Indeed it does!

[Scott]

Next to the meeple-shaped box is the wooden tower that @kettlefish made for me. Lurking behind in a red drawstring bag is The Adults of Carcassonne that Ted did a Kickstarter for back in the day, in both the rubberized and cardboard versions. The dice game sits in front, and the two Spiel Doch tiles for Carcassonne Safari are waiting for the game to arrive (ordered today on eBay).

On the left you can see C1 and C2 amongst the spinoffs. The ArtBin case on top contains everything for C1; I ordered a second case today on Amazon for my C2 collection. All the C2 minis are in the base game box, and I only have three of the boxes expansions, but that will improve in the coming months.



This little cart is how I’ve decided to store game mats. I need to get document tubes and transfer the rest of my game mats into them; right now they’re still in a box on the floor behind me.



Here is the play area. The black cabinets are packed full with various games. A fancy Monopoly set is currently taking up half of the table until I decide where to store it. I want to get a smaller secondary table and put it in the alcove on the left, but finding something small enough is a challenge and I’ve been focusing on other rooms of the house. Currently in progress on the table is a puzzle that my wife bought herself.

I’ve been busy trying to finish our library and my office. IKEA is having supply issues so it’s been a long process.


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