{"id":768,"date":"2008-04-08T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T19:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=768"},"modified":"2008-04-08T13:50:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-08T19:50:00","slug":"live-from-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/08\/live-from-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Live from New York …"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"steubenapple.jpg\"We all go through changes in life as we grow up – schools, romances, marriages, kids, deaths, jobs and so on. Last fall, after fifteen years with one company (my 3rd after deciding I’d rather have money than a PhD) I got laid off with a bunch of others due to a slump in the semiconductor industry. Don’t worry – my life was never in real jeopardy: I learned the small-time version of ‘golden parachute’ when I realized my severance and stock grants and options would make sure that we were all set for nearly a year. Fortunately things got busy for me really quickly – I never had the chance for self-pity, and worked on a short-term job before finding a wonderful job with a wonderful company: Corning, Inc.<\/p>\n

I was born in a town south of Boston and after going to college in picturesque Troy, NY, I moved back to Massachusetts where I have lived for the past twenty years, including thirteen in our first and only house in a small town of 10,000 that is more NH than MA. Yet I guess Massachusetts has always been home – I never thought I would trade this:<\/p>\n

\"bostoncity.jpg\"<\/p>\n

for this:<\/p>\n

\"nyfarms.jpg\"<\/p>\n

But that isn’t really an accurate representation of what is going on, since I never lived in the city and am not moving to a farm town. I am really trading this:<\/p>\n

\"rhem_uhp.jpg\"<\/p>\n

for this:<\/p>\n

\"deckerbldg.jpg\"<\/p>\n

And more specifically this:<\/p>\n

\"bostonloc.jpg\"<\/p>\n

for this:<\/p>\n

\"corningloc.jpg\"<\/p>\n

We are right in the middle of moving to the Corning, New York area, and it has been an interesting process for the whole family.\u00a0 If you have moved many times during your life, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.\u00a0 As I said, for my wife and I this is our first and only house, so we wanted to ‘move up’ and also benefit from the things we’ve learned through the years (and the ways we got screwed buying our first house).\u00a0 For our kids, they have never known anything but this house, this town, their friends, and so on.<\/p>\n

As with everything else, gaming plays a role.\u00a0 For my kids it has been a way of dealing with the stress of tossing aside everything they have ever known and diving head-first into the unknown; of dealing with the ‘hurry-up-and-wait’ process; of doing something with their exhausted young bodies while deprived of proper access to normal kid-oriented activities.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the time to limit their time according to the clock, nor is it the time to over-analyze the content of their DS game choices: each one has choices that work to their personality.\u00a0 My older son played mostly LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Metroid Prime Hunters, while my younger son played mostly Master of Illusion and Naruto: Ninja Council 3.<\/p>\n

As of today we have spent our first night in the new house; have started the ‘punch list’ of things to discuss with the contractor; I have started back at work after a week-long absence to deal with the last minute surprises from the realtor selling our house; and our kids had a last visit to their schools to finalize paperwork before starting school tomorrow.\u00a0 The animals have settled in pretty well … as have the humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all go through changes in life as we grow up – schools, romances, marriages, kids, deaths, jobs and so on. Last fall, after fifteen years with one company (my 3rd after deciding I’d rather have money than a PhD) I got laid off with a bunch of others due to a slump in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}