(This got a lot more wordy than expected, and I apologize in advance.)

I was born in 1965 and raised in a small town hidden among the lush green forests and crystalline blue lakes of Northern Wisconsin. To the North, the land is deep woods dotted with tiny lakes where the calls of Loons echo all summer long. To the East the land rises and county roads turn to gravel, then dirt, then muddy, rutted logging roads, then disappear altogether into the green darkness. To the West, the land flattens out, and farms and fields fill up the spaces between hedgerows. To the South, rocky pasture land competes with moist lowland forest, and ice-cold streams begin to join together in their run toward the Chippewa, the Mississippi, and on toward the Gulf of Mexico. It's an almost-mythical place; a landscape that exists as much in the mind as on the map. In order to get there you have to have an open heart, an adventurous spirit, and a devotion to beauty.

You might think I romanticize the place a little bit.

I say all that because I think growing up in what I felt (and in many ways still feel) was the best place on earth pretty much set the course for my life. I have traveled very little, and I have no desire to move much farther away from my birthplace than I am right now, which is roughly 90 minutes to the south (less if I take the freeway, much, much more if I take the backroads. And I love to take the backroads).

My parents owned a grocery store in that small town, and my grandparents on my father's side had it before them. My great-grandparents on my mother's side had a store just up the block, and prior to that another store in a nearby town. Retail is in the blood.

So when I went away to college in Eau Claire in 1984, I pretty much expected that one day I would return to my home town and take over the family business. As if tempting myself to choose another path, I majored in Communications and Journalism, and for a couple years post-graduation, I worked in the news department of a local television station directing newscasts and as a photographer. Which I loved.

And then the corporation that owned our station closed down our news department to save money. So I took a similar job at another station, which also closed down several months later. After that came a series of odd jobs that I only vaguely remember right now, having sort of a blurry-lensed view of my twenties. Finally, more out of desperation than any sincere calling, I decided to go through a training course and placement service for youth ministry. It's crazy now that I think about it. I had been working with the high school students at my church, and didn't really enjoy it at all. But I wanted to enjoy it, and I thought this training course would fix this perceived defect. I really threw myself into it, but after a week of the 8-week course, I figured out that it wasn't for me.

So I went back to that small town after all, to work side by side with my dad at the family grocery store to see if taking over the store was in my future. I'd worked there all the time growing up. It was a guaranteed summer job. But this time my dad began to let me start running the place and making actual decisions.

But something happened. I'd been in Eau Claire long enough that I had started to grow attached to the place, which came as a great surprise to me. So nine months after I'd decided that the grocery business was my future, I quit -- this time for good -- and returned to Eau Claire to help a former boss start up a publishing company. I don't know if my dad was disappointed or relieved. It's not like we always saw eye to eye, and working together so closely -- both of us adults this time -- did tend to cause a bit of strain. However, I look back on those nine months with fondness because I really came to understand my dad a lot better. For most of my life I'd strived to be different than him, but I began to see how much we were alike in ways I didn't expect.

I'm getting long-winded . . . sorry.

For the next eleven years I worked for Progeny Press (a company name I always felt was awkward at best). Progeny Press was and is a small publisher that produces curriculum marketed toward home educators and Christian schools. The emphasis is on literature, and for over a decade I wrote and edited literature study guides. I always thought it would be fun to have a job where you got to read books and write about them. And it was, . . . but maybe 11 years doing anything will eventually cause burnout.

Here's my biggest regret in life so far. I should have inquired about a temporary leave of absence just to recharge my low deposits of creative energy. Instead, when offered a position at another company in town, I jumped at it, even though it was a trial position that was only guaranteed for about a year. And sure enough, 12 months later the bosses decided that they didn't need this new position after all.

I was absolutely fine with that, because 12 months at that company had showed me that some businesses are completely dysfunctional. Though I was offered a different position at the same company, I turned it down. By this time, I'd begun developing a freelance business of my own, doing page layout and design for a few local clients, and I'd had enough business that I was working all day, and then going home and working all night.

When my wife and I married, we talked about our "five-year-plan," which was that within five years I would develop my freelance business into a full time business, and it seemed like the right time. That was in 2005, and I've been working from my home office since then. Unfortunately, I still haven't got enough regular clients (or the right kind of projects) that this business could be the sole source of income for our family, but thankfully my wife still works half-time. Poor thing.

Man, . . . I do go on.

My wife and I married in 2002. We met and fell in love over a game of Sequence in which she cheated for me. (See this Geeklist: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/12127)

She knew that I came with Geek baggage, which at the time manifested itself in the hundreds of hours of Star Trek and other Sci Fi I'd recorded. The Gamer-Geek side of my personality had been suppressed by too many years of party games among our group of single friends. When another couple we know introduced us to Settlers of Catan in 2005, the Gamer-Geek side reemerged. Since then, I have been neglecting my other vices.

I've recorded the childhood portion of my gaming history in this Geeklist: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/16417

Apologies for not getting around to part 2 yet. Had I known that I would be Geek of the Week, I would be up to parts 3 and 4 by now.

I should probably cut this off before it turns into a book.

Thanks for the honor of being Geek of the Week. I look forward to answering questions because, if the above gives any indication, talking about myself is my favorite subject.

Okay, the ol' Two Truths and a Lie game:

1. Several years ago, I was visiting a friend at his uncle's house up north, just sitting on the couch, minding my own business, when a deer came running out of the woods and right through the front door. It attacked me, knocked me off the couch, and then just stood there looking out the window. My friend's uncle took this completely in stride.

2. I can be seen at least three times in the Rodney Dangerfield movie "Back to School," which was filmed at UW-Madison. My friend and I drove down one day during filming, and ended up as extras. I've still never seen the movie all the way through, though I have seen "my" scene. I can be seen waiting in line to register for classes with all the other students. It wasn't nearly as exciting as we thought it might be. We found that actually registering for classes involved much less standing around.

3. The shortest I ever held a job was only four hours. I got a job at a greenhouse, thinking that the highly-oxygenated air and the smell of fresh soil would make for an energizing work environment. But when another worker nearly killed me with a forklift, I decided that it was best to escape while I still had all my limbs. I went to the head office and told the boss, "Let's pretend this never happened." She nodded in a very knowing way, and I walked out. Never got paid for my four hours, but I didn't care. I was alive.

1) Your avatar, your geek badge....Explain.

2) You rate Louis XIV as your top game. What, for you, marks this out above every other?

3) What colour is YOUR colour when you play? What colour is the most hated of colours?

4) If your wife span a 180 on you and announced you could only keep ONE game in your collection, and you decided that your love for her WAS more than your love for games, which game would you keep and why?

5) I see you blog. As a non-blogger what do you get out of the experience and why do you do it? Did you ever write a diary?

6) You're on a desert island. You look out as the ship sinks on the horizon and see a sealed box floating towards you. Eagerly you rush back out into the surf and drag it in. Inside is a solar powered(?!) TV, DVD player and CD player. There are also a small collection of DVDs and CDs. Name five movies and CDs you'd want with you on that desert island.

7) Which game would you ALWAYS turn down? The game that makes you grind your teeth in hatred, frustration and annoyance?

. . . our next Geek is the cranky uncle who turns up at family weddings, drinks too much bucks fizz, tries to get your old great grandmother up to dance, and complains when the DJ doesn't play "I am the music man".

I've got nothing to ask you since you've told us everything! :P

My mother lives in the U.P. and we often drive home from her house through Wisconsin because it's shorter than going through Michigan, plus Wisconsin is so pretty. I can see why you love it.

Oh, I do have a question for you! What games have you tried with your kids?

Congratulations Drew! A well-deserved nomination.

1) What is your favorite image that you've uploaded to this site?

2) I see that Reef Encounter is another game you've rated as a 10. What would be your response if someone told you this game is simply a "poor man's version of T&E", something I've heard but don't agree with myself?

3) I see that you have the "Trader" microbadge. What's the best game trade you ever made?

4) If you could add one new feature to BGG, what would it be?

5) Which of your 21 Geeklists took the effort to create?

All right, Drew! Congratulations!

I've enjoyed the on-line gaming we've played - and I believe you've played on a lot more sites than I have. Please tell me your top five on-line gaming sites, ranked (if you can). Thanks, and I hope you'll be able to make it to BGG.CON.

Way to go, Drew!

Okay, the Slurpee packing plant next to your house has been the target of a nefarious plot by some evil genius to drown the world in cold, Mountain Dew Slurpee liquid. Long story short--your house is filling with neon green goo, and you can only save 5 books: What do you grab?

Congratulations Drew, on being chosen as geek of the week.

One thing that's always puzzled me (aside from your avatar, which has already been explained)... is the 1365 in your username... is that a significant year or is there any other significance to it?? (sincere apologies if I've just revealed your pin number or something!! )

yay Drew! Congrats on being Geek of the Week!

I also suspected there must be some sort of secret midnight rituals one had to participate in before becoming GotW. Or maybe you had to play that one super-secret-fantastic Eurogame, the one that everyone who's ever played it rates an 11; the game that is such a closely-guarded secret that it's not even in the database. I heard someone once submitted an image of Aldie, Morgan, and Alan Moon playing this fantastic game. It was immediately removed from the database, that user's account was instantly deleted by a watchful admin, and it was said that the user himself had all his fingers so horribly dislocated that he was never able to log on to BGG again.

I'm drawing a blank here. I really like most games, and if I'm lucky enough to find someone who'd play something, I'd probably go along with it. But I'm guessing it would be a party game like Cranium.

But the 1365 is simply my birthdate and year. September 13th, 1965. My wife's birthday is December 13th. We were married on April 13th. We have no fear of the number 13 at all. In fact, this year our anniversary is on a Friday the 13th! Whee!

Thanks Sandy! Sandy's been a great on-line opponent as well, and seemingly always willing to try something out.

Not Canasta?

My daughter will gain hearing on Friday the thirteenth. This is after a series of being the bad pointy end of the statistics. Good thing we also have no fear of the number 13!

(Edit: We were married on Sep 11th.)

Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin - I just love the way Helprin writes. He's one of the writers I was talking about above who can create an image that just stays with you for years. I've liked all of Helprin's books, but Winter's Tale is my favorite. It's a strange, magical-realist story of New York, a burglar who falls in love with the daughter of a newspaper magnate, a mysterious cloud wall that seems to act as a barrier between time and eternity, a flying white horse, a criminal obsessed with creating a room made of gold and sealing himself in, a Brigadoon-like village in upstate New York, a world-famous bridge-builder who might possibly be a fallen angel, a primitive group of people who live in New Jersey, unchanged by time, and . . . well, a whole lot more than that. It's hard to describe and it has something to do with how everything makes sense when viewed from a point of view outside time, and I'm reading it for the third time, and I think I'm just beginning to get it.

Mark Heard . . . poor dead Mark Heard. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Heard) I will choose Dry Bones Dance (1990) by Mark Heard, which was sort of a comeback album for him. Not that he really went anywhere. But he'd released an album a year from 1978 through 1985, then didn't release an album under his own name until 1990. (1987 he did the album Tribal Opera as iDEoLA, playing all the instruments himself, and it was a bit overproduced.) But in 1990 he came back with a rootsy, acousticky album that remains unmatched. He did two more albums (Second Hand, Satellite Sky) and then died in 1992 some weeks after suffering a heart attack while performing at Cornerstone Festival. Some friends of mine were at that final concert. I did get to see him in concert a few years earlier, at a time that I was only vaguely familiar with his music. A shame, really, because had I been more familiar I probably would have appreciated it more.

Satellite Sky did it for me. I hadn't listened to him for years, but I found Satellite discounted because the case was cracked and I took a chance. I played that with a dropped jaw. He'd changed over the years, and the musical and lyrical maturity was astonishing. Then I found out he'd died and was crushed.

Why the turnaround in your feelings toward abstracts?