Quantity versus Quality

    Sorry it's been a while. I've been busy. Very busy. I'm in a new grade level this year and only in my second year of teaching in general; so I'm still figuring things out. Over Labor Day weekend, while my friends were posting on Facebook about their adventures at the beach,  theme parks, and other various outings, I went over district timelines and wrote lesson plans. In fact, out of the three days I really only got to do something fun on the final night. I played Mario Kart with my family for an hour before the kids had to head to bed. That's it. That's a pretty lame weekend if you ask me. I should be able to truly enjoy my weekend. So I got fed up, returned to a Facebook game (I quit playing them a couple of years ago), and stayed up 'till an ungodly hour playing rather than sleeping. Call it my rebellion against the system that steals my precious time with my family and that mythical me time, I guess. I decided an hour of fun wasn't good enough and stole from my sleep time to have a little more fun.

    I know you're dying to know what game I started playing again. "Is it a game I play? I really need another friend so I can level up, plus send me some items." Well, the odds are that you don't play this game (apparently ALL of my friends have quit playing it and moved on to the newest Zynga craze), but I'll tell you what it is anyway: Frontierville. Except now I think it's called Pioneer Trail, but you can play it under either name on Facebook. I don't know why, but I always liked playing that game. I never cared much for Farmville or some of the others, but Frontierville Pioneer Trail sucked me in big time. Now, I am super far behind and it's trying to give me about 50 missions at once. Those will be difficult to complete without any active friends, but I'm going to try it anyway. Look how busy my land is! It looked a lot busier yesterday, but I've cleared some stuff out.

    So, other than rebellion, why did I return to a life-sucking, time-consuming Zynga game? The short answer: it's easy, fast, and requires no thought. Personally, I'd much rather be playing a Nintendo game. My favorite games are any of the Legend of Zelda games, but I also really love Mario games (Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine), Harvest Moon games, and Endless Ocean. The problem with those games is that they have lengthy storylines and you need to be able to remember what goal you are working towards or where you are going between playing sessions. Unfortunately, I get to play so infrequently these days that I can't remember what the heck I was doing the last time I played and use up at least half of my time retracing steps and figuring out what I needed to do next. That's very time-consuming and frustrating so I've decided to abstain from playing those types of games for now. And that's why I'm playing a mindless, but fun game on Facebook instead. After all, I deserve to have at least a few minutes of fun everyday. This is definitely a case of quantity versus quality!

What do you do to have fun and relax on your days off? Do you choose (or get forced to choose) quantity versus quality?