This week’s T-SQL Tuesday is about where you use databases in your personal life. And I have a database I don’t use any more that’s a little happy and a little sad. For the first year of my marriage, I would track every time we played a board game together.

Of course, some may question if it was really a database. We kept the data in Google Sheets. It was ugly data; if we played multiple games in a day, I didn’t always put in all the dates. I didn’t always spell games the same way. I had different entries for which configuration of Star Realms we played, even though it was the same game.

One thing that was really useful was seeing which games Annie kicked my butt at. Or to see which games we played the most. Magic the gathering is in there twice because I did’t always spell it the same way.

After a while, we didn’t play quite as frequently and all the data entry started to wear on me. I even played around with making a PowerApp to make it easier.

In the end though, I stopped keeping track. Maybe at some point I’ll start again. I find it strangely satisfying to have this bizarre log of the first year of my marriage. During that time, we played about 90 distinct games about 220 times. We had a lot of fun and still dedicate 9 PM to 10 PM as our date hour, but will watch movies or play video games too now. And ultimately, we started what has been the best decision of my life, which was getting married.