Bowling, word games and more
Saturday, we all went to the airport, where I saw Melissa and Katie off for a week in Indiana. After they disappeared beyond the security area, I went back to the car and drove to Maine to stay with my sister Julie for a couple days. It was really nice. The first night, my brother George and his fiancée Annie came over and along with Julie's two boys, we played a rousing game of "The Name Game"... a game made up by one of George's friends. It involves everybody writing incomplete words, phrases, names to things, etc down on paper, cutting the paper up into individual segments, and everybody merging their stuff together in a hat or bowl. Then the bowl gets passed around, and everybody draws two or more (generally no more than four I think) scraps of paper out of the bowl and combining them into one complete "thing". For example, "The ____ little puppy" on one scrap, someone else wrote "with a gourd", and another wrote "controversial". Getting those three scraps, I had "The controversial little puppy with a gourd". Of course, someone hearing that would say "what does that even mean?" That's a great question, and that's generally the second part of the game, discussing just what the hell the things we come up with mean. Why is the puppy controversial? What's it doing with the gourd? Is it doing something offensive with it? Anyway, that's the game we played. It's a lot of fun with a big group, lots of people contributing different things. It's often vulgar when we play it, but that's part of the fun. Words like "clown" "hobo" "loaf" and various other words frequent the game, and often can be found multiple times if they are favored as being particularly amusing. At one point, one of my nephews had to ask his mom how to pronounce "Chlamydia". George and I had a mock argument over who said some particularly ridiculous phrase first, Han Solo or Greedo, ending with George insisting that Greedo said it first in the new version.
The next day, I played some Munchkin with my nephews, winning out of luck and their sheer determination to screw each other over rather than me. Afterward, we all hopped in the car, picked up George, and grabbed some lunch at Hot Supa, a nice little restaurant in Portland. After a good meal, we went over to the bowling alley where I treated them all to a couple games of bowling. The first game we played with the rails down, a real true bowling game, but I felt kinda bad for the boys, who seemed to be having fun but were getting lots of gutter balls, so the second game we put the rails up. I got high score for the first game, but totally sucked throughout the second game, and George scored ultra high for that one. Apparently he took classes in college.
After bowling, we dropped George back off at his place and went home, where we had pizza for dinner and watched Batman Begins. I was the only one who had seen it, partially because they had never really had any interest in it, until they saw the trailer for the upcoming sequel. They all really enjoyed it, and continued to borrow it so they could get George to see it, who had shared in their previous disinterest, and who they thought would also enjoy it.
Monday morning I followed Julie into Portland where she dropped the boys off at their father's for the week, and then we went to a nice but crowded little restaurant down at the waterfront where she treated me to breakfast before we parted ways: her to work, and me back home to Massachusetts so I'd be able to make a 2:00 appointment with my chiropractor. Breakfast consisted of three sausage links and the most fantastic bowl of fruit I'd ever seen. Julie was so dazzled by my bowl of fruit that she ordered one for herself, only to find that the banana they cut up for mine wasn't included with hers... instead she got grapes at the bottom.
I had a lot of fun spending time with all of them. I hope to visit more regularly in the future. I also found out that my parents are discussing possibly moving to Dover, NH... about halfway between me and Julie. I'm really excited about this, and hope that they do (no pressure Mom and Dad!). I'd love for them to be close by, able to visit regularly. I also like the idea that if my father wants to go up to Mountain View for a weekend, I can drive up to Dover and go with him.
Tuesday I slacked off. The only work I did was cleaning the litter box, which was much needed. The kitties got new litter... sawdust. They seem frightened of the box now. In the evening, I ordered pizza and watched the Final Cut of Blade Runner which arrived with the mail that day (thank you, Melissa! I love you!) Julie, if you're reading this... the changes made in the Final Cut really aren't noticeable. I couldn't see where anything was added or removed, except that Bryant says "four skinjobs" where he used to say five (which used to add a lot of confusion as to the mysterious fifth replicant).
The next day, I played some Munchkin with my nephews, winning out of luck and their sheer determination to screw each other over rather than me. Afterward, we all hopped in the car, picked up George, and grabbed some lunch at Hot Supa, a nice little restaurant in Portland. After a good meal, we went over to the bowling alley where I treated them all to a couple games of bowling. The first game we played with the rails down, a real true bowling game, but I felt kinda bad for the boys, who seemed to be having fun but were getting lots of gutter balls, so the second game we put the rails up. I got high score for the first game, but totally sucked throughout the second game, and George scored ultra high for that one. Apparently he took classes in college.
After bowling, we dropped George back off at his place and went home, where we had pizza for dinner and watched Batman Begins. I was the only one who had seen it, partially because they had never really had any interest in it, until they saw the trailer for the upcoming sequel. They all really enjoyed it, and continued to borrow it so they could get George to see it, who had shared in their previous disinterest, and who they thought would also enjoy it.
Monday morning I followed Julie into Portland where she dropped the boys off at their father's for the week, and then we went to a nice but crowded little restaurant down at the waterfront where she treated me to breakfast before we parted ways: her to work, and me back home to Massachusetts so I'd be able to make a 2:00 appointment with my chiropractor. Breakfast consisted of three sausage links and the most fantastic bowl of fruit I'd ever seen. Julie was so dazzled by my bowl of fruit that she ordered one for herself, only to find that the banana they cut up for mine wasn't included with hers... instead she got grapes at the bottom.
I had a lot of fun spending time with all of them. I hope to visit more regularly in the future. I also found out that my parents are discussing possibly moving to Dover, NH... about halfway between me and Julie. I'm really excited about this, and hope that they do (no pressure Mom and Dad!). I'd love for them to be close by, able to visit regularly. I also like the idea that if my father wants to go up to Mountain View for a weekend, I can drive up to Dover and go with him.
Tuesday I slacked off. The only work I did was cleaning the litter box, which was much needed. The kitties got new litter... sawdust. They seem frightened of the box now. In the evening, I ordered pizza and watched the Final Cut of Blade Runner which arrived with the mail that day (thank you, Melissa! I love you!) Julie, if you're reading this... the changes made in the Final Cut really aren't noticeable. I couldn't see where anything was added or removed, except that Bryant says "four skinjobs" where he used to say five (which used to add a lot of confusion as to the mysterious fifth replicant).