One Down, One To Go

Greetings,

The marathon, 10.000 point Uno game with the daughter is finally over and I have emerged victorious.  Actually, the outcomes was never in doubt after about 300 games or so.  Here is a chart of the lead over the course of the game…

The daughter was leading for the first (7) games and then I led for the final (423) games.  I won 229 games and she won 193 games (there were an amazing 8 ties where the loser only had 0’s in their hands).  She was a trouper and played until the end even when it was just to get the whole thing over with.  She is a very gracious loser.

The son on the other hand, well that is a different story.  We are about 250 hands into our match and I have a 1,024 point lead.  The son is convinced I am cheating.  He says I am cheating when I go out and catch him holding high cards.  He says I am cheating when he goes out and I have only low cards in my hand.  He says I am cheating when HE gets to call the color (after paying a wild) and HE picks the EXACT color that I need to go out.  I shuffle thoroughly, I even let him cut the cards and yet he still thinks that somehow I am cheating.  I tried to explain that if I had that kind of power over the 108 card Uno deck, I would not be killing time in Kokomo but rather hitting the tables in Vegas.  He has no idea what I mean when I say that.

The wife had some extra blow money from substitute teaching a while back and she used it to buy a gas grill.  It sat in the back of the van for a week and then in the garage for 2 weeks (still in the box) but today I decided to tackle it.  I unpacked it and surveyed all the parts and did an inventory to make sure I was not missing anything (this was actually step one of the instructions).  Step two was to put the legs on the base.  It was simple, it said, “Attach legs to base as shown” and then with a grainy, black and white picture it gave you a vague idea of where to stick the bolt into what hole.  What it did NOT tell you was that it MATTERED which direction the OTHER holes on the legs were pointing.  Now, you do not need those holes until step ten or so and by the time I reached that step I had a decision to make.  Take the whole thing apart and start over or press on and hope that a missing bolt (or three) would not matter in the whole grand scheme of things.  I chose option B (as if you ever had a doubt) and pressed onward.  I got as far as step sixteen when I realized that not only had I put (3) of the legs on backwards but I had also used the wrong bolts and now could not complete step sixteen.  Now I was met with another decision but this time I had either to start over or go to the hardware store to buy more bolts of the size that I needed.  I decided that option B was best again and I will have to put the assembly on hold for now as the wife has the van and the Buick is out of commission until we can get it into the shop (this is why I decided to blog, to kill some time until the van is back).

We have more kittens underneath one of our back sheds.  I have not seen them yet but the wife and daughter have and the dogs want to go outside continually.  Once outside, all they do is sit, perched and staring at the base of the shed eagerly anticipating some kind of movement and sound.  Nina is particularly bad and will sit and stare for an hour or more at a time.  I would not want to go up against her in any type of patience game.  I will have to keep you posted on the kittens as the story develops.

Jon