BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’d start a Twitter account for this sort of thing, but I just don’t have time. Besides which, I’d just get myself accused of trying to capitalize on the “Dad Says” dude, and his success.

So, anyway, there we were, on vacation. I should probably write a vacation blog and tell all sorts of stories about how E K made us march through the woods and over huge boulders, all in the sweltering 95+ heat, with 12,000,000% humidity, but I’ll have to get to that later… Maybe… I guess it’s a we’ll see sort of thing.

Okay, so back to the real story here. There we were, on vacation, last night of the trip, and we were staying at The Davie School Inn. When we asked about “eats” the owner directed us to The Brick House restaurant, a couple of blocks away. A little eclectic fusion sort of bistro with interesting decor and good food. We even sat at the “Twister Table”… Seriously. It was painted like a Twister mat. Kinda weird, but kinda cool at the same time. After ordering up a couple of Mothership Wits for ourselves, and a Root Beer for the O-spring, we set about perusing the menu. When all was said and done, after salivating over the many wonderful sounding selections, believe it or not we all ordered sort of the same thing – E K had steamed mussels and a house specialty salad. I had steamed mussels and a spinach salad. The O-spring had… Yes… Steamed mussels, but instead of a salad she opted for French Fries. Odd combination, yeah, but hey… She’s a 10 year old. Besides, how many 10 year olds do you know who willingly order steamed mussels and then rave about them for two hours? Yeah, that’s our kid. Go figure…

But, that’s not what this is really about. Well… It is sorta, but not exactly. You see, as we sat there enjoying a wonderful dinner, some tunes were wafting in from above. This prompted E K and I to discuss our Vinyl Collection, because it has yet to be all converted to CD. In particular, we were talking about The Police and Sting. Why? Because a song by Sting was playing, silly.

Anywho, fast forward 10 minutes or so. The kid is blowing bubbles in her root beer, shoving French Fries into one side of her mouth, and discovering the creamy goodness of the steamed mussel broth at the bottom of her bowl. Yet another song by Sting begins pouring in from overhead. Being old, and because of that a bit addled, I looked at The Evil Redhead with a puzzled expression.

“That isn’t the same song we just heard a few minutes ago, is it?” I asked.

E K, being in the middle of masticating a mussel, held up a finger to indicate I should wait a second for her answer. However, before she was able to engage peristalsis and swallow the food, the O-spring spoke up.

“No, it isn’t the same song,” she said, then by way of explanation offered her personal analysis of the brass section content. “The other one was a lot more horny.”

E K choked on the half swallowed mussel. I spewed Mothership Wit all over the wall across from me. The server applied the Heimlich Maneuver to the redhead, propelling the glob of  seafood along a bizarre trajectory that landed it in the pale blue beehive of a 97 year old patron across the room who was trying desperately to enjoy a Bruschetta, even though she had forgotten her teeth. Another server who was attempting to avoid the shellfish projectile slipped, sending a tray full of chilled soup cascading across a party of 18 several feet away, prompting the…

Okay… So it wasn’t that dramatic. But, EKay’s eyes got really big, she half choked on the piece of garlic bread in her mouth, and I almost – not quite, but almost – spewed a mouthful of Mothership Wit across the table.

The O-spring looked at us and said, “What?”

E K leaned over and whispered, “You probably should have said brassy, because horny is a slang word that means someone really wants to have sex a lot.”

The O-spring having been through the “talk” at school, besides being brilliant as well, knew what sex happened to be – in theory.  Also, being 10, while she is familiar with the non-specific theory behind it, the subject is still residing in that “EWWW, GROSS!” area of her psyche. Personally, I’d like for it to stay that way until I’m dead, but hey, I’m a dad, and that’s how dads are.

So, since that’s where the concept resides, that’s what the O-spring said. “EWWW, GROSS!”

This was somewhat heartening, to say the least…

There was a moment of quiet, then she looked across the table and said, “You’re going to write a blog about this, aren’t you, Dad?”

Obviously, she hadn’t lost her faith in me…

(Aww, come on, quit groaning… you knew I would have to make at least one Sting song lyric related pun…)

More to come…

Murv

Competition, in and of itself, is a good thing. A bit of healthy competition helps folks to strive toward excellence. It forces them to work harder for a reward, thereby helping them become better at what it is they are competing over, about, around, on, under, or otherwise with.

In the marketplace, it even tends to promote a little better pricing here and there. Sometimes it even spurs honesty – but then again, sometimes it spurs dishonesty, which is a bit less than healthy.

But, we aren’t talking about the marketplace here today. What we are talking about is “healthy competition” among friends. A contest, as it were, on an impromptu family & friend game night.

And it all starts with coffee…

You see, a dear friend of mine – we call her DeathStar because… well, if you ever meet her you’ll understand… Anyway, this dear friend of mine is a coffee roasting hobbyist. Actually, I think she has migrated from hobbyist to professional in recent months, but the real point is that DeathStar  hand roasts and custom blends some of the most INCREDIBLE coffee on the planet. And, since I am her friend I am fortunate enough to receive freshly roasted – as in less than 3 days old – coffee beans on a regular basis. If you are a coffee drinker at all you understand me when I say this is almost literally a case of “Java Nirvana. ” The aromas when you open the sealed package, the aromas when you grind the beans, and everything else that comes along with it… Because of DeathStar I even went out and purchased a French Press… Well, actually E K picked it up for me, and she doesn’t even like the smell of coffee, which just goes to show you that even someone who hates coffee with a passion knows how to respect the “Beans o’ DeathStar”.

And so… I have this coffee. And, I have this other friend who is a coffee fanatic. We’ll call her Anastasia. We won’t, however, call her ‘Stasia Mae. Only her husband gets away with that. But, if we’re going to be honest, we mostly just call her Luets. Long story there… But, anyway, Luets is a coffee fanatic, and whenever I come into possession of the sacred beans, she shows up at my door. As was the case recently.

Luets and her husband came by for freshly roasted, ground, and pressed coffee one Saturday. After juicing several of the beans and sitting around talking it had progressed into the late afternoon, so we invited them to stay for dinner. Afterwards, as we all sat around drinking Vodka-Tonics the Evil Redhead decided we should play a game (see… now I need a friend who distills their own Vodka…)

Now, normally when this happens it usually involves me wearing a collar and fetching sticks, tennis balls, and various chew toys for E K. However, on this particular evening the Redhead was looking for something we could all do, and she didn’t have enough leashes on hand to accommodate everyone.

But, seriously… E K came up with the idea that maybe we should play Uno or some other card game. Since the O-spring was involved, we let her pick and she decided upon Phase 10. If you’ve never played it, Phase 10 is sort of like what would happen if Rummy and Uno had a child. It’s a lot of fun, and we really enjoy it. And, it’s healthy competition…

Or, so we thought.

You see, Luets is competitive. When I say competitive I don’t mean healthy competitive. I mean insano, take no prisoners, needs a straitjacket competitive. With everyone…

Her husband, Mike, however, is not what you would call competitive at all. He’s more along the line of “Yay! Everybody wins!”… In fact, he is sooooo diametrically opposed in “competitiveness” to Luets, that he will literally go out of his way to help someone else win, even if it costs him points. In fact, he readily admits that he is happy to lose as long as he is able to drive Luets up a wall. It seems that when it comes to games, making Luets crazy is Mike’s real entertainment.

And so, we discovered this… with extreme prejudice, mind you…

At one point during the game Luets used a skip card, but didn’t skip Mike, even though he wanted her to. The reasoning, announced loudly and without apology, was that, “You don’t play the cards right.” You see, had she skipped him it would have set him up to help someone else win on the next round. She knew he was going to do this and was vying to prevent it, all the while seething and generally turning into a psychopath whenever anyone would inch ahead of her. To give you a verbal illustration of her behavior, Luets was even going head to head with our 10 year old, and was being brutal.

Fortunately, the O-spring can hold her own, as I shall now illustrate…

During a later hand, as Luets whined, seethed, grumbled, and shrieked, it came around to the kid’s turn. O-spring was in possession of a skip card herself, and she played it. On Luets…

Well, I probably don’t have to tell you that Competition Girl immediately became pissy. She demanded to know why the O-spring didn’t skip Mike instead because in her mind that would have been a better play. Without missing a beat our 10 year old looked across the table and completely owned her by saying, “Because just like you said, he won’t play the cards right!”

Yeah… The O-spring doesn’t fall far from the tree… Next time we play cards though, I’m thinking we might need to dial back on the amount of DeathStar Coffee we allow Luets to drink…

More to come…

Murv