Keep a-shining in June

I forgot something bunny_hugger and I did Wednesday evening: at my father's suggestion we went to the clubhouse. There's a game room there, and also putting green for golfers warming up, and a swimming pool and a fitness room, pretty much none of which I ever use except when the WiiFit is broken. Mostly I just don't have the time, and my mother never has the time; why my father never goes down I don't know, but I imagine the reason involves sighing.

We got there, wandering past a crafts room where the craft seemed to be the retirees drinking wine, and found the game room was quite dark. It didn't seem to be too late in the evening, though, and we turned on the light. While we didn't play the vaguely electronicized dartboard (we couldn't figure how to turn it on, for one) and gave ping-pong a pass, we did uncover one of the pool tables and set up a game of whichever game it was we did play.

As a pair we have some difficulties in playing pool; for example, I have only a dim awareness of the rules. This stripes-or-solids thing is about the best I can do. More importantly: neither of us is very good at pool. I think our best streak was three sunk balls in a row, but more often, we went upwards of forty shots without hitting anything relevant to the subject, and we were threatened with the prospect of her visit running out of time before we finished. And then after we did struggle our way to the end of one game, we played another round.

After that we gave shuffleboard a try, which came out very different in that I have absolutely no idea what the rules are, while bunny_hugger was vague on some of them, but got around to what seemed like a coherent set in time. The greater difficulty here seemed to be something vaguely wrong with the surface, with it too high-friction to make the game quite as dynamic and maddening as it could be. Also if there was a scoring chart somewhere near the board we missed it, and resorted to using the pool table's scoreboard. Despite the awkwardness of the game, we ended up having fun, and being glad nobody was peeking over our shoulders.

Trivia: Napoleon was in Paris for only 955 days of his 3,680 days of imperial rule (from 1804 to 1814). Source: The Age Of Napoleon, Will and Ariel Durant.

Currently Reading: The Trees Of Zharka, Nancy Mackenroth.