Thursday, July 14, 2011

Family Game Fest

  Earlier this week, The Boy came up with the idea that for the ten nights before his birthday next week we should play a different game every night.  He drew up a calendar, with randomly selected games to play each night and posted it on the fridge.  We began Monday night with Apples to Apples. Tuesday night it was In a Pickle.  Our family game festival will end next Wednesday, the night before his birthday.  

Last night it was:


We were only able to play for about an hour this time. Usually our SuperScrabble games go on for much, much longer.  I still won, though. Yay me!  I got to actually play the "Q."  Usually I get stuck with it at the end of the game.

Tonight we'll be playing Dutch Blitz, which is another really fun game. It's basically the card game I learned as "Nertz" but with a special deck of cards.  

I can't remember all the games in the line-up, but I know Yahtzee and Liverpool Rummy are on the list somewhere.  Liverpool Rummy is a game one of my cousins taught us all to play many years ago.  I have memories of playing that game around my Aunt Shirley's kitchen table, with my mother and various relations from our extended family.  No holiday would be complete without a game of Liverpool Rummy.  I miss those days.

Oh, I need to end this post now. I've got to get ready for my appointment.  I'm keeping the Ravages of Time away today....

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Play Us a Song, Piano Man...

A few weeks ago I walked in to pay a bill at our local gas company, and sitting in the lobby was a lovely little Kimball piano.  We've been looking for a piano for The Boy for a while, and it's been difficult to locate a nice used piano at a price that wouldn't make The Professor cringe and in a location that is not too far away, because moving a piano is no small feat.

So, lo and behold, there was this piano. I wondered why it was in the lobby of the gas company office.  The couple who own the gas company also attend our church, so I told Mrs. Gas Company one Sunday after church that I had noticed the piano in the lobby and asked if she'd be interested in selling it.  She told me that a lady from Memphis had been in our town to clean out her mother's house and had come by to see Mrs. G.C. at the office on her way back home. Memphis Lady had the piano on a trailer behind a truck and when Mrs. G.C. saw it, she offered to buy it from her.  They moved it in to the lobby and there it sat. She didn't really have a place in her house for a piano.  When I asked her about selling it, she quoted me a ridiculously low price and I almost fainted.  It was a price that would not make The Professor have hang-bangs, plus we would only have to move it a few blocks to our house.

The Professor worked out the details for getting the piano moved and he and the helpful piano moving volunteers from the college maintenance staff got it over here this morning.


I am going to have to re-arrange my living room furniture now,


 but I'm so happy The Boy has a real piano to play.   Thanks be to God!

One of these days I'll get around to posting about the second half of our vacation, my latest project around the house, and what I have been reading this summer.