Snow Outage

We got our March snowstorm early this year - a couple of inches during rush hour. That didn't stop poker though - 10 players and it came down to me vs the Borchs. I doubled each of them up when their pocket pair was better than mine. Luckily, Katie took out Rob but as she was gathering her chips the power went out, then on, then out, on, out. Outside the bay window we saw two huge flashes of light, sort of like lightening. Then nothing. It's two hours later and still no power. We finished by flashlight - Katie won! Being the only two girls we did call for an all-girl heads up when we were the short stacks, so our psychic abilities are intact!

The power stayed off, but our friends are troopers and stayed for a second game. We played by laternlight and the second game ended much like the first, but with Nick taking 2nd instead of me. It was a fun poker night!! I just hope the power comes back on soon (I'm writing this via Nick's cell phone - will fix it up later).

The Wait Is Over

Nick beat Dave and me at Empire Builder tonight!! It was a close race at the end but he had it easily in hand. We also read the rule variations in the instruction book and came up with a couple of interesting possibilities for the next time we play. We're looking forward to it.

Games, Games, Games

Despite the Scrabble debacle, we've still been playing games. That same night, Nick beat me at Trains, but I've beaten him twice since then. Yesterday we proved that we are slaves to advertising by going out to eat at Houlihan's after getting a coupon in the mail earlier that morning. The food was pretty good, not outstanding. Afterwards, we swung by Coldstone to get some dessert to take home with us.

As we were waiting in line Nick's phone rang; it was Smeeta! So we took our ice cream over to her and Dave's where we ended up playing 20th Century Trivial Pursuit (the weirdly impossible version). Smeeta and I decided we would take on all the guys (Nick, Dave, Ed and Jeff) and we managed a come-from-behind win by knowing that the Forrest Wood fishing competition is a bass-fishing competition. Ok, maybe that was a guess, but it doesn't matter because we beat them! It was our first question in the middle too!

Ice Fishing!

Last weekend I finally made it out to the ice house. The guys are still in the same spot they were before and they are still catching lots of perch! The new roof makes the whole thing nice and cozy.

Ice House 2008

Fish in the hole!

Nick and Ed each pulled up a fish at the same time!

Sergei's "Big Catch"

Beyond that, we are just staying warm at home. Nick and I saw another movie, Dan in Real Life, and went to Granite City with Ed and Dave. Nick and Dave won at tennis for a second consecutive week and I got to go to a free show at Acme courtesy of Ed's birthday. Neither of us did very well at poker this week.

Today is a gorgeous day. The snow is melting and Nick and I felt comfortable as we were running errands. It wasn't a pain to walk from the car to the store and back out again! I got a new battery for my cell phone (hopefully this fixes the problem) and Nick bought a new racquetball racquet (maybe he can beat James now). We even took a walk around the block when we got home!

Scrabble Hates Me

I pulled my new letters from the bag and made "BUTCHER" - but no where to put it. After I tried to sneak a word past Nick and he challenged successfully, I realized there was a spot that it could have gone if I had noticed it. I then made the word "BUT" and pulled out "TEA". Couldn't get that on the board either and had to settle for "TEACH". Finally, I pulled out FELD. Yes, three turns in a row and I didn't get a single one of them on the board. Final score: Nick 308 to Karin 280. He was happy to finally win a game against me; I've been on a great win streak lately.

Domination!

Dave and Ed came over tonight to share some of the ice house fish, followed by a game of Empire Builder. Apparently, all my recent practice against Nick paid off because despite having a slow train for about 10 turns longer than everyone else, I won quite convincingly!! It was a sleeper win too - no one noticed all my Mexico City/LA routes adding up to big money until it was too late. It's only 11 PM but everyone's heading out and we're going to bed too. Quite the exciting Friday night.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Nick and I didn't really celebrate. We both worked late, then came home and exchanged cards that were on Woot today. Then it was flying out of the house and over to Sergei's for poker. We got there early and ate pizza - yum! We had 8 players and Nick and I did pretty well: 2nd and 3rd. Ed beat us both! Hope your day was fun for you too!

I did it!

The 96-page monster scrapbook is done! I plan on making the next one a more reasonable 60 pages - I already have all my September pictures printed out and ready to go!

The DeSantification Process is Complete

Christmas is officially over. I took down the Christmas cards on Thursday after work (I liked how cheery they made that corner of the kitchen but I was sick of sweeping up glitter!) and today Nick and I made up the bed with our wedding quilt again so the Christmas quilt is folded up and put away. There are no signs of the holiday anywhere.

We had a pretty low-key weekend. Saturday we went to another movie - August Rush. It was interesting but SO SLOW! The movie could have easily been about 45 minutes shorter without losing anything. I don't know if I could recommend it just because it was so slow. Rent it maybe and you can fast forward to the end of scenes. We also played a game of Empire Builder (won by me) and ordered pizza. Today was also pretty boring - church, a little shopping, and two games of cribbage (split). We are enjoying our time spent quietly at home though!

Poker Hosting

We had a very good turnout for poker this week - 13 players and 4 non-players. I started off with two awesome hands and things quickly went downhill from there. Nick, however, finished 4th. Ed was the big winner - he fought back from a rough beginning and managed to take it all. We were also celebrating Rob's birthday and the cards obliged him. Rob played pocket 7s against Ed's pocket 2s and a pair of 5s, a 2 and a 7 showed up on the board. So they both had boats :)

I also played in a 6 person "speed poker" dollar game. We raised the blinds every 5 minutes, so it was possible to miss an entire blind level. It was fun - probably more so because I won and got $4!! Woohoo!!

Most Efficient Trains Game EVER

Nick and I just finished a game of Empire Builder in about 65 minutes! Wow! We both had lots of good routes and the final score was close: 272 to 262. Good practice for next time Dave comes over.

Useless Information

Worth a laugh nonetheless:

I often have trouble estimating the size my plastic cultery will be.

Beyond Football

We had a fun weekend! On Friday night, Dave came over for random stir-fry. Nick mixed a bunch of small bags of frozen veggies together to clean out the freezer and served it over rice. It was delicious and now we have more space. We played three games and everyone won once so it was nicely balanced. Nick and Dave each won a game of Puerto Rico and I won Empire Builder, handing Dave his first loss since the very first time he played.

On Saturday, Nick and I slept in then tore through the cleaning before heading out to have some fun. I saw Enchanted with Jess. It was so cute! I loved all the Disney movie spoofs in it. Both of us were glad that we went with each other and not our husbands though - I think it would have been another movie where Nick asked if we could leave halfway through. I am impressed that Dave sat through the entire thing! Afterwards, we went shopping at Archivers. I bought a ton of paper. Now if I only had some pictures I could finish up the blue scrapbook and start on the green one. Yes, I am obsessed! Working on August now and I barely took any pictures in January so it should go pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, Nick went out to the ice house. They had a ton of people crammed in there and the fish were biting! I got home and the sink was full of live fish! He didn't count them, but I am looking forward to the perch fry soon.

Nick's fish!

Also on Saturday, Mom and Dave swung in for a visit after dropping off some furniture for Thomas. We made tacos for supper and Mom and I played Trains while Nick and Dave talked. It was a close game, but I won. Sunday morning, Nick and Dave went on a Fleet Farm mission to find a creamer and then stopped out at the lake so Nick could show off his ice house. Mom and I played an old favorite while they were gone: Priscilla! I started off pretty slow and Mom won the first game, then I came from behind to win the second. In the tie-breaker, it was back and forth until the final round when I managed to win again! Luckily Mom doesn't mind losing. :)

What a great weekend. We're having fun staying home in 2008...wonder what happened to that travel bug???

Bittersweet

The game today was pretty bittersweet - on one hand, I was a little sad because we elected not to have a party this year and because Green Bay wasn't in it. On the other hand, it was actually the best SuperBowl in the last couple of years, the Patriots lost, and there were a few good commercials. My favorite was Shaq as a jockey, although the Jeter/Manning one was good as well.

Congrats to the New York Giants!!

Random Activities

Sunday night when Nick got home we decided to go out and avoid the wet carpets for a while. So we headed off to the movie theatre and saw Charlie Wilson's War. I was a little surprised that it was at the dollar theatre already - Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks? Regardless, Nick and I both enjoyed it. Since the kitchen was also a mess (all the stuff not in the sunroom was in there) we stopped at Arby's for supper afterwards.

Wednesday night, we got our pictures taken for the church directory. I think we looked pretty sharp - I can't wait to get our free 8x10. We've been debating whether to cover up the engagement photo or the wedding photo with it. Do we ditch the 2 year old picture or the 18 month old picture? We don't really need a 3rd 8x10 of ourselves displayed in the living/dining room area! Since we were already dressed up we decided to try out Pittsburgh Blue - a new steakhouse in Maple Grove. It's a fancy place though and we've never felt dressed up enough to go there before. The food was fantastic! Nick had a porterhouse and I had a New York Strip on the bone (never had that on the bone before). We shared a tear-apart bread and hashbrowns, then had a piece of Red Velvet cake for dessert. Scrumptious!

Thursday we skipped poker, so no wonderous bragging stories this week. Maybe Ed can comment and let me know who won. We stayed home and cleaned up instead. Not extremely interesting but we're happy with the progress being made. We're almost back to our pre-carpet cleaning state! Now all I want for tonight is a game of Empire Builder - shouldn't be too hard to make Nick indulge me!