Heather and Andy came over last night for games. That would Andy Fisher, not Andy Crews, which, if you've been keeping track, is a good thing to note. Today was supposed to start Kris' vegetarian week, but, well, we pushed it off for a day to make tasty pizza this evening with various ingredients the four of us had from our respective refridgerators.

Sidenote: I remember in kindergarten having to circle the pictures of the items that began with R. I circled the rat. I circled the rake. I didn't circle the refridgerator, and so had a big red X over the refridgerator. I cried foul in whatever way a five year old can cry foul, and said that doesn't begin with an R. "What is it?" the teacher asked. "It's a fridgerator." She didn't count that one against me. Why I didn't think the rat was a mouse, I have no idea.

To start the evening, I pulled out all the board and card games Kris and I have. I dug to the bottom of the office closet to retrieve some of them, pulling them out for the first time in years, I think.

Each of us vetoed two of the games for the evening: ones we were tired of playing, or tired of losing at when we played, or didn't want to learn the rules, or didn't like the color or shape of the box. Once that round was done, we still had a large number of games left to choose among.

At Heather's suggestion, we decided to play a game of UNO before making dinner. Usually, it's a quick game. In our case, it was a quick disaster, with my "hey! check this out!" distracted call as I walked around the table, bumping the Rumis box, which hit the Fast Figure box, which jammed the Password box, which knocked over the beer bottle sitting on the other side, which spewed beer all over the cards.

Yeah, party fouls come quick and furious when I'm around.

After spreading all the UNO cards out on nearly all the elevated horizontal surfaces in the house, Heather and I wandered into the kitchen to make dinner. Kris is planning on trying a fully vegetarian diet for a week or so, but Heather and I thwarted his start by fixing pizza with a beef topping. We managed to use up some ingredients from her kitchen, as well as ingredients from our kitchen, so, even though Kris was thwarted, I was not in my goal to use up instead of toss out (as in, eat before it spoils).

Kris and Andy spent the baking time out in the living room playing Parlay. The cards for the game have both normal playing card numbers on them, as well as a Scrabble-like distribution of letters on them. Each hand is played as both a Scrabble hand, make the best word you can with the seven cards you've been dealt, as well as a poker hand, make the best five card poker hand you can with the seven cards you have.

After the pizza was in the oven, I wandered out to the living room with Heather, to see what Kris and Andy were up to. The two of them were fairly evenly matched when we sat down, I next to Andy, Heather next to Kris. We figured this was a good way to distribute the poker talent, as well as the word creation talent: Heather vs me, Kris vs Andy.

If only Andy were so lucky.

He had been able to keep up with Kris mostly on the word games, but, gah, after I showed up, his luck with the numbers completely disappeared. We managed a few five letter words, which was great, but we couldn't even eek out a pair. One single pair would have been great. Maybe even an ace high hand would have been great, but, noooooooooo. We managed Jack high hands, and that's the best five cards from seven.

I did the best thing I could for Andy.

I walked away,

Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, his luck improved. Who would have guessed I could be such a bad luck charm?

After a few more rounds, even without the removal of his bad luck charm, Andy lost handily on an all-in, had-to-go-for-it move on the poker hand that lost handily to Kris' four a kind poker hand. Go fig.

The next game up in our night of games was Carcasonne. Now, I've watched Kris and Doyle and Mark and Chookie and Keith and Martha and Tyler and others play Carcasonne a lot, but I started playing only this year. I have played all of five times before, never making it past second place, behind Doyle, behind Kris, behind Keith three times. Tonight was my best shot: two beginners and Kris.

We played the game as we explained a bunch of the rules. I played for a strong end game, hunting a large meadow, fishing a large river system. I ran though a lot of cities during the game to keep the early points going, but I concentrated on cities with the little gold nuggets in them, finishing them whether or not I would receive immediate points, and concentrating on the bonus cards instead.

My plan mostly worked, but not completely. Kris was hunting my largest meadow with me, with Heather sharing my river system. I had to play sneaky, but it didn't really help. In the second to last round, I was tied with Kris. Tied with Kris and he managed to connect a meadow he was hunting with the meadow we were sharing, giving him more guys on the meadow, pushing me out. In that round, however, my collect-the-bonus-cards plan came through, and I managed somehow to pull out the miracle card and claim the meadow for myself.

Yay, me! I won my first Carcasonne game! Whoo!

Spoons came next.

I remember watching my mom play spoons when I was younger. I remember the large group of people, all crammed in the dining room around the table, the cards passed around the table, the flurry of card matching, the mad scramble for a spoon as someone snagged the first one and everyone realized it.

Playing with three people changes the dynamic a lot: fewer spoons to grab, quicker cards being passed along, sneakier opponents snatching spoons with more subtly than a big group can manage.

After eight rounds of playing, with each of us taking two turns at dealing, each of Kris, Heather and me had lost 2 or 3 times, Andy hadn't lost a single round.

Not. A. Single. Round.

We decided to try to rectify that situation, and switched places. Since the table is rectangular, the persons on the ends were at a disadvantage for reaching the spoons or even passing cards. Andy and I switched, putting him on the end, and me on the side.

Didn't help.

We tried grabbing the spoons closest to him. We tried being subtle. We tried being obvious. We tried grabbing spoons and pushing the other ones away from Andy. Nothing helped.

Four rounds later, he still hadn't lost.

So, we tried another tact. We put the spoons in the far corner, close to Heather, and away from Andy. Around the cards went. When I had a matching four cards, I grabbed the closest spoon. Since I had to reach across the table, my gesture was quite obvious and Kris grabbed the spoon closest to him.

Heather and Andy immediately lunged for the third spoon. Both missed. Heather managed to toss the third spoon on the floor. Andy managed to grab my hand. "My spoon! Mine! Mine!" I cried out, as Kris called out, "The floor! Heather, on the floor!"

Andy heard Kris and lunged even farther in an attempt to launch over the table to reach the last spoon. Heather bent over and picked up the last spoon.

Ah, that victory was by far the sweetest.

Okay, so, there were other parts of today's hike that weren't about Blue (no, really!).

Andy shows me that we're here! Yay, the beach!

We found a really big tire on the beach:

Bella was very puppy-dog on the beach, with her ears flapping in the wind:

A very happy Bella:

Annie found a dead seal on the beach, and showed it to me just before she rolled all over it.

Poof! New beagle!

All in all, a good day:

Andy IM'd this morning and asked if we were interested in taking the dogs to the park. Go outside and play? Uh, yes? Kris had plans at noon, so wanted only to go to the local park. We went off to the park, three people, four dogs in tow.

I expected each dog to do his usual thing: Bella would sniff everything along the perimeter; Annie would run run run, then sniff along the perimeter, waiting for a lapse in our awareness to make her escape; Blue would chase the disc as long as Andy threw it; and Shadow would alternate between playing defense on Blue and hovering near one of the people for a quick snuggle.

To my surprise, Bella came out to play with us, chasing one of us when someone was running around, and dodging us when one of us was chasing her. She artfully zipped among the three of us, swerving in and out, juking one way and dashing the other when we made to cut her off. Bella pretended to be a 2 year old dog, and endeared her little heart to us.

Shadow also surprised me by chasing me down, nipping at my legs and herding me back to the pack when I tried to run down Annie, who had "wandered" away. When I turned on him and started chasing him, Andy and Kris joined in, turning the herder into the herdee.

When we were done, Andy asked if I was interested in heading to Ft. Funston, confuse the dogs by giving them not one, but TWO outings. I was up for it, so off we went. Although the trip was billed as a "fool the dogs and go on a hike," in reality it was, "display how inaccurate Kitt's timing is with her new camera."

Andy asked if I could take a picture of Blue mid-air. Sure! So, throughout the hike, I took pictures of Blue. Note, I didn't say I "took pictures of Blue mid-air." No, that would have required good timing on my part. instead, I managed an off-frame picture of Blue:

A distant shot of Blue:

A close shot of Blue:

Blue chasing birds in the surf:

Blue eating sand:

Way after a catch:

Just a little after the catch:

Waaaaaay before the catch to compensate:

And so far before the catch, Blue was still spinning:

But, you know, you take enough pictures, ONE of them is bound to be good, right?

Of course, there's the shot of Andy, to prove he was there, too:

Of my dogs, well, I have a lot of pictures of their butts:

It appears I'm starting my own tradition with my JW Blue.

Megan invited Kris and me over for Thanksgiving dinner. She knew we were orphaned this holiday, where "orphaned" is, of course, defined as too cheap to buy expensive tickets to visit our loved ones, opting to spend that money on flights to the Midwest for everyone to work on a house I bought instead. Or so I tell Kris.

I thought we'd have Mark and Megan, their parents, us, Doyle and Shirley, and maybe a couple of Mark's brothers. I was delightfully wrong, as we greeted Megan's parents, Mark's parents, Megan's sister (whom I had heard lots about, but only met in passing before), her significant other (who I've known for DECADES, but only after confirmed he was, indeed, more than 20 years old), all three Smith brothers of Kyle, Kevin, Matthew (who is now Matthew, and no longer Matty), both Smith grandmothers (though only one is actually a Smith), Mark's Dad's brother, his guest, his son and his significant other, a coworker of Mark's (another orphan), Kyle's Emily (who rocks, and hey, did you know she's beautiful in turkey dinner candlelight?), and Mirabelle (who slept thought much of the afternoon, and was the only person under 18 there (yay, Matty, er, Matthew).

I'm sure I'm missing a few others who were there, but that's just it: the living area was filled with three tables of people from four generations of Smith's. The house was filled with the smells of amazing food, and sounds of dozens of people talking in merriment. I can say that, because I sat at the children's table with Doyle and Shirley and Kris and Matty, er, Matthew, and Lucas and Kevin and Emily, with Kyle at the head of the table, and there was much merriment at our table.

After dinner, I wandered into Keith's office to work out a problem I've been gnawing on for a while now, from a personal site I've been working on. While I was working, many people came to visit with me, which was really cool, as I was able to catch up with them one-on-one in a quiet room instead of in a big crowd with lots of noise. Heather and Vinny and Vincent's mother showed up after dinner, with Heather being one of the people who came to visit with me. We talked for probably half an hour, which was about 25 minutes longer than any other conversation we've had. It was nice to finally talk to her, as we've been in the same social circle for years and never actually talked.

Rock Band started up about an hour after dinner, with the Smith Brother's Band rocking the house. Mark was on ocals, Kyle on drums and Kevin played guitar. Their first song brought down the house, with the entire family watching their musical exploits. Their second song was one that, well, Mark had never heard of, much less knew of, and, well, they failed that song. When they started back up again, Shirley grabbed the microphone as Mark's backup singer, and recovered their score.

The entire afternoon to evening to night event was wonderful and in some ways completely amazing. My family hasn't had the big family Thankgiving dinner since we stopped going to my aunt's house, many years ago. I miss that gathering and its festivities. I'm incredibly thankful that Megan and Mark let Kris and me share with their family's festivities.

I'm also amazed my kale dish was completely eaten. Even Mirabelle liked my cooked carrots. Of course, even brussel sprouts taste good with enough olive oil, garlic and balsamic vinegar, eh?