wideeyedfunk

Tag: camping

  • The world’s slowest rotating restaurant.

    I slurped my left-over broccoli soup dinner, “Huh?” I replied to the WideEyedSpouse.

    “It’s like we’re on the world’s slowest rotating restaurant,” the Spouse repeated. I gazed at him, thinking maybe those Left Hand Milk Stout Nitros were hitting him a little hard. They could rotate a room I guess.

    The Spouse had been thinking about the fact that we live on this spinning ball in the middle of an awesome hugeness and that gravity is the only reason we aren’t flung off. After dinner, he stood in the driveway while the dogs had an evening yard romp and stared at the stars. “If you look long enough, you can see that they are moving and that we are moving.”

    I don’t know what happened to the Spouse that he had a moment of awareness of the vastiness. Maybe it was triggered by our camping trip to the wilds a week or so ago. The night sky was huge, the Milky Way looked like mist flowing off the mountains around us. A couple of satellites zinged past, probably recording our campfire for the NSA. Walking from the campsite to the bathhouse was an exercise in balance, not because we got into the wine (ok, maybe a little), but because the stars and planets and satellites and UFOs for all I know were larger and brighter and more real than the crappy dirt road our Crocs were scuffling on.

    The dogs and walked the neighborhood this morning and I tried to feel the spinning planet, the wide universe. I thought about overcoming gravity and immediately worried about how Hamish and Miss Tibbit might engineer, ah, elimination, without it. Then I sat at my desk and commenced with the workday. In one of the world’s million slowly rotating offices.

  • The ubiquitous Martha Stewart soul.

    The organized and tidy soul of Martha Stewart lives in a camper visiting Allegany State Park in Western New York. The tendencies and preferences of the Martha soul are tempered by local idiosyncracy.

    Tip #1:: An empty cigarette box will keep your q-tips clean and organized during traveling.
    Tip: An empty cigarette box will keep your q-tips clean and organized during traveling.

  • You Funks and Your Damn Doubles

    After 23 years of losing at backgammon to Funks, the Spouse might have a valid point. We Funks tend to roll doubles. Kind of a lot.

    If you have never played backgammon it might be hard for you to get why he complains so much about Funks and Doubles. Here are the essentials: you have to move all of your pieces from A to B on the backgammon board. You move them according to the numbers you roll on your two dice. If you roll doubles, it is like you have four dice – you get to move four times instead of two. Double sixes are the EZPass lane. Sweet.

    Rolling doubles is fun. Rolling doubles makes a person smile with lucky joy. Rolling doubles makes a person feel smug, even if they try to not show it. Observing your opponent rolling doubles is annoying. It is like getting a mystery chunk in your nice cold glass of milk. You can overcome it the once but multiple offenses turn the whole thing sour.

    The Spouse learned to play backgammon in the summer of 1989 on the giant screened porch attached to the back of the Parents big old South Jersey Victorian. Two Brothers and I were home that summer (Younger and Older. Oldest lived elsewhere by then.) and we played backgammon a lot. Hours of evening backgammon while hungry bugs worked at the screens, desperate for our blood. Older Brother was almost unbeatable. Younger Brother played indifferently. If the Spouse wanted to spend any time with me, he had to learn backgammon. I think he learned about Funks and Doubles in his first game.

    I just asked the Spouse how many games of backgammon he has won from Funks over the years. He claims he’s had winning streaks. That there was time when he could not be beat. When I sniveled over losses. (I do not remember this.) Ok, I changed my question, how many times have you won against Older Brother? The Spouse shrugged and pretended to be busy with his iPhone.

    The WideEyedHousehold went on vacation last week. We did the back to nature thing and walked in the woods, had campfires, and when it rained we played backgammon. I rolled doubles more times than I did not. I won the first game. Best of three, we thought. I won the second. Because of abundant doubles. One more game, we said. I won. Doubles. A final game because the Spouse really thought he could do it. Halfway through he couldn’t stand it anymore. What’s up with you Funks and your  #%*!@$ing doubles!  I mean…really! Then he got a double or two. But he lost.

    Funks roll doubles. It is just one of those things. Sort of entertaining for us. Useful in the moment. Serving no greater purpose. I’ll take it. Rolling doubles is better than not.

    Game 3. Soon to be a loss for the Spouse.