Month: November 2022

Chicago Cribbage Rematch 2022!

Since it has been almost a year since we last played Chicago Cribbage, we decided it was high time to break the laws of cribbage again. Short story—I won this year. Sena won last year, so we’re even.

We played to 61 because the game can take an eternity to play using the Chicago cards: Deal Again, Cut Again, No Fifteens, Trade Hands, and Reverse Count. Each player gets 7, two each of the Deal Again and Cut Again. See the web page for the full rules.

 The Chicago Cribbage 7 is now your license to cheat. You can demand to deal again and cut again at will if you don’t like your cards. The other Chicago cards are even more brutal.

You can deal again and cut again all you want, but you’re screwed if Reverse Count is played. However, the damage you cause for your opponent by playing the Reverse Count, while cruel, be mitigated by your opponent playing the No Fifteens card. If you can’t count fifteens, you can’t count backwards. Playing the Trade Hands card can backfire in a big way, trust me. You win by being merciless.

The artwork on the cards fits the criminal theme of the gameplay. There are pictures of gangsters and gun molls.

By the way, a few words about the background picture of Crystal Gardens in the video. It is or maybe it’s more accurate to say it was at Navy Pier. When we vacationed in Chicago in 2007, we went to Navy Pier, but neither of us can recall actually going to the Crystal Gardens.

When we searched the web, we discovered that we had missed what many Chicagoans felt was a Chicago icon. Thousands signed a petition protesting the plan to close Crystal Gardens as described in a web article in 2021. The plan is to replace it with something called the “Digital Entertainment Experience.”

That sounds like something anybody who has a smartphone can get these days.

We have a lot of fun playing Chicago Cribbage—although it can be a little frustrating. Give it a try for a change of pace!

Announcements!

Attention, I have announcements!

We got a message today about our Sasquatch Cribbage Board. It is being carved!

The Amaryllis flower, Star of Holland, which will be red with white accents, is now 9 inches tall!

Deer are feasting in our back yard even as I write this!

Sena and I had a Chicago Cribbage rematch today. There will be a post tomorrow with scintillating video of the action. Don’t miss seeing the winner and champion of the galaxy!

Coffee Talk

We got a new coffee maker the other day and it’s a Black and Decker. That brand name threw me for a loop just by itself. I’m used to hearing about Black and Decker power tools. But believe it or not, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of Black and Decker coffee makers.

I looked this up on the web. In fact, the Black and Decker company didn’t start marketing coffee makers until the 1980s, I think. It was called the Spacemaker Coffee Maker because it would fit under kitchen cabinets.

Sena tells me we had a Black and Decker coffee maker a long time ago, but I don’t remember it. Then we went with Hamilton Beach, then Mr. Coffee. We also had a Keurig, but the coffee pods were really expensive. This Black and Decker replaced an old Mr. Coffee. The clock didn’t work on it, a problem that I think got started after the derecho a couple of years ago.

Anyway, the Black and Decker is a 12-cup thermal programmable. The number of cups we get out of it is 8, and I think that happens with every coffee maker we ever had which bills itself as a 12-cup. I wonder how big they think most coffee cups are?

It has a smart-looking stainless steel thermal carafe and something with an interesting name, “VortexTM Showerhead.” It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s a gadget that looks like a red showerhead that’s designed to provide even saturation of the coffee grounds for “optimal water flow for maximum flavor.”

It has a digital LCD clock, like most coffee makers have, but it’s not backlit. You can see the clock but you have to squint at it. You almost have to use a magnifying glass to see the word “STRONG” which appears when you press the button for strong coffee, which we like.

The user manual suggests (in bold face type) to fill the carafe with hot tap water and empty it before brewing. This is an extra step which is supposed to warm up the carafe and help keep coffee hot. It takes extra time and we don’t think it makes a bit of difference.

We’ve been drinking coffee a long time. It’s actually good for you. Some claim it can even reduce the risk of depression, but I would take this with a grain of salt. If you took that sentence literally, then coffee might not do much of anything for you. You can get too much caffeine, but other than that, it’s good for your health.

I guess you can use it to dye your gray hair, which is funny. You just brew some coffee, rub it into your hair, and right away your hair is much more alert.

What About Social Media?

I read this article about social media last night, written by Rachel Young, PhD, Associate Professor, Undergraduate Studies.

It made me think about my WordPress blog and my YouTube accounts. I ask myself what I’m doing with them.

I like to think I’m doing the right things with them. I use a sense of humor and try to use common sense. I never drone on about politics because I feel bad about what’s happening with it most of the time. I don’t want to spread that around.

I stopped accepting comments on YouTube years ago because all I seemed to get were spammers. Frankly, I get a lot of that on my blog as well. But I also have commenters whose opinions I respect.

I used to have accounts with Twitter, Facebook (I guess that’s called something else now?), and LinkedIn. I dropped all of them a few years ago, mainly because all I did mostly was copy my blog posts to them. I found a web article, the title of which indicated there are more than 133 social media platforms.

Why?

Blogging is a part of social media. I don’t get much traffic. I don’t mind that so much when I realize how much of the traffic is negative and empty.

I blog because I really like to write; I always have. I kept one blog going for about 7 years and dropped it because I was unhappy with how personal information was being collected and what it might be used for.

I also didn’t think the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) didn’t treat hobby bloggers (like me) fairly. That was the main reason I dropped my first blog. I don’t collect anyone’s personal data. Hey, let’s be clear. Social media does that. I’m not trying to sell anything here. I’m just trying to have fun and share that with anyone who’s interested.

I wasn’t going to write this much about social media. I guess that means I’m ambivalent about it. I think that’s normal.

What do you think?

Amaryllis Plant Growing Like a Weed!

Sena got our Amaryllis plant shortly after a juvenile Cedar Waxwing lost its life by banging into our sun room window. That was on November 1, 2022. It’s sort of a remembrance of the little bird.

It was barely measurable then. As of yesterday, it was about 5 inches tall and it seems to grow an inch or two almost every couple of days.

The articles I find on the web say the Amaryllis blooms about 7 to 10 weeks after planting. The stalk can get up to 18-36 inches tall. The average lifespan of a bulb can be about 25 years.

Ours is a red one and will make an impressive flower, maybe around Christmas—we hope.

I Got Skunked in Cribbage!

It’s not common to get skunked in cribbage—but it happened to me yesterday. Sena has a way of getting very high scoring hands and this led to her winning the first of three games in a big way.

I was stuck well behind the skunk line. This led to some questions by both of us as to what exactly happens in a tournament when a player gets stuck behind the 91-hole on the peg board after the opponent reaches the winning 121 hole.

The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website says the winner gets 2 points. I think that’s because the scoring in tournaments is done by points.

Other references say that the winner gets 2 games. That means something if you’re playing the best out of, say, 3 games and the like.

There is such a thing as a double skunk, which is getting stuck behind the 61-hole after the opponent reaches 121. Then the winning opponent wins 3 games.

Many cribbage boards will not mark where the skunk and double skunk holes are. Tournament board makers often don’t mark them—but will if you ask them to do so.

We have a so-called tournament V-tournament board which marks both skunk and double skunk lines. You can see the V-shaped track on it, which is supposed to help players avoid pegging errors.

This reminds me to mention the brand-new Sasquatch cribbage board we just ordered. It’ll be a hand-carved walnut board in a circular shape. Sasquatch will be carved in a deep 3-D relief. We are very excited about it. We hope it arrives around Christmas time. There will be no skunk lines.

By the way, I ended up winning two of three games because we typically ignore the skunk rule.

Going for the Juggler Gold Trophy!

I’ve been working on my juggling form—and it’s only somewhat improved, but I’m getting 30 throws (good for the personal Gold Trophy milestone) without dropping more consistently just since yesterday.

I’ve got about a dozen video clips with me getting at least 30 throws, one with 36 although I’m weaving, lunging, rearing, rocking and rolling all over the room, nearly crashing into the computer. You can read my lips to see I’m counting in the video.

I’m hoping that getting to my Juggling Gold Trophy milestone will help make it easier to do tricks.

University of Iowa Psychiatry Residents Get Shout Outs

Recently, University of Iowa psychiatry residents worked hard enough to get shout outs. One of them was exemplary performance on the consultation and emergency room service. The service was following over two dozen inpatients and received 15 consultation requests in a day. This is a staggering number and the resident on the service did the job without complaints. In addition, the resident was the only trainee on the service at the time. Other residents were working very hard as well.

This high level of performance is outstanding and raises questions about health care system level approaches to supporting it.

I read the abstract of a recently published study about Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) compared to medication in treating anxiety in adults (Hoge EA, Bui E, Mete M, Dutton MA, Baker AW, Simon NM. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction vs Escitalopram for the Treatment of Adults With Anxiety Disorders: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online November 09, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.3679).

On the day I read the abstract, I saw comments which were cringeworthy. The commenter is an outpatient psychiatrist in private practice who had some criticisms of the study. He thought the report of results at 8 weeks was inadequate because symptoms can recur soon after resolution.

Another problem he mentioned is worth quoting, “A course of treatment that requires as much time as the MBSR course described in the study would be out of the question for most of my patients, most of whom are overworked health care professionals who don’t have enough time to eat or sleep. Telling people who are that overworked they should spend 45 minutes a day meditating is the “Let them eat cake” of psychotherapy.”

That reminded me of a quote:

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”

Zen Proverb

I know, I know; I should talk—I’m retired. Actually, I took part in an MBSR course about 8 years ago when I noticed that burnout was probably influencing my job performance on the psychiatry consultation service. I thought it was helpful and I still practice it. I was lucky enough to participate in the course after work hours. The hospital supported the course.

The residents who are being recognized for their hard work on extremely busy clinical services may or may not be at high risk for burnout. They are no doubt extra resilient and dedicated.

And the University of Iowa health care system may also be offering a high level of system support for them. I don’t see that University of Iowa Health Care is on the list of the American Medical Association (AMA) Joy in MedicineTM Health System Recognition System, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing the kinds of things which would merit formal recognition.

Anyway, they all get my shout out.