Go Retire Psychiatrist

OK, a reminder that the University of Iowa Psychiatry Dept. Annual Kickball game is on for this coming Monday, June 29 and the heat forecast from the National Weather Service is for temperatures to be in the 90s with heat indices in the 100s. The announcement about the kickball game is:

“What: Psychiatry department annual kickball game

Who: Psychiatry/FMP/IMP faculty, residents, fellows, families, friends, kiddos, pets (on a leash). 

When: Monday June 29- 6pm pizza, 7 pm kickball

Where:  Napoleon Park Shelter & Field #5, 2501 S. Gilbert Street, Iowa City, IA 52240 (same as last year)

Why: Welcome new interns, hang out, eat pizza, give your physical therapist something new to work on”

OK, so here are my thoughts. First, welcome to the new interns! Second, is your health insurance paid up? I’m only half-joshing. I’ve got a suggestion, though.

How about a cribbage tournament? Stop laughing! Even the Iowa State Fair holds the annual cribbage tournament in an air-conditioned space. It’s hosted in the Oman Family Youth Inn on the fairgrounds in Des Moines.

I don’t know how many people participate in the kickball game, but there might be enough to play a cribbage tournament. Even if the number is large at the kickball game, there might be enough dropouts from heat exhaustion to play in a cribbage tournament. You could still make it Faculty vs Residents.

Sena and I have never played in a cribbage tournament, but we got a question-and-answer guy (Dan) at the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) who knows all about it. He’d be glad to finally get a question from us that’s about tournament cribbage—mainly because we’ve asked him about wacky cribbage variations that always mystify him. He could provide guidance about how to set it up. There are different ways to organize it depending on how many players there are. One example on the web of how to set it up might be similar to the one at this link.

The only thing is—you’d all have to learn how to play cribbage. You don’t have to be experts. It helps if you can play a game in 15-20 minutes. There’s a local ACC club (Capital City) in Des Moines, Iowa which has a simplified schematic of how they learn to play in tournaments.

There’s a couple of good short YouTube videos of how to play cribbage. Watch both below and you’ll get a pretty clear idea of how to play the basic game. And you won’t get heat exhaustion.