I’ve been practicing the reverse cascade lately. It’s slow progress but faster than the shower pattern.
You start with the regular cascade pattern and gradually work into making every throw over the top instead of under.
I still do a lot of windmilling. I’ll get there-I think.
We play cribbage and we tried playing using the Muggins Rule the other day. We “muggled” through it is what I should say.
During one game, Sena got the total count wrong, which led to a confusing situation leading to her overpegging and eventually winning a game, which didn’t make a lot of sense.
Most of the problem was misunderstanding how to apply Muggins rule to overpegging. It’s not clear to us how to address that. Underpegging is easier to understand. If Sena underpegs and I catch it, I’m supposed to call Muggins and peg the difference between the actual pegging score and her over score.
She overpegged a large number of holes and got so far ahead, that I couldn’t catch up. What we didn’t understand is that, according to some rules, the player who overpegs is supposed to move her peg back to the original position behind the front peg.
On the other hand, there is more than one set of rules for how play Muggins. The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) has official rules for it, and they say it only applies to underpegging. It applies after you peg.
On the other hand, I can find guidance for overpegging elsewhere on the ACC website, and it covers overpegging. It’s in the Tips Library and interestingly there’s a slang term for it: Hauling Lumber.
“Hauling Lumber – Hauling Lumber (or Timber) usually refers to intentional Over Pegging, which is one form of cheating during a cribbage game. It is believed the term originated due to most boards being made out of wood and the offending player was pegging more wood than what they were entitled to.”
“Overpegging – Overpegging is pegging more points that what you are entitled to take. It may happen during the play of the hand, in counting the hand or by accidently taking more pegs than indicated. If the opponent catches the Overpegging, you must return your front peg to the proper place and the opponent gets to take the difference between what was pegged and the correct total. If you notice your own Overpegging before your opponent, you may announce the fact and correct your front peg to its proper location with no penalty. See also False Claim of Game and Hauling Lumber.”
However, the Tips Library also says this about Muggins:
“Muggins – Muggins is taking points your opponent misses. Muggins points come from one of two sources. If your opponent misses points during the play of the cards, Muggins may be called after a pause to make sure the opponent is truly missing the points. The other situation is where your opponent fails to count and/or take all the points in the hand. Once he has under pegged his hand, Muggins may be called for the difference in what was pegged and the actual count in the hand. Muggins may not be taken in the case of an opponent failing to take his two points when a Jack is the starter card, those points are lost once the dealer plays a card. Muggins is not applicable in the case where an opponent over pegs his hand, see Over Pegging – Hauling Lumber.”
The bottom line seems to be that overpegging is not allowed in Muggins. If you do it deliberately, you might want to haul ass away from the game table.
I wondered about what the term “Muggins” itself means so I made a cursory search for the origin of the term. I found out that the term is connected to the word “mug,” which means fool or idiot. By extension, I guess it could mean that a cribbage player who makes mistakes in the game is thought to be a simpleton.
This is part of the reason why we’re not going to use the Muggins rule anymore. It takes a bit of the fun out of playing cribbage.
The Iowa State Fair will again have the Cribbage Tournament this year! It’s on August 18 (the last day of the fair) from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m at the Oman Family Youth Inn. Registration begins at 10:00 a.m.
We walked the Terry Trueblood Trail the other day and ran into a couple of other bird watchers. They said they’ve seen many birds called dickcissels on the trail.
I couldn’t remember ever seeing or hearing a dickcissel. We have enough trouble catching a clear sight of goldfinches. Both birders said the name comes from the bird’s song. They said it sounds like the bird is saying “Dick, Dick, Dick.”
I’m not so sure. As it happened, I think we saw a few dickcissels that day. We think the bird doesn’t sound like it’s saying “Dick, Dick, Dick.” I think it’s more like “chirp, chirp, chirp.”
Anyway, I think I got a video of three dickcissels, along with a few other birds. Do you agree or disagree? And what do you think of the name “dickcissel” for a bird? I read one article written by someone who had a low opinion of how the bird got its name.
What are those things in the water? I think they’re fish.
We’ve been in the hotel a couple of weeks now. We’ll probably be here 2 months until our house is built. Making it livable is about keeping it simple.
While we were busy packing and moving out of our old house, we got away from regular habits that helped keep us happier and at least somewhat saner.
We’re working to get back to that.
We’ve been so busy moving that I’ve laid off juggling for a while. I’m sore in every muscle!
We’ve moved into a hotel for a couple of months while our new house is being built. I’ll get back into juggling shape soon!
I’ve seen a couple of Cribbage videos on Huddle Around Games, which is a YouTube site dedicated to Cribbage as well as other games.
This one is a tutorial on how to play Cribbage for beginners. He calls himself Zulwarn, which is his name when he plays the online form of a computer Cribbage game called Cribbage Pro. I play (well, mainly lose) on Cribbage Pro, but not on line. I just play the computer, on Brutal level. I guess I like punishment because Brutal doesn’t make mistakes.
Zulwarn is funny and smart. He likes coffee.
The other day we went birding on the Terry Trueblood Trail. You couldn’t ask for better weather. We saw a lot of birds paired off and checking into the nest boxes or building from scratch.
I don’t know how we got so lucky. We saw male and female red-wing blackbirds, tree swallows, sparrows, and goldfinches.
The difference between the guys and gals is that the female birds tend to be drab. It’s mainly for protection. The females don’t want to attract attention from predators. The males tend to be flamboyant, as if you didn’t know that from your own experience with humans.
The red-wing blackbird male has stunning red and yellow epaulets on its wings. The female is mostly brown.
The tree swallow male is startling bright greenish-blue. The female is a bit duller.
The goldfinch male is a loud yellow while the female is kind of drab olive.
And so on.
A couple days ago, Sena found a bird’s nest in our front porch artificial Christmas tree. The small nest is made from the clippings of Sena’s ornamental grasses. It has 4 small eggs, which are white with dark specks.
We could hear a bird singing while we were sitting in the house and it always sounded close by. We could see it flitting around but we couldn’t identify it. We thought it might be nesting in our magnolia tree at first but Sena couldn’t find one.
I’ve scared a bird a couple of times lately and it always seemed to be flying off our front porch from somewhere. I never thought to peek in the little fake Christmas tree sitting in a big pot.
So, I got the critter cam out. It hasn’t been getting any use since we solved the problem of our yard drain grate lids popping off by having them screwed down last year. We never did find out what flipped the lids.
Anyway, Sena suggested moving the pot with the tree around to face the front of the porch and set up the critter cam facing the tree. Both the tree and the camera on a tripod are somewhat sheltered from the wind behind one of the columns.
Moving the tree confused the bird a little because it had a little trouble finding it at first. We got a good enough video to identify it as a female house finch. We don’t know when she laid the eggs, but they take a couple of weeks to incubate.
We had been trying to keep birds off our porch by setting out a couple of fake snakes. The birds ignored them. And I guess they don’t mind nesting in fake trees, either.
The nest is probably in a fairly safe spot on the porch. Crows and other predatory birds fly around, but might be less likely to see it from the air. Maybe we should get a fake dog.
We’ll try to keep our intrusions to a minimum, because it tends to tip off big, hungry birds. On the other hand, we would like to get enough footage to make short videos of the progress of the nestlings.
I’ve been working on that shower juggle pattern for a year now. Progress is slow but a couple of days ago, I noticed it got better when I held my arms pretty rigidly within the pane of glass. You can still tell I tend to morph between a half shower and a full shower.
It’s also called a circle juggle because that’s sort of what it looks like.
I can do on average about 5-7 throws before I start dropping balls on my head. I notice also that as long as I stay in the pane and focus on the arc throw at the top of the arc, I can juggle the shower with pretty much any set of juggling balls.
I think the Svengoolie T-shirt gives me good luck.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 