We visited the Terry Trueblood Trail and relaxed. The temperature was in the 60s, just a little on the breezy side. Everything seemed to move slower, except for the lady bugs which tried to keep warm by landing on us everywhere they could. I thought they would get into my rolled up blue jean cuffs, but amazingly they did not.
There was a small, brave patch of asters hanging on for dear life, literally. We both loved the red tree and you can tell which one it is in the video. I should know what kind of tree it is, but for now I guess just seeing it was good enough.
The cedar waxwings were flitting around maniacally and sometimes that means they’re getting smashed on fermented berries. But I didn’t see that there was enough on the branches for a party.
A pelican lazily swam across the lake in a way that suggested that it’s OK to just relax. What’s the hurry?
We might have seen one of the last northern shovelers (a dabbling duck) still hanging around. It’s like it was saying, “There’s still plenty of time.”
Whether that’s true or not, slowing down doesn’t hurt at all.
I’m going to take a chance and mention tariffs in this post because it figures importantly in our cribbage game pastime. We have several cribbage boards we’ve bought over the years and one of them is from Ontario, Canada.
Michaud Toys is a company in Ontario which makes very nice wooden toys, many of them board games. It’s a small, family-owned craft shop in Ontario not far from the Niagara area. They are well-known for making excellent wooden toys, games, and puzzle boxes. A little over 6 years ago, we bought a jumbo cribbage board from them at a reasonable price. I think it was about $70.
It came with a nice storage bag, some metal pegs (2 inches long), a deck of cards, and a set of very accurate rules. It’s 27 ½” long and 8” wide. It’s great fun to play on. We feature it in several of our cribbage game YouTube videos.
It has a handy little cubby on the board which can hold the card deck, pegs, and rule booklet. This is covered by a cap which fits snugly over the hole and is secured by “powerful rare earth magnets.” They work. I can turn the board upside down and shake it—nothing pops out.
This is a novelty board which is sold as Cribbage Rumble although the web link has “cribbage wars” in it. That should ring a bell to anyone who has heard of the game with the name “Cribbage Wars.” We’ve never played Cribbage Wars but Cribbage Rumble resembles it. Cribbage War sells for about $20 or so. Cribbage Rumble is prettier—but it costs a lot more.
We’ve been playing several cribbage game variants lately. We were looking for yet another one, checked out the price of Cribbage Rumble and found out it includes a high tariff, which the company tells you about in bold red type with exclamation marks after it. It doesn’t use the word “tariff.”
I don’t know much about tariffs except that they’re taxes. The last time I interviewed President Trump, he was pretty enthusiastic about them (satire).
Tariffs work both ways. I don’t really know anything else about them. But they’re going to delay our purchase of Cribbage Rumble.
I wonder if a Cribbage Rumble match could be arranged between President Trump and Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney to settle this tariff business? I won the Cribbage Pro match with President Trump (satire). If President Trump wins, I get the Cribbage Rumble game free. If Prime Minister Carney wins—it stays on the shelf at Michaud Toys.
All morning long today we played the oddball cribbage variants and we are wiped out! It’ll drive me to drink!
Sena is to blame for this. She “suggested” we play all 4 of the new multi-card weird cribbage variants we learned just in the last few days: 7-card, 8-card, 9-card, and 10-card. What did we learn from this? We learned one of the reasons why 6-card cribbage is the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) choice for their big grand national tournaments. Talk about needing to be able to play a cribbage in 15 minutes!
I won the 7, 8, and 9 card games and Sena won the 10-card game. We caught a squirrel on camera watching us who seemed catatonic probably because it couldn’t fathom why two people would subject themselves to this mind-bending ordeal.
You can spend an hour just trying to figure out your score for one hand in 9-card cribbage. If we had not had that cribbage scorer I found from a guy on a Reddit cribbage thread, we would not have been able to manage scoring a couple our hands. I know I said it didn’t work consistently—but it works well enough when you’re faced with scores as high as 36 and more! According to AI, the most common scores in 6-card cribbage are 4 and 2. Most cribbage scorers available on line or for smartphones are designed for 6-card cribbage, meaning you can’t enter more than 4 cards for the hand and one for the starter.
9 card cribbage hands
Thank goodness there is no information on the web for the rules of 11-card and 13-card cribbage, despite the ACC saying they are two of the many cribbage variations. If anybody asks me, “But Jim, what about the 12-card cribbage variant?” I will politely change the subject and talk about catatonic squirrels.
Sena is starting to warm up to the 8-card variant, although I’m doing my best to ignore her. It’s amazing the 10-card game is actually faster than the others and the hands are easier to count.
The only reason to play the 9-card variant is if you are tired of living. There should be a public service announcement about this game warning of the need for supplemental oxygen and K-rations because you won’t have time to do anything but mumble through the endless scoring rituals.
“OK, how many 15s for 2 do you see?”
“ZZZZZ…”
I would not play any of these variants past the 121 hole on a standard board, if you value your sanity. We agreed to play them that way. If you can’t persuade your spouse, friend, or catatonic squirrel to do that, you should consider resorting to thumb-wrestling, best 2 out of 3 falls. Seriously, playing 9-card cribbage to 363 should be considered a health hazard.
Short List of the Oddball Cribbage Variants with rules and comments (all are presumed to be for 2 players):
7-card: Deal 7 cards to each player, one to the dealer’s crib. Then look at your cards and throw 2 more cards to the dealer’s crib. There should be 5 cards in the crib and 5 cards in each player’s hand. The starter card makes 6 cards for your hand. Flushes are allowed: 4, 5, and 6 card flushes are allowed. In 4 and 5 card flushes all the cards should be in your hand. The highest score is 46 (4,4,5,6,6). I think this game has the smoothest play, but there will be hands that are difficult to score. There are 8 three-card runs for 24 points, 8 fifteens for 2 for 16 points, and 3 pairs for 6 points. Note, I found out the hard way that I can’t use the double run rule to count the runs and the pairs together to come up with the 30 points you have in pairs and 3-card runs. I missed two 3-card runs (6 points) and I could find them only by taking pictures of the double run counts including the pairs. In order to avoid missing them, it’s best to count all the runs and all the pairs separately and add them. Then add the 15 for 2 points (16).
8-card: Deal 8 cards to each player and each throw two cards to the dealer’s crib. Choose 4 cards to keep and two to the bottom of the deck. Each player then has 4 cards in their hands and uses the starter card to score with their hands. Play standard cribbage as usual to 121. This felt a little clunky at first, but you get used to it.
9-card: Carefully consider whether you really want to torture yourself with this variant—then go ahead and deal 9 cards to each player and throw 3 cards to the dealer’s crib. Play to 121. Scores will be high and challenging to count. There is one scoring program available which seems to work OK. I couldn’t put in J for Jack and make it work, but other initials like K for King seem to work. Numbers alone work best. Get the link from the Reddit thread:
10-card: This one is fun. Deal 10 cards each and two to the dealer’s crib. Divide your remaining 8 cards into 2 separate 4 card hands. Use one for pegging and both for the show (means scoring your hands). Play to 121. You get big scores but they’re more manageable.
OK, so Sena and I have been experimenting with a few cribbage variants in the last few days and I ran into this Calvinball comment on a Reddit cribbage thread about 10-card cribbage. Yes, people play that! I’m afraid to look on the web for 11-card cribbage although Sena asked about it.
Briefly, 10-card cribbage is usually a two-player game. Deal 10 cards each; 2 cards from each player go to the dealer’s crib; each player divides the remaining 8 cards into 2 four card hands, one for pegging and either one or both for the show.
As an aside, the Reddit thread person who started the thread about 10 card cribbage asked if anyone else ever played it. One commenter facetiously replied “Yes, there have been many many posts of Calvinball crib.”
You have to know where that term “Calvinball” comes from. I’m pretty sure it’s from another social media forum which plays a game called Calvinball—which is a whimsical, forever evolving game which has nothing to do with playing cards, is based on the comic Calvin & Hobbes and has no real rules whatsoever. Participants make it up as they go along. So, I think what the commenter might have meant was that 10-card cribbage is yet another of the many proliferating variants (some better than others) of the more well-established game, usually identified as 6-card cribbage.
Anyway, we found out later that there are two sets of rules for 10-card cribbage. The intent is to make the game play faster and yield higher scores.
Given that context, we played it both ways to 121. In the one set according to AI, you deal each player 10 cards and both throw 2 cards to the dealer’s crib. Each player divides the remaining cards into hands of 4 cards each. You play one hand only during the pegging phase and the other for the show (scoring the hand). It was pretty slow and didn’t yield high scores, partly because we used only the four card hand for the show.
And then there’s a Wikipedia article which says you peg with one hand and score both for the show. We got higher scores all around, the game was faster, and we both enjoyed it much more.
As a reminder follow up to the post about the 9-card and 8-card cribbage games, Sena still likes the 9-card variant but doesn’t care for the 8-card (neither do I) because it seems clunkier, probably because you need to bury cards under the deck. The 9-card variant has an on-line scorer which didn’t work consistently. We seemed to fare pretty well without it for the most part. The suggestion to play to 323 (up, back, and there again on a 121-hole board) seems like overkill. I’m retired but not that retired.
We’re still getting used to the 7-card cribbage game and guess what Sena asked me today?
“Is there an 8-card cribbage?”
So, I looked it up on the web and, sure enough, there was a Reddit thread a year ago with only one relevant entry. It was from someone asking if anybody else played 8-card cribbage. That person went on to admit uncertainty if it was a thing or not and wondered if they just made it up. I would vote for the latter. Two commenters didn’t shed any further light on the subject.
The rules for 8 card cribbage are that it’s played like 6-card cribbage except each player is dealt 8 cards, each chooses 4 cards to keep in the hand, tosses 2 cards to the dealer’s crib and the remaining 2 cards get buried at the bottom of the deck.
We gave 8-card cribbage a spin and it felt a little clunky, maybe because of the added motion of burying a couple of cards under the deck along with the extra cards—yet despite that we ended with 4 card hands and played to 121. So, it felt much like regular 6-card cribbage.
We both prefer 7-card cribbage. Even though it doesn’t have a lot of documentation about it, it feels less like word-of-mouth and a little more streamlined. The scores are more challenging to count. Anybody else out there ever heard of 8-card cribbage? Anybody else ever play 7-card cribbage?
We’ve been working pretty hard today trying to teach ourselves how to play 7 card cribbage. There’s not a lot of information on the web about the game. The gist of it is that you play to 181 and each player gets 7 cards with 5 cards to the dealer’s crib. You can have 4, 5, and 6 flushes but the 4 and 5 card flushes have to be in your hand. We found out about it on a website called Masters Traditional Games.
We’re not used to playing past the 121 hole in cribbage. We struggled over it until Sena finally got the idea that it must mean we just go back to the starting hole when you get to 121. We’re not sure why the goal is 181 points to win. Other goals are to play to 151, 121, or play to 61 three times.
The opportunity for big scores is higher in 7 card cribbage and they can be difficult to count. The highest score is 46 with cards 4,4,5,5,6,6 which includes the starter card. It took me a while to count it. One person said it was easier for him to get that than a 29 score in the 6-card cribbage game—which is very rare.
We also got new long sleeve cribbage shirts for the occasion. Mine says “That’s What I Do, I Play Cribbage And I Know Things.”
I’m not sure how often we’ll play 7 card cribbage. The games should play pretty fast because the scores tend to be higher than in the 6-card version. On the other hand, you can get pretty bogged down figuring out your score!
Sena noticed that I didn’t roll up my trousers the way you’re supposed to do it. I had no idea. I guess you’re supposed to double roll the bottoms of your trousers.
I got to wondering how James Dean rolled the bottom of his jeans. It turns out he didn’t, at least in the film “Rebel Without a Clue” (excuse me, “…without a cause”).
My jeans are a little on the long side and, as usual, that makes me wonder if I’m shrinking as a I get older. Height shrinkage is normal at my age.
Anyway, she double-rolled the bottoms of my jeans—the proper way. It reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s lines in his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
“I grow old…I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
By the way, this reminds me that we’ll be turning our clocks back by one hour tomorrow. I usually prefer doing it the day before, which always disorients Sena, but makes me feel ahead of the game. But there’s no reason to do it earlier—except to feel an hour younger and to give me a little more time to get the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
I stopped by the Storyshucker blog today and it sent me on a wave of nostalgia. You really out to stop by Stuart Perkins’ blog and get that feeling. You can read his post, “Baby Bear” in The Local Scoop Magazine. The link is on my menu, so there’s no excuse!
Stuart has his baby bear and, although I don’t have keepsakes going that far back, it sent me back. It reminded me of our last move (I hate moving!). We have this piggy bank we toss loose change into. I can’t remember when we first got it, ages ago. When we moved last year, we tried to get all the coins in it into our bank, but they wouldn’t just count them and deposit the amount—I had to learn how to roll and wrap them myself! That’s not a great memory.
I had a spark plug gap measuring tool and that was back in the day when guys adjusted stuff like that by hand when tuning up their car engines. It’s a good thing I don’t do that anymore. I accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake one time and put a dent in the garage wall. That’s not such a great memory, either.
We used to have an old vintage calculator I used when I was a student at Iowa State University. Memories linked to that are a little better.
We lose track of some things from our past and that can be a good thing occasionally. Guys like Stuart know what’s worth keeping.
Sena alerted me to an article about the 28th anniversary of when the first Men in Black movie hit the theaters in 1997. The author praises it and says it’s still pretty good.
I can’t remember the first time I saw it, but it was probably not in 1997. I was in my second year of being an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (now called University of Iowa Health Care). I was too busy to do much of anything except run around the hospital responding to requests for psychiatry consultations from medicine and surgery. I did that a long time.
I’ve been blogging since 2010. I cancelled my first blog which was called The Practical Psychosomaticist. I then restarted blogging, calling it Go Retire Psychiatrist. One blog that pays homage to my career and to the Men in Black films is “The Last White Coat I’ll Ever Wear.”
It’s part reminiscence and part comedy in the style of Men in Black dialogue and jokes. Since I retired, I have not been back to the hospital except for scheduled appointments in the eye and dentistry clinics. I don’t know if I’ve ever reconciled myself to being retired. If someone were to tell me “We have a situation and we need your help” (think Men in Black II), I would probably say something like “There is a free mental health clinic on the corner of Lilac and East Valley.”
I saw a couple of web resources about staying healthy and fit that seem to make sense to me. One of them was actually a YouTube video by a personal trainer advising people to stop doing certain kinds of workouts that could be unhealthy. He recommended avoiding certain kinds of weight lifting exercises, especially for those over 40. I’m way over 40 and I agreed with him.
The video was posted about 2 months ago and there are so far 725,000 view and well over 2,000 comments, both for and against the trainer’s advice. Many of the older commenters disagreed with slowing down after the age of 40.
I’m 70 and I’m a minimalist when it comes to exercising. I’ve slowed down from daily exercise, but I still enjoy juggling, riding an exercise bicycle, limited use of dumbbells, body weight squats, a step platform routine, planks, stretching and wrestling grizzly bears. I occasionally go for walks when the weather permits.
I remember trying to lift really old barbells in the free weight room at the YMCA when I was a kid. I dropped them once and the director directed me out of the room. After they got a weight machine, a guy bet me and a friend a dollar that he could jump over a broom handle (in another variant of this stunt you try to jump over a dollar bill, I think) while bent over and grasping his toes. He did it but we couldn’t. We didn’t pay him any money. I still can’t do that trick. Nobody recommends doing this as a regular fitness exercise.
On the other hand, patient YMCA teachers taught me how to swim and helped me get over my severe headaches related to my initial fear of the water.
The other web source is an article that actually recommends we stop focusing on working out. In fact, the title is “Stop focusing on working out”—a professor says you should follow these five science-backed steps to improve your wellness instead.”
There are so far no comments on it. The authors have five suggestions:
Make movement fun
Be socially active
Use mindfulness as a stress buster
Be kind to yourself and others
Prioritize quality sleep
The last one usually is difficult for me. Ever since kindergarten, when the teacher wanted the class to take a nap, I’ve had trouble sleeping. The teacher never understood that. I also tend to be shy. I like playing cribbage, though my wife is my only partner. I still practice mindfulness meditation. Juggling is a fun movement activity and it’s also beneficial exercise.
I think it might be a little safer to try to jump over a dollar bill while squatting and grabbing your toes than squatting with barbells if you’re 70. You’re welcome. That’ll be one dollar, please.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 