cribbage – Page 10 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Pegging Around Wisconsin

We played a game on our new Wisconsin cribbage board. We made some miscounts I’m sure, but it was because we had so much fun talking. We lived in Madison for a short time many years ago and managed to see quite a few sights in the south-central region of the state. And even after we moved back to Iowa, we made return trips to visit Wisconsin because there’s a lot to do there.

Madison itself is the capital of Wisconsin. One of my first impressions is that a number of fascinating people live there. I remember we were walking west on State Street, and I saw a guy walking in the middle of the street wearing a live rattlesnake coiled on his head. Sena missed that for some reason. He was moving carefully and slowly, probably to avoid rattling his headgear.

I don’t think the sculpture of Harry Dumpty is still standing in Madison, but for several years it was a distinctive bronze sculpture in front of the Madison Municipal Building just south of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and East Doty Street. I can’t see it on Google Maps nowadays.

I never knew the sculpture was Harry Dumpty. It sat above a large concrete wall with an inscription on it which I just assumed was connected to the sculpture and probably still sits there although we couldn’t find it in 2012 when we returned for a visit:

“David James Schaefer, 1955-2004
was a phenomenal phenomenon. Though plagued by the progressive debilities of cerebral palsy, “Schaefer” was an uncomplaining and generous friend to many. Disability Rights Specialist for the City of Madison in three different settings, his death of a heart attack in September 2004 made a hole in our community which cannot ever be filled.
Erected by the Friends of Schaefer at private expense.”

It turns out Harry Dumpty has no connection to David James Schaefer. In fact, Harry is one of several similar sculptures created by artist Brent George, who made him in 1997, saying he’s Humpty’s brother. If you look closely at the book sitting open next to Harry, it’s entitled “Harry Dumpty.” Brent George’s name is below it. Brent’s phone number is on the front of the wall. Evidently somebody called him and asked about the sculpture. Brent says there’s no connection between the sculpture and the inscription.

On the subject of art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (on State Street) is a place to see. Although the art works are free to view on the web, they’re copyrighted and you can’t reproduce them without permission of the artists. However, at the time we were there in 2012 we saw Typewriter Eraser by Claes Oldenburg. I think it’s OK to share our picture of the giant one we saw in Washington, D.C. In 2015.

One of the more relaxing times we had was having pizza for lunch at Paisan’s in Madison. We were outside and had that breathtaking view of Lake Monona, the breeze was coming off the water, cooling and refreshing—like the Moose Drool brown ale, which is not a Wisconsin brew; it’s made in Montana.

Wisconsin is known for its beer, among many other virtues. New Glarus Brewing Company is famous. I tried a few of the brews. One of them was Stone Soup. It had oil of clove in it and my lips got numb.

We took a dinner train ride at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum in North Freedom. It was great food and great company.

One of the more interesting stories about Monroe, Wisconsin is The Great Limburger Cheese War, which I mangled during the heat of the game. I first heard about it on a TV show; it seemed to me it was on Mysteries at the Museum, but when I googled it, I couldn’t find it.

We had a great time in Wisconsin. Maybe someday we’ll go back for a visit.

Wisconsin Cribbage Board Arrives

We got the Wisconsin state map cribbage board yesterday and there’s a little story behind it, right off the bat. It was delivered by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and I remember the slap as it hit our porch from the USPS worker just tossing the package.

When we opened the package, it turned out to be not the board we ordered. It was not as thick as the Iowa cribbage board and it didn’t have a storage space on the back for pegs. The packing material for the Wisconsin board was not as interesting as that used for the Iowa board, which was packed using a local newspaper with a sermon on one of the pages, “In times like these we turn with trust to God.”

In contrast, the Wisconsin board was shipped from the same place in Minnesota, but this time in a plain white USPS envelope, conventionally secured with eBay tape, bubble wrap, and a plain brown shopping bag. No sermons.

Sena arranged to return it for a refund (which was the only choice other than having the exact same item reshipped from the seller), carefully rewrapped it and drove out to a couple of the UPS stores—both of which happened to be closed yesterday. She was late by just a couple of minutes.

This morning we noticed that the seller sent an email apologizing about shipping us the wrong board and offered us the choice of shipping it back for the full refund or keeping it at 70% off the price. We took the latter.

We’re now brushing up on our memories of Wisconsin, chuckling at our snapshots, and considering using the deck of cards we got at Lost Canyon gift shop at Wisconsin Dells, where we took the horse-drawn wagon tour 13 years ago.

Lost Canyon wagon tour in Wisconsin Dells

Upcoming Video of Our New Iowa Map Cribbage Board

Three days and a new memory card later, Sena and I are almost done with our video of us pegging around our new Iowa map cribbage board. We’re watching the weather reports right now because rough weather is moving through the state.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Boy, are you guys lucky! I woke up yesterday morning with the crazy idea of making a video of me singing “L-O-V-E.” You know, the one Nat King Cole made famous. What do you mean, “No, what are you talking about?”

No kidding, though; I even cleared my throat a couple of times just thinking about it, getting ready to burst into my full-throated, only slightly phlegmy 60ish voice. I let that go after my first cup of coffee, thank goodness. You don’t know how close you came. My singing would kill a cat from a hundred yards.

Anyway, Sena got a kick out of my Valentine’s Day card because it had a scrabble theme. The top line actually is made of 3-dimensional Scrabble tiles. I bought that card before I found the Tile Lock Scrabble game.

By the way, I’m zero for 3 games so far. We really need a Scrabble dictionary. Sena plays the video scrabble game a lot and she played the word “Qi” twice (at right angles to each other) in our second game, claiming it’s a real word. I didn’t argue and without a dictionary, I couldn’t challenge it. But she didn’t know what it meant. “I’ve been meaning to look that up,” she says.

It turns out Qi is a variant spelling of CHI (pronounced like the first syllable of cheapo, a variant of cheapskate, as in a guy who spends the least amount of money possible on a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife). Qi is defined as the energy or life force in everything and it’s the basis of most of Chinese medicine and philosophy. It’s also the single most commonly used word in Scrabble tournaments.

We made this deal a while ago. If we buy a cribbage board in the shape of the state of Iowa with a road map and names of major cities, etc. on it, then I would agree to play Scrabble. We got the Scrabble game first. A deal’s a deal, even if it’s backwards. Sena ordered the Iowa State Map cribbage board yesterday. She wins most of the cribbage games, too. Here’s how she counts her scores: “15 for 2, a run of 3 for 19 (laugh it up you people, these are the jokes; hint, you have to know what scores are impossible in cribbage), and a flush for a total of 29; hey, I win again!”

You guys need to thank for me another thing. At first, Sena allowed me to use just one snapshot of us in this post. It’s of us at Niagara Falls in front of the helicopter we took a ride on to get a fantastic view of the falls. But we got to looking at a ton of pictures. We laughed a lot. We chose more pictures.

Have a great Valentine’s Day!

Be Kind and View Our Chicago Cribbage Antics Video

It’s a mystery why our Chicago Cribbage Antics video is not getting thousands of views on YouTube. It ranks right up there with the other Top 10 great mysteries:

Bigfoot sightings are everywhere, including your backyard; yet there is a shortage of Bigfoot Personal Trainers.
UFOs sightings are also on the rise, and they frequently crash; yet we don’t see UFO body shop repair businesses springing up at all.
How come there is no Save the Chupacabra Society?
What’s the delay on opening the Loch Ness Monster petting station?
Is there any explanation for the pitifully small number of Taco Bell restaurants on Mars?
Will there be an upcoming investigation into why the male Weather Channel meteorologists are required to wear pants that pool around the ankles?
Everywhere you look there is a crisis of men’s shirt pocket puckering—yet there is no federal investigation forthcoming.
Just who is in charge of installing signs to properly identify dangerous worm hole vortex entrances?
Will we ever get anything but lame excuses for the existence of isosceles triangles?
Why does shredded coconut have the texture of cellophane, making it impossible to swallow for some people, like me?

Anyway, as far as we know, there is no other video about Chicago Cribbage besides ours. It deserves around 3 million views, preferably by tomorrow. We appreciate your kind attention to this matter; thank you for your time.

Let’s Play Chicago Cribbage!

Sena and I just went through a marathon of tries over a couple of days to make a YouTube video of a demo of how to play Chicago Cribbage (a variation of cribbage) and finally made it. We think it might be the first YouTube video of how to play Chicago Cribbage. You have to know basic cribbage to follow the gameplay, although you can still appreciate our antics whether you know the standard game or not. You can learn basic cribbage from my post “Kitchen Table Cribbage,” and the rules for Chicago Cribbage are posted on the web.

You need to know basic cribbage to play the Chicago Cribbage variation

No doubt you’ll find mistakes, but they’re nothing compared to the bloopers we made earlier. We forgot basic cribbage skills! And it was the best time we had playing cribbage in a while.

One thing we noticed was that it was a lot easier to play standard cribbage after trying to keep track of all the nuances of Chicago Cribbage. It takes longer to play but you don’t notice the time pass. We actually skipped one video segment to get the length of show down to about 15 minutes.

As usual, Sena won. You got me, babe!

Chicago Zombie Cribbage!

We finally got our Zombie Cribbage game the other day. We also got a Chicago Cribbage set, which doesn’t come with a board or pegs, but has a gorgeous full set of 52 in-pack cards along with wild cards allowing you to get an edge on your opponent—maybe.

The zombie pegs themselves are pretty small, but fit surprisingly well in the peg holes in the folding 61-hole plastic peg board. The zombie figures are in various dramatically spastic attitudes which zombies typically have when fighting over who get the brains. One of them is missing an arm, but that’s completely normal for zombies. The face cards have brightly colored zombie heads.

We’re still trying to figure out how to play the jokers included in the deck for the wild card gameplay variations, which include Lowdown Zombies, Reveal Your Zombies and Zombies, Run!

However, it’s not hard to mix the Chicago Cribbage wild cards with the Zombie cribbage game. You can find the rules for using Chicago Cards on the web, which like the cards in the included 52 card deck, are decorated in a colorful a 1930’s style gangster theme.

You can tell from the names of the Chicago Cards what they allow players to do: Deal Again, Cut Again, Reverse Counting, No Fifteens, and Trade Hands. When you play the Reverse Counting card, you can tell your opponent, “Walk like a zombie—only backwards!”

The makers of the Chicago Cribbage game variation say you can play it in 30 minutes. It took us over twice that long to finish a game marked by back and forth sniping with the Reverse Counting cards (each player gets one of these) on every deal. You might be surprised at how seldom that works to set your opponent back, especially if you counter with the No Fifteens card. We sometimes end up inching forward and backward only a few peg holes.

You have to know how to play regular cribbage to play both Zombie Cribbage and Chicago Cribbage. As someone once said, cribbage is a game that takes an hour to learn but years to master. Opinions differ on how much luck and skill are involved. Some say it’s 50% luck and 50% skill. Others who play at the tournament level, like those in the American Cribbage Congress (ACC), say there’s a lot more skill involved than you think.

Sometimes, playing all your Chicago Cards might not give you the edge that you hope for. In order to get the perfect hand, you can use both of your Deal Again and Cut Again cards–and not get much. Then what?

Play the cards you’re dealt.

Moderna Booster Jab Today and Mindful Zombies

I got my Moderna Covid-19 booster jab this morning. That was quick. A guy (probably about my age, I’m not sure) waiting for his booster behind me chuckled and asked, “Did she even let you sit down for it?” I was in and out that fast. It’s the same as the primary series, only half-dose. Sena and I are now both fully vaccinated and boosted.

According to the FDA and CDC guidelines, I could have gotten a heterologous booster, but I stuck with what I got for my primary series. There was no problem with vaccine supply; it was already on the shelf, so the only thing different was the smaller dose. Since there’s not much else to say about it, we’ll move on to other more exciting news.

Sena ordered the Zombie cribbage game I just had to have. It won’t get here by Halloween, but that’s OK. I know the board is a folding plastic affair and there’s only enough peg holes for what would be half a full game (61 instead of 121). The pegs are zombie figures—which may or may not fit in the holes.

But it’s zombies! This is what happens to you in retirement, people. My gratitude to Sena for getting Zombie cribbage will be to play Scrabble with her.

That reminds me of a cribbage story I read on the web about a game between a couple of old guys in a senior community in Minnesota. One of them, Harry, was 108 years old and the other, Don, was 105. They were long time cribbage players, but they’d never played each other. The young guy won. As soon as he did, he got back on his walker, saying, “Just another game,” and left. In fact, neither player got as excited about the affair as everyone else including spectators, family, and staff, talking it up like it was a championship boxing match. Don’s family said that his attitude about the win was probably part of the reason for his longevity.

I liked Don’s reaction to winning the game. I don’t know if Don’s approach to cribbage is the same as it is to life in general. Maybe it’s about living in the present. When something is over, it’s in the past and it’s time to move on. There’s probably no point in worrying about the future either, especially when you get pretty old. There’s not much of it left.

Maybe this mean that retirees should be more like zombies—we should just play cribbage, eat brains mindfully, and forget about tomorrow. You’re welcome.

Can Cribbage Cultivate Congeniality?

Sena and I have been playing cribbage since late 2019. It’s a two-hander card game played on a board with pegs for keeping score. It’s been around for about 400 years and some have asked whether it’s a dying game, played mainly by codgers in retirement homes. The question is whether it can promote positive attributes like congeniality.

Actually, it’s a pretty popular game, especially for, some reason, in California where there are over 40 local cribbage clubs according to the American Cribbage Congress (ACC), the big boss organization in North America, established in 1980. Most states in the U.S. have only a few. Iowa has one in Ankeny.

If you look at the ACC website, you’ll find a section called the ACC Cribbage Club Code of Congeniality. It’s under the Clubs section. The wording is in some ways a bit ambiguous, probably because many of the members are very competitive. There are a lot of tournaments, including an annual Grand National. The most recent one was held in Sacramento in late September, just last month. Even though it’s a pretty big deal, attracting players from just about everywhere on the planet and possibly beyond, I can’t find out who the winner was from the website. Maybe that person is too congenial to brag.

Anyway, the ACC Code of Congeniality has a tone, for lack of a better word. For example, take this item:

“We pledge to not force new players to play a game in fifteen minutes. (We will, instead, be tolerant and not complain, remembering that we too, started slow.”)

Sena and I never can finish a game in 15 minutes, and we’ve been playing for going on a couple of years. That pledge as well as the others have an almost Mark Twain-like ring to them. It’s as though whoever wrote it was snickering behind her hand. Or maybe the ACC leadership got wind of a few complaints from new members who got horsewhipped for dragging the games out to 17 minutes or even longer. Actually, it’s the subtle sense of humor expressed in the Code of Congeniality that I appreciate.

The ACC also has a Code of Ethics which extols “true sportsmanship and respect for others, without rancor, animosity, or overwhelming self-interest during competition.”

The ACC publishes its tournament rules and it is to be contrasted with something called kitchen table cribbage. Except on my blog and YouTube video, you’re unlikely to find the term Kitchen Table Cribbage anywhere on the web.

There was a man named Peter Worden who traveled around the world, teaching people how to play cribbage, love it, and make new friends. His short documentary about his travels and adventures is called the Cribsionary. A photograph shows him hiding his face with his cards—I don’t know why. He says cribbage is 50% luck and 50% skill. There are those who have different opinions about that. He also says he likes the quotation:

It’s easy to agonize over such situations but quite profitless; sometimes one is faced with a scattered collection, at other times there’s an embarrassment of riches.
Peter Worden?

I could not find this quotation in its entirety anywhere on the web. Well, I found the “embarrassment of riches” part, the authorship of which seems to be in some doubt. This seems to capture how one feels about the hand one is dealt in a cribbage game—and perhaps in life. He doesn’t take credit for the quote, but I’m going to take a chance and give it to him.

Cribbage is a lot of fun and there are variety of handsome and even whimsical boards on which to score your points. The ACC prefers a special board for tournaments which makes it easier to avoid pegging mistakes.

We prefer a jumbo board (bigger numbers and pegs), but have played on one shaped like the number 29, the highest score you can make. The odds of getting that hand score are 1 in 216,580. You want to keep playing just to see if you ever get it. You’ll have a lot of fun on the quest.

It might also be a way to foster congeniality in society. We sure need it.

St. Patrick’s Day Reflections: COVID-19 Vaccine 2nd Jab and More

This morning I got my 2^nd COVID-19 vaccine shot at the Health Care Support Services Building (HSSB)—just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, as luck would have it. Sena got her first shot yesterday and is scheduled for her second next month. I forgot to wear green, which worried me a little while I was waiting in line when the lady ahead of me poked a lot of fun at a guide for the same sin. He pointed to something bright green on the sole of his shoe, which I didn’t inspect too closely, and which didn’t pass the lady’s inspection.

After my first shot last month, I had some swelling, soreness, redness, and itching in my left arm which didn’t limit my activities. Today, the nurse affirmed that my symptoms after the first shot were not uncommon and that I might have more symptoms after my second shot—or none at all. Like my first experience, the process was very smooth and fast.

I didn’t pay much attention to the type of vaccine I got. I felt lucky to get it. All three, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer are effective. According to a recent news report, about 88% of Americans who got the first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine completed the 2-shot series, based on a CDC study of 12 million people.

In other important news, just this past Sunday I spread crab grass preventer and fertilizer on our lawn. On Monday, I shoveled snow from our driveway. Sena assured me that the snow would not hinder the lawn treatment. In fact, things are greening up nicely for St. Patrick’s Day.

The robins have probably been around for about a week. I noticed a robin standing in the street Monday while the snow was coming down. It was mesmerized and seemed to be thinking like me, “Just my luck. Now what?” But the robin didn’t have to shovel a driveway. Luck comes and goes.

I nearly got a 29-hand playing cribbage with Sena last night. She nearly always wins. The odds of getting a 29-hand are 1 in 216,580. In my hand I had the jack of spades and 3 of the four 5 cards. All I needed was a spade 5 cut card, which I did not get. Some players think cribbage is 2/3 luck and 1/3 skill. You need both.

Me and the robin keep looking for the warmer spring sun, and any other good fortune which is coming—and not dependent just on luck.