Poker night

Seven year old Max came over on Tuesday, which is getting to be poker night, since that’s what we’ve been doing lately with him. Before the big game, though, he had some of Nana’s famous mac n cheese. We shut off the TV to visit, and I asked him about school. He was typically noncommittal, though he did talk to two girls in his class, Krista and Katerina.

He started talking about those hand buzzers that kids use to shock each other, and how one might be built. His dad cautioned him strongly about playing with electricity, but asked him, theoretically, how he might go about making such a thing. Max surprised us all by saying, “I have a diagram in my pocket.” Sure enough, there it was: an exploded view of a buzzer, complete with “battery holder” and “copper wire”. Shane said it looked like the kid version of the Anarchist’s Handbook.

Nana was the big winner in poker, taking the “all in” hand at the end.

Look who' s 60

Today is my 60th birthday. I’ve come to terms with it. It was a little rough for the past year or so leading up to it, as I thought about what it might mean. Growing up, anyone who was 60 was really old! I remember that 50 kind of felt good. 60 is not much different, though I might be creaking a little more than I did ten years ago.

I’m fresh from my birthday dinner with the in-laws. We tried a place that none of us had ever been to before. It bills itself as “comfort food with a twist”. We had a nice time with great food—one brother in law even cleaned his plate of his chicken parm, and the other liked his steak. I had lamb chops and discovered that I really don’t care for lamb chops, but I could see where they were going with it.

Everything was going along just fine until the checks came. There were errors on all three of them. Ours was correct the second time (we wound up owing more). Kathy and I left, though, while the others waited for their checks to be corrected for the third time. Too bad. We were thinking of returning there some time.

I spend the day doing things I like to do: I got a haircut, and walking back from the barber, I saw a pretty girl in a red Corvette stuck in the snow across the street from our house. What to do? I got a board and some carpeting from our garage and went to the rescue. Later I went to Borders and got a book on the photo software I use, and wandered aimlessly around the store for a while. So it was pretty much a perfect day.

As long as I keep up with walking the dog a few miles a day, swimming and weight training, I should be able to keep age at bay. After all, isn’t 60 the new 40?