Rabbit rabbit! Happy August and happy Friday! Today is International Mahjong Day (Mahjong is having a moment, but it also looks super confusing) and Respect for Parents Day (Respect should be earned).
WM had his six week post-op appointment yesterday and it was all good news. He received the okay to finally remove his leg brace and a referral for six more weeks of physical therapy. He’s going to the same PT place I went to for my Achilles tendinitis last year. They work you hard, but they are fantastic. He’s going up and down the stairs and cooking again and driving himself to PT so it seems like Hot Caretaker Summer is coming to an end earlier than I expected.
After work I mowed the lawn because the temperature had dropped from 100°F to 70°F. And then I took a shower, because the grass was wet and I was approximately 10% grass stain by area.
Now that I’m squeaky clean and moisturized within an inch of my life, I can tackle the Friday 5. The theme is Puck Around and Find Out which can only mean hockey! Here’s hoping my NJ Devils can play an entire season of good hockey instead of a few weeks of greatness and a few weeks of cringe. I haven’t seen a home game in over 20 years, but I intend to end that streak this year.
- When could you reasonably have been called a jet?
Your girl Kim has never relied on speed. I’m more of a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race gal. (We’re doing hockey teams! This refers to the Winnipeg Jets.) - When did you most recently feel blue?
Today, reading that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down. I hope everyone who voted against funding it has the future they deserve. (St. Louis Blues) - What have you been wild about lately?
Non-Dorito snacks, believe it or not. Lately it’s been Dot’s Homestyle Pretzels Original Seasoned Pretzel Twists and Ruffles Cheddar & Sour Cream (flavored) Potato Chips. I’m still portioning out my food so I need those smaller portions to have BIG flavor. (Minnesota Wild) - Who were the co-stars of the film that was your week?
Nephews A and B. They are 11 and 7 now and we had a blast at HersheyPark. Eventually I’ll get one of them on a looping coaster and eventually we’ll be at the park until the lights come on. (Dallas Stars) - What sharks are in your waters these days?
The grim, foreboding feeling of the impending end of summer. But I still have the entirety of August — and actual summer runs until the end of September. I’ll also be grabbing a bonus week of summer later this fall. I can’t wait. Oooo I can’t wait. (San Jose Sharks)
Apologies, readers! I just realized I forgot to create August wallpapers. I’ll pick that back up in September. This weekend I’m planning to spend a bit of time working the garage, start brainstorming my August cards, and enjoy some quality reading time in my hammock. I hope you have a great weekend, too!
PS: I’ll post my July cards on Monday!
If you get rummy or gin (the card games, not the alcoholic or the alcohol), you’d pick up mah jong almost immediately. The numbers in the upper right corners of the tiles are like the values of playing cards. The pictures (which look like plates or bamboo sticks or whatever) on the tiles are the suits. So if you see 4 and you have bamboo, you’ll see 4 pieces of bamboo, the way you’d see 4 spades or 4 hearts on playing cards. As in gin, you make runs of the same suits (7, 8, 9 of bamboo!) or sets of the same numbers across suits (2 plates, 2 bamboos, 2 characters*). You’re done when all your tiles are parts of these sets.
There’s a little more to it than that, but that’s the gist. Of course there are variations that make it more complicated, but the game you see the Golden Girls playing is basically gin.
* the third suit isn’t a picture of anything — it’s the pictographic representation of the arabic number in the upper right of the tile. So basically the 9 of characters (different people call it different things) is the 9 of numbers. It’s literally 9 in the upper right in arabic and 9 in the middle in chinese numbers.
The other weird suits are dragons and winds and cool stuff like that, without numerical value but more valuable, points-wise.
I’ve been on a low-carb thing since the end of April (21 pounds down. Woo.) but of course I couldn’t just throw away my snacks, so for a month I was eating two Doritos a day. They were heavenly. Even when they were stale, they might have been the highlight of my day. 🙂