A-Little-Labor Day

We had a good weekend, thank you very much.

We saved a lot of our fun for Labor Day itself, yesterday. We got up early(ish) and went for a bike ride, stopping for breakfast along the way. The awful heat we’ve had for the past week broke yesterday and we had a nice cool breeze for the ride, along with sun.

After we got home and read the paper, we prepared for Subrata and Susan to come over and hang out. We went a little overboard: I replaced the cats’ litter, swept the back patio, prepared cucumber sandwiches, and added herbs (parsley, onion, rosemary and thyme – the “slightly twisted Simon and Garfunkel herbs”) to hamburger meat and made patties out of them. Debbi prepared corn to grill, checked the potato salad she’d made the night before, vacuumed, and did dishes.

S&S came by around 3 – and Subrata promptly turned around again because they’d thought we had a copy of Clue which Susan and Debbi wanted to play. Which is to say, Debbi thought she had a copy in the house, but it must be in storage – I’ve never seen it in the house. Once he got back we got down to some not-at-all-serious gaming: Two games of Clue (I won one), and two rounds (of 7 games each) of dominoes. Subrata and I both prefer “skill” games, while I think Susan and Debbi like much more casual games. Clue and dominoes are kind of in-between, with a lot of luck but some skill, too. I hadn’t played Clue in probably decades; it was pretty fun, as a change of pace. Dominoes actually is fun, but it works best with 3 or more people; 4 is a good number, because there’s lots you can do. Oddly, Subrata turns out not to be very good a dominoes, something he knew ahead of time. I don’t know why that is, as I felt like I picked up the nuances of it fairly quickly when I learned on our trip to visit Debbi’s family last spring. I won both rounds of dominoes, but certainly not every game (and I had one game where I committed a real boner play).

We grilled hamburgers, sausages and corn around 7 pm, and it all turned out quite well. The potato salad was excellent! I managed to get almost everything off the grill at the same time, and certainly close enough for our purposes. We topped it off with Computer Chip ice cream from Rick’s and another round of dominoes before calling it a night.

So a fun time was had by all. Even the cats had a good time, with Blackjack and Newton hanging around with us all day, and Roulette perking up her ears when Susan pulled out the treats. It was a little work to put it all together, but it was worth it.