Two for Tuesday

Knowing my personality, a co-worker forwarded me this web game link that she thought I would enjoy. Her assessment was spot on, of course, and I spent the next ten minutes committing monkey atrocities across the continental US. After managing to get my name in the daily Hall of Infamy a few times, I took it upon myself to drive my friend's name completely off the leaderboard. Having accomplished that mission, I didn't give it another thought.

At work the next morning, I'm going through my usual routine: get my coffee, check Yahoo! news for anything interesting, clean up e-mail from the overnite, etc. I'm looking for a web address in my URL history, notice the game link, and figure I'll check the scoreboard. You know, just for the hell of it. The scores were cleared from the previous day, but...

...her name was back on the list!

Now, I know for a fact that she did this on purpose. She's just like me: ultra-competitive about utterly meaningless things. It's a horrible way to live, but I digress. I had no choice but to wipe her off the list again.

And now I wait. Wait for her to make her end run yet again, at which time the cycle repeats. Eternal vigilance is the price of Furious George superiority.

Intermission
Now, since I've been such a crappy blogger for the past week, I've decided to give you a two-fer. I hope you enjoy Act II.
Intermission End

Saturday was a good day. A bunch of friends got together for a picnic/poker game, and we all had a blast. The host is one of those guys of whom I'll always be jealous: he can build stuff and it will look like the picture when he's done. He put together a really nice game room in his basement, complete with a poker table that he built himself. Padded rail, drink holders, the nines.

This was our second gathering at his place in the past few weeks. The first time we were there, he still hadn't done anything with the backyard; but, he's done something with it now. He leveled an entire area, and built himself a brick patio (650 bricks, I believe is the count); and he did it on a single Saturday. Absolutely astounding. His knack with his hands does lend itself to some ribbing from the rest of us though. Here are a few of the gems:

When we noticed he had a pallet with quite a few bricks left over from the patio:

What are you going to do with those? Build a shelter for the homeless?

When we were discussing where we'd have the next party:

I'd have you over to my place, but Brian hasn't built it yet.

When he was talking about his other plans for the backyard:

Brian: I'm going to put quoit pits over there, and there.
Us: I suppose you'll have RF chips in the quoits and auto-scorers in the pegs too, eh?

Unfortunately, while building his patio, he managed to bury his wedding ring under the bricks. He's pretty sure he's got the area narrowed down, but he'd still rather use a metal detector to find it. Turns out my dad has one, and I offered to bring it over to search for the ring, but only on three conditions.

1. We have to wear eye patches.
2. We have to say, "Arrrrrr" every time the detector goes off.
3. He must hereafter refer to his ring as "buried treasure."

I also plan on keeping any loose change we find, but I'll spring that one on him later. I want to get agreement on the other points first.