February 28, 2009

Keeping Score


I used to hate board games. I'm not competitive, well, Will would say I am competitive at a few things (sailing mainly, I just really wanted to WIN! Is that so bad?) I never did sports at school, I never do any kind of sports in fact if I can help it. I just don't (generally) car about winning and losing. And I think that's why board games always used to irritate me. But round about the time that Briton was born (which coincided with us having less money) and then even more so when Evie came along (again, less money still) Will and I started playing board games. Usually we play with friends but over the past three or four months we've started playing each other, ALL THE TIME. Part of it is that Briton is now old enough to play some decent games, part of it is that we've finally learned/amassed some good two player games, especially card games. I hadn't played many card games since I was a kid. My Grandma and her friends used to sit around the table at their cabin playing a game called Whoopie! which I can't remember how to play other that when you win you yell WHOOPIE! But now were card game addicts. And since we're constintly playing, I decided we needed a score board to keep track of who's winning and whose the loosing.

And being me, I couldn't just use a piece of paper, I had to make it difficult on myself and make a scoreboard that could hang in our dining room.

I found a really ugly frame that was painted (badly) in flaky gold and housed a equally ugly flower painting with a velvet mat (seriously, velvet?) at my favorite thrift shop. Wish I had taken a photo of it before I took it apart because it was REALLY ugly. But it was the right size and shape and the texture of the frame was interesting. And it was a whopping ten cents. So I bought it, took the painting and the velvet mat out and painted it the green that my dining room is very slowly heading towards color-scheme-wise and added a new back that was painted with chalkboard paint. (Don't ask Will how long that last step took, let's just say I lazed around for a few weeks with a half done project after I badgered him into getting the wood cut to size. Oops) But at last, it's done and we played an inagural game of cribbage last night to christen the board (I won!)

Now I can't decide if I'm ready for another project or projected out.