Ivory’s Adventures in Canada: 5 pin bowling

In early fall, I took an unusual sort of trip for me, a straight up vacation.  No conference, no coffee meetings, just a visit to my friend Jack.  We had a lot of fabulous adventures full of many, many new-to-me things.  Canadians sure do things goofy!

 

One of those goofy adventures was 5 pin bowling.  I’ve done plenty of bowling.  Heck, I even have a bowling skirt.  But, I’d never done 5 pin bowling before.  The pins are the same, except it’s only the front ones.  The balls are different.  They’re about the size of a softball and rather light compared to a full size bowling ball.  There’s less pin action because the pins are on strings, like puppets, for resetting.

The play and scoring are a little different, too.  You get 3 chances instead of 2 and pins are worth different points depending on where they are.  The head pin is 5, the next two out are 3 and the end two are 2 each.  There’s still strikes and spares and they work essentially the same.  There’s no bonus for taking 3 balls to knock down all the pins.  The max score per frame is 30.  I have no idea what a decent game score is.  All I know is, I beat Jack both games.  Hee hee.

My first couple rolls were terrible because I tried rolling the mini ball like I do my regular ball, straight down the lane.  That didn’t work because that roll relies on the size of the ball and closeness of the pins to knock things into other things.  Then I tried throwing it with a hook using the movements Mr. Trizzle had taught me for a curve roll.  It worked beautifully.

It was a lot of fun.  I kinda wish we had 5 pin bowling down here.

5 pin bowling in action

Fun with Munchkinhead Day 4

We started off the day with several games of bowling.  Albany Bowl has a great low price special on Thursday and Friday days.  I  won all the games, but that hardly mattered since Munchkinhead explained she doesn’t care how many pins she knocks down, she likes bowling because she likes throwing things.  O_o

Somehow, after bowling and a nice lunch at home, our day turned into a sort of accidental let’s-be-rich-people day.  We spent the afternoon at the race track and then went for dinner at the yacht club with our uncle.

I’ve driven past Golden Gate Fields well over a 100 times and had never been in it.  Munchkinhead’s visit seemed like a great excuse to finally check it out.  It was lots of fun, especially since it was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon with bright sun and not too much wind.  We watched 7 races and bet on a total of 11 horses from those races.  Munchkinhead had been to races in Kentucky before (she went to college in Kentucky), so she knew how to place the bets.

Overall, we won half our money back.  We started off picking horses based on the horses’ names.  That didn’t work too well.  By the end, we were picking based on jockeys and their rankings and the horses’ names.  That worked better.  In the 7th race, we picked 2 of the top 3 horses.

Here’s a fabulous picture of the two of us in the stands, in between races.  Munchkinhead borrowed my hat.  (Well, I put it on her head and she made a face.  But her faces are always so much better than mine.)

We almost got a picture of the two of us in front of the track when a gentleman offered to take a picture for us.  However, he turned out to be totally inept.  Couldn’t understand the concept of “no, you have to look through the viewfinder,” no matter how many times or ways Munchkinhead explained it.  Then he couldn’t find the shutter button.  Then the camera turned off, after which, in trying to turn it to find the power button, he dropped it 5 feet onto the hard concrete and said, “good thing it’s electronic!” 

Munchkinhead was horrified, especially when she discovered the fall had broken the camera.  Part of the retractable lens had come out, the lens couldn’t close and the camera screen would only give us “lens error. reset lens.”  Needless to say, by the end of this, we didn’t get our picture.  Though I did get Munchkinhead’s camera to work again after some minutes of futzing with it.

So instead of both of us in front of the field, here’s Munchkinhead in front of the field, and me in front of a tree in the parking lot.

 

Our Uncle had invited us for dinner at his yacht club, so we headed directly over to Sausalito after our day in Albany.  The yacht club is at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and it happened to be very clear and sunny when we got there.  The fog rolled in while were having dinner.  Munchkinhead was thrilled and super excited about the fog.  Until we went outside and she learned what the fog meant. Brrrr.

She got some great pictures of the bridge, and got a nice picture with it.

 

My Bowling Skirt

I like to bowl.  I like to sew.  I like to bowl so much, I joined a bowling league.  And at the bowling league, I discovered I bowl better in skirts.  “Well then,” I thought, “I ought to sew a skirt to bowl!”  And I did.

Cutting out the materials was pretty easy; everything was felt. and the pattern only had three main pieces and a handful of appliques.

The hardest part, and the part that took the most time, was sewing the sequins onto the bowling pins.  But even that wasn’t too difficult.

Since the skirt fabric was black, I needed a different color for the ball.  My bowling ball is a beautiful swirl of silvers, golds and dark greys with black.  It looks like outer space.  It’s pretty, so I needed something pretty for my skirt, too. This blue-grey felt has an embossed paisley pattern, giving it a little bit of color fluctuation and shimmer when it moves under the light.  It’s fabulous.

Some snip snip here, and some stitch stitch there, and pretty soon I had a great new bowling skirt.

It was quite a hit with the bowling league. :)

Munchkinhead Go Bye-Bye :(

My little sister, Munchkinhead, came to visit me this weekend.  Yes, it's the middle of my finals, but I don't care.  I value time with my family above everything else, even exam prep time.  (I took one exam Monday morning while she was sleeping and think it went fine.)

We had a fabulous weekend!  She came in Friday night and we headed up to school for what was left of Blackacre (flight delayed).  She got to meet a few of my friends and luckily for us, the food that was left was all the yummy, expensive cheeses.  After the Blackacre, we did a bit of grocery shopping (I was out of milk!) and headed home for a nice evening in.  We watched what very well may be my new favorite movie, Lost in Austen.  If you haven't seen it, do!  Then you'll understand why Munchkinhead and I like to say things like "one peacock is probably sufficient."  (Mommy, don't watch it yet!  Watch it with me!)  Later in the weekend we also watched the real Pride and Prejudice.  (Do not ask which version!  There is only one real one!)

Saturday, the weather was gorgeous.  It was the only nice day, and our busiest day.  We started the morning by dropping some stuff off at a donation center in East Nashville.  (Shhh... don't tell my mommy my little sister came to visit and one of the first places I took her was the ghetto.)

We spent most of the morning enjoying the Parthenon and its surrounding park.  It was also good exercise as we walked there and wandered around for awhile.

In the afternoon, we headed out to the Adventure Science Center with Foo Foo.  I think I had the perfect person to go with; nobody else would have been that much fun there!  (Ok, maybe Alfred.)  I learned something important: I'm big.  Sometimes that makes things that used to be fun scary.  I tried crawling through this giant heart, but I barely fit and was afraid I'd get stuck!  (Here's an example of some of the places we crawled.)

We did manage to climb up through lots of little spaces though to get to the top of the Adventure Dome and Look out over the entire city.

Foo Foo had fun playing with the different sound equipment.

We also discovered that if Foo Foo stands on Munchkinhead's head, they're almost as tall as me in my shoes.

After Adventure Center - we went shopping.  The trouble with having Munchkinhead around is that she makes me spend more money than normal because shopping with her is just so much fun!  We bought dresses at the South American import store down the street (more walking), then headed out to use one of my gift cards at DSW.  I had the hardest time finding shoes I liked!  The store was so uppity!  I did finally find a nice pair of brown dress shoes.  Can't believe I now own some BCBG.  We headed to Target but didn't find anything of interest there.  Finally, we went to Ross and were both delighted with the cutest dresses!

The rest of the weekend, Munchkinhead helped me pack because it was icky outside.  We did go out to Cafe Coco for dinner.  And we went bowling!  11 games on Sunday night, 5 more on Monday.  We had so much fun!  Munchkinhead beat me twice.  I started bowling with my left hand, too and now have 2 sore arms instead of one.  (And a sore back, and sore legs, and sore anything that can be sore.)

And on the last night, after bowling, we played Candy Land with Foo Foo, Daddy Bunny, April and Whiskey.  April and Foo Foo each won one game.  The pictures are on Munchkinhead's camera.  :(

Today, I had to take her back to the airport.  :(  She has more school now.  But we had fun, and she made it back safely.  I can't wait to see her again in July.  And then Alfred will be there, too!  What fun we shall have!!!

Gobble Gobble

It wasn't me, but someone did get a turkey tonight.

We're back in the wonderful world of cheese, all three of us.  Monday night is the highly anticipated Metallica concert.  Alfred got in on Thursday; Munchkinhead and I arrived today.  This evening we went bowling with old friends: Smokey the Grrrr, his sidekick and The Great Ecclestone, actor extrodinare.  The turkey was all Ecclestone.

My high was only 126.  Definitely not my best.  My average was higher than that before I left Nashville, but I haven't bowled much since then.  (It's really expensive in Cali and Nigeria, and now, my bowling partner's moved away.  Come back Mr. Trizzle!)  However, I did have one really cool thing tonight.  I won ten dollars!  Orange head pin is special.  Get a strike, spin the wheel.  I got an orange head pin.  I got a strike.  I got to spin the wheel.  I got $10.  That was pretty good since nearly every other slot on the wheel is $1.  $50 is the highest, but if you get $50, you get to spin again, so you can win up to $100.

Oh, and randomly, I just happened to be wearing my lucky bowling shirt.  Light blue with dark blue bowling ball, "This is How I Roll," it says.