We tried something new tonight. One of our regular Thursday night group members is a serious skier, and at the end of the ski season, he took a last run down a slushy, icy mogul hill. Near the bottom of the run, he hit the nadir of the mogul just right to compress his knee wrong, and he tore his ACL badly. He has been waiting to get on the schedule of a top-notch orthopedic surgeon, and today was his big day. This guy is the life of the party, or at least the source of our GM's greatest torture, and we agreed we would skip the game if he couldn't be present. Rather than skip a week and let ourselves fall out of the habit we've kept since November or December, we had the first inaugural Hot Tub Game Night (tm). After a successful trial run, this is probably going to become a regular thing. A family tradition, as it were. The kids brought over dinner, everyone took turns soaking in the new tub, and we settled around the table after dark to play mah jongg by torchlight. The fire added an extra complexity that we didn't expect, but I didn't want to be bothered by mosquitoes or flies, so it was worth making each tile drawn like a strange, dangerous game of jenga. It made it worth our while not to imbibe as much as we might have on a D&D night. I was wearing a big, floppy-sleeved robe that I got for free at the casino on Valentine's day last year. I knocked my own tiles on the ground a couple times. I had to be extra careful not to light the robe on fire.
I think everyone managed to win at least one round, and we went to the wall once (ran out of tiles and no one won). It's nice having a regular cadre of players who picked up the rules so fast that I didn't have to coach them past the first round months ago. It was a nice cap to the first real full day off I'd had in weeks. I ran out of steam in a big way, and needed a day to sleep late and recover. I still had to mow the lawn and clean off the outdoor table, but other than that, I let other people call the shots today. And now at the end of the day, I realize that I never took any of my pills, I left the windows closed in my room so it's hot, and I forgot to make the pecan pie I like to make on May 10 to mark the anniversary of both of my grandfathers' birthdays. I can still make it. Maybe I'll do it next week when there will be a houseful of people to eat it up. Until then, I have to get back to business and knock more things off my to-do list.
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