Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The Game of Washers

This is a little...okay, a lot...late but when I was on vacation in Taos, NM a couple of years ago I entered a Wal-Mart looking for one thing and happened upon these little gems.

This is what we poor people call the game of washers. Before they became a product at Wal-Mart, Target, and wherever else, these washers were randomly found at hardware or plumbing stores or maybe just by dumb luck.

My dad created a "course" in the backyard of our house out of the bottom of a dual burner gas grill and some washers that were like 2-3 cms thick, about 2-3" in diameter with a center hole about a 1/2" in diameter. I don't know where my dad found these washers because you can't find them anywhere nowadays. They cannot be found exactly like I remember nor can they be found similar in size and weight. They are either too thin or too light and typically none in 3" diameter. They at least can't be found at your local Lowe's, Home Depot or Ace Hardware stores.

Anyway, this is a really fun pasttime for the family. It's similar to horeshoes in scoring and play (tossing something on to something else). When I was in junior high school, the coaches made the game out of an empty can goods can. Again, the washers weren't the same in size and weight as the ones my dad had but the ones they had served the purpose. It was fun playing a game that these adults were new to that I was used to playing my entire life.

When I saw this package in the Wal-Mart, I had to buy it. Even if I didn't have a 'course' set up to play it on it was worth already having the washers because the holes are easy to construct out of just about anything. It wasn't until months later when I got back to Dallas that I saw these again at Target. However, this time they were part of a set and it wasn't exactly the same game I grew up playing. There are tons of variations but none will replace the game of old. Some of the variations are similar in set up to the old game.

There's just nothing like sliding or bouncing a washer from about 10 inches in front of the hole into the hole. Or having a washer toilet bowl the hole to either make it close or inside the hole. Some of the variations now are set up to where you have make a hole-in-one to get a point or points. That's not the fun part of it. The fun part is being able to knock the opponents washer away from the hole if it's closer than your washer OR making a sinker. The sinker isn't the end all be all.

Anyway, that's my brief walk down memory lane that only took me two years to type about. I'm glad to see it the washers game coming (or came) back. I guess we should thank tailgating and it's appreciation of any game that can be made into a drinking game.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

In the news 09/19/2013

This is ridiculously stupid. From the Park Cities BubbleLife News:
HPHS Softball Field Lighting Still in Limbo

A decision on whether the Highland Park High School girls softball team should have lights at their stadium, one that has been in the making for over two years now, still was not reached at Tuesday’s University Park city council meeting.

Click here for article while it lasts.

This is just ridiculously stupid! Did I type that already?

These residents are bitching about the possibility of noise and light pollution from the high school for which probably is the reason why they moved into the area in the first place!? Highland Park residents are the whiniest, most egotistical people. The odds are probably zero for any activity at the fields in Highland Park to go past 9:30 or 10 p.m.

I wonder what the residents around the TCU, SMU, UT Austin, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and others schools say about the noise and light pollution—not to mention parking pollution.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

New advertisements in Yahoo?

Is this the new way that Yahoo is advertising in its email? I don't know if they decided to minimize their ads like Google does or what. I noticed it first in the Yahoo app on my Samsung SIII about a week ago—I think it was after a Yahoo app upgrade. I then noticed it on my computer via the browsers.
 
 
If they wanted to be like Google, they need to move the ad a few lines above the emails list. Google at least separates the emails and ad by a couple of lines.

Anyway, this is just me sharing my powers of perception.