Lanka

this has been a long day...for no other reason then getting up at 4am and tackling a pile of things that just needed that "ooomph" to get them done....thank god....more and more I am getting things off my backlog and out the door.


But now it is a pitiful 8pm and I am ready for bed. MK is not. But we will discuss this shortly.


We switched the boraco game to today because of the Brazilian election. That is important because I play with Brazilians and it is a requirement that they vote in the presidential election no matter where they are in the world (or they lose their travel status).


The cards did not like being played on a Saturday. It was a two hour game but only three hands and it was just...painful. I was congratulated that for it only being my second game I had already mastered the "buraco sigh" of absolute despair as you look at a hand of caringas and realize you are not only f--cked but so is your partner.


In between we had ribs, nuts, cheese and cafe zinos and Frederico the squirrel came and crawled in one of the players laps and ate peanuts.


THen it was off to the cafe to sit and catchup on even more paperwork. But it is all getting there. Knock on wood but next week I will be on to many new things. I have been holding poems and videos and radio at bay while I try to catch up and iron out things. And then before I know it the workshops are on again. Add to this a strange one I am doing this wedensday, an 8 hour venture into an unknown land for me.


Coffee will see me through.


I think, in the midst of all of this, I am most pleased that I am beginning to learn how to play strategy with buraco. It made that book, Midnight in the Garden of Good an Evil, more real for me. You know the part about the card party with all the timed events (deal hand 7:00, serve water 7:15, remove water 7:20) because we arrived, bonded, had our coffee and cigarettes and then sat down and it was all business and all silence. I could imagine it escalating into a carefully choreographed thing like the bridge games in the book.


And I also have begun to understand the bridge culture that was around when I was growing up. Games are such an odd thing. We've talked alittle about the difference between the group/party games like Trivial Pursuit and that drawing thing and the group/partnered card games, how there is less talking that occurs with the latter but more socialization on the inbetween if that makes sense. Its funny because I have never been a fan of the party games, they always seemed such lonely ventures to me and yet I have loved mahjong and other things like that which are played in groups.I had to invest serious time in research on the Brazilian election so I could participate in the discussions at break and it was a good thing. The description of their debate process is very interesting.


Oh and by the way, we discovered we are playing the Sri Lankan rules of canasta.


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