week winding down; coffee; lunch; more DVDs; dominoes

[fflo]

Had coffee with elmur_fudd yesterday---good hangin'. Just came back from lunch with coworker. had a beer! oooh!

This weekend to look forward to: more library DVDs, cleaning, maybe Discount Tire, dominoes. Anything else? I forget.

Comments

[masculine-lady.livejournal.com]

indeed...which version do you play? The one I am most familiar with is the Mexican Train...but, I am willing to do any. Yes, that is a great cold wintertime activity. And a summer one on a picnic table. Oh yeah.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I believe my game of choice is called Muggins, or something like that. It's when the ends adding up to multiples of 5 scores---the traditional Carribean/Af-Am game, I'm told. Mexican Train is big in Texas, yes? (Where bones themselves are big?) Do you play that with Double Twelves, or Double Nines, or something crazy? It has a stem thing in the middle, and you play out toward yourself?

I'm a Double Six gal, so no more than 4 can play my game, and it's really more fun with a boneyard, so 2 or 3 are ideal. But I'd love to learn Mexican Train sometime---and am I right that you can play it with more people? 6 or 8?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Geez Louise! I haven't played dominoes in at least a quarter century. And I'm quite sure I played with them more as a building set than as the game was meant to be played. I think the family had two matched sets stored in one box, and each kid would build a tower on the table. Then we'd take turns sliding a domino at the other kid's fort, to see who knocked it down first. We had all sorts of strategies for fortifying the citadel with walls around the tower.

Later on, as older brothers moved away, I just built elabrate towers, domes, and other archetectural wonders.

You guys actually play that game where you use the dots? Bizzare! I think I've only played whatever version is generic in the US once or twice. It was much more gratifying setting them up in rows, going up stairs and stuff, and knocking them down. I think the high point was having the last one land on a mouse trap loaded with a ping-pong ball.

Definitely I grew up with dominoes as a craft, rather than as a mathematical, intellectual pursuit.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I was a building domino person as a kid and exclusively for many years---love the knock 'em down thing. I wish I'd thought of the mousetrap-cum-ping-pong-ball, though! You showed signs of genius early on, hunh, Pete.

I love the combination of strategies that bones (scored in multiples of 5s) calls for. There's a "spinner"---the first double played---off of which play can happen in 4 directions, but the vertical ones only become "active" for scoring once a bone is added to one side or the other there. One wants not only to score often & as much as possible, but also to "go out" first---not having to draw bones from the boneyard & load up your hand---cuz that not only scores more points (potentially) but (moreover) give one dominion over what bone gets played first in the next hand.

I was taught by a guy who worked with me at Balto City Comm College. He was great. Holly would never let me use all of his pseudo-psychological tactics of bravado and such, but she too liked the game, as do many of my favorite folk. Want to play some time? I'm a gentle teacher (at first). (Once you learn, the kid gloves come off!)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I can't take original credit for the mousetrap and ping-pong ball. I got that from my big brother, who in turn got the idea of a ping-pong bll/mousetrap chain reaction from Disney's "Our Friend the Atom."

But yeah, sure it sounds fun to try a game of dominoes sometime. Those games always have such wierd jargon--spinners and bones and boneyards (I do remember "boneyard," but I never heard the pieces called bones).

The only game I've actually played recently has been Scrabble.

[masculine-lady.livejournal.com]

we play with double 15s, and you can play with many more people, I've played with as many as six. It's the most fun and least confusing with four. Though D. and I have had a weeklong dominoes game before with just the two of us. I learned Mexican Train from someone from Arizona, which made the Mexican thing and now the Texas thing make sense.
I have long wanted to learn the other version of which you speak. We should plan something...

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know there WERE double 15s.

Yeah, I'd like to learn Mexican Train. Got a chock-full week and weekend coming, though. Maybe next week? or later?

[masculine-lady.livejournal.com]

oh, us too. I am going to be out of town on two separate trips from the 4th thru the 8th. But the next weekend might work out just fine. When are you free?