Monday

The fair is now gone and so too with it most of our summer. Football training camps begin next week. Soon the days will shorten. High school football practices will start. The dog days will be here, and back to school shopping will be a must.

But last weekend was one of the best of the summer. Not that we did anything special - Friday Kristie and I went with our friends, Lon and Sara, to the premiere of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Saturday was pure relaxation - Kristie and I played Scrabble (I'll post an entry on that in a bit) and then watched episode after episode of "Law and Order - Special Victims Unit." Then to cap the evening off KoKo, Kristie, and I played Boggle and Phase 10. Sunday was more of the same. A quick trip to Walmart to get supplies for KoKo's Girlscout trip to Medora this week. When we returned, Casey and his buddies (Austin and Curtis) were up from their late night at the Fertile fair. We enticed them into a game of American History Trivia. Casey is a history nut, so it was right down his street. Of course, Kristie won - despite our best efforts to set her back at every turn. The game involves moving pieces around a board (doesn't almost every game?). The board is divided squares and each square is divided into four basic categories (art, history, geography, and general). If you answer the question in your category correctly, you move on. This continues until you get one wrong. The nice thing is that you never get stuck on a category because even if you answer it incorrectly, when your next turn arrives, you can move to the next category and try to answer that question. To compound matters, a few of the squares have a picture of Uncle Sam on them. This means you have to draw a card from a separate stack. It either will move you ahead or back. Sometimes you have to forfeit your turn. Sometimes you also can elect to move other players ahead or one back. Well, we all ganged up on Kristie and moved her back whenever possible. Poor Casey cruised to a big lead. But he became stuck on the final square, which was devoted to arts. He lost four straight questions. Soon I joined him there and was stuck too. Finally, Kristie arrived there too. We knew we were in trouble because arts is her category. We lucked out and she got the first question wrong. However, so did Casey and I. But Kristie wouldn't be denied. The winning question was about one of her all time favorite performers - Simon and Garfunkle. She won . . . AGAIN!