eXtreme Croquet

So I found No Nest for the Wicket by Donna Andrews in the Barnes & Noble bargain bin. I can’t say that I recommend the book (a mediocre murder mystery), but the premise is fantastic and introduced me to a new sport: eXtreme Croquet.

It turns out that eXtreme Croquet Societies dot the country; the most famous group is the Connecticut eXtreme Croquet Society. [I highly recommend checking out their website http://www.extremecroquet.org/; the news clip is especially entertaining.]

Forget the gloves and manicured green lawns of traditional croquet. The rougher the eXtreme course, the better. In fact, eXtreme Croquet courses include hills and valleys, pits and chips, even sand and water. Some courses cover such a vast area that walkie-talkies are needed to know whose turn it is. eXtreme mallets look like something Beowulf might have used to combat Grendel, and depending on the muscle playing, wickets are made of PVC or metal pipe. Even better, eXtreme Croquet veterans recommend having extra balls handy (no, not like that) because traditional balls tend to shatter when they are impaled on a boulder or drop from lobbed heights. You can see why the game sounds tempting, right?

Fortunately, I belong to a gaming family (not in a gambling debt sort of way, they’re just game for a game). I explained the idea. They hopped on board and we planned the first of what might be many eXtreme Croquet days.

Since Dad loves his power tools, he quickly devised a way to make the mallets using 4x4 fence posts and closet dowels. We ordered a box of balls from croquet.com and chose an unruly section of Texas hillside for our course. PVC wickets were placed as inconveniently as possible—among cedar trees or rutted out cow paths—in a 9 wicket diamond formation.

Fun was had by most (sadly, it took me a dozen tries to clear the second wicket, so I spent the game hopelessly behind). I am happy to report that no snakes were hiding in the tall grass, that no ticks attacked from cedar groves, and that cow patties were the scariest obstacles to avoid. The definite highlight of the game was when a roqueted player cleared a 4 foot embankment and miraculously got back on course.

Since the eXtreme course is eXtremely big, games take an eXtremely long time (we planned for two hours and should have planned for four), but next time we’re thinking of donning headlamps and playing a four hour game at sunset!

Gossip Girl Is Back!

Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder because over the summer I learned to say proudly, " I looooooove Gossip Girl," upgrading it from a guilty pleasure of a show to a sorely missed, omg!-I-might-be-addicted show. But the higher the expectation, the harder the fall. Thank goodness Josh Schwartz has successfully steered his beautiful bevy of upper-east-siders into season 2.

If you have read this post thus far, then chances are there is no need for a season 1 refresher or even a season 2 synopsis, so I will get to the point. The characters of Blair and Chuck are greatness this season. Let me be even more specific: whoever is writing Blair Waldorf's lines, rocks. Why? Warm up the DVR, because without it, you might miss gems like "'perfect post-Bass palate cleanser', 'listen Bass-hole', and 'oh that mother-Chucker'" in her rapid-fire dialogue. I have no idea how long the writers can keep the two characters on the amorous-venomous bantering edge, but one thing's for sure: I'll tune in Monday to find out.

XOXO

Fluidline Every Time

The lady-like fashions parading down the Fall 2008 runways are accessorized with upswept hair and liquid lined eyes. Oh boy! Liquid eye liner has always been a tricky challenge. Whether the liner’s applicator is a neat “pen” or a thin brush, if the applicant’s hand bobbles the tiniest bit, it is bound to be a Cleopatra-eye sort of day. While I prefer the glamorous look of a well-applied liquid liner to a smudgy pencil, if I have had too much Starbucks, I am forced to settle for the pencil…until now.

MAC cosmetics has introduced Fluidline, a cute little pot of eyeliner that has all the precision of a liquid and all the control of a pencil. Applied with the brush of your choice, its paste consistency glides on smoothly and dries almost instantly. And because it is MAC, the price ($15.00) is reasonable and the pigments are outstanding: brilliant blues and greens for the more adventurous, subtle blacks and browns for the professional (the coppery "brassy" is a fave). More traditional liners disappoint during a long work day (a pencil liner fades and a liquid liner is bound to smear), but Fluidline stays put. It is the gel pen of the eyeliner world and the reason a skirt is the only pencil I’ll choose in the morning, regardless of how much coffee I have had.

(pics used from umachanel.com and maccosmetics.com)

Twitch & Frances? You Decide.

My papillon Georgette had puppies 3 months ago. Four puppies, to be exact: a huge litter for a papillon. The smallest of the four we called 'runt' for the first week of his life but feared we would give him a complex. So, we started calling him Twitchington (yep, if you know what SYTYCD stands for, you know where the name came from), or Twitch for short. Imagine my surprise when I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and saw Twitch staring at me from an aisle display. What is Frances anyway? Bear? Chipmunk?

P.S. Frances, it turns out, is a badger.

All of Colorado Fall in a Day

September in Texas is a source of frustration. With warm plaids and sweaters, adorable jackets and boots hitting stores, it looks like fall. And with schools and football gearing up for another season, you want it to be fall. However, when you walk out of the AC and into 92 degrees of sunny Texas day, fall seems eons away.
Not so in Colorado. Even though this September is "unusually warm" (temps have camped in the mid-seventies all month), the nights dip into the crisp forties. Bring on the plaids and jackets!

Best of all, the mountains are beginning to wear their autumn finest, too. Because this is the first Colorado autumn we have seen since we were kids, my sister D and I took a drive.
Our plan was to tour Gold Camp Road, where groves of Aspens canopy the drive. The trip had to be a quick one since clouds were rolling over the mountains and threatening us with rain. Along the highway to get there, patches of brilliant yellows and golds, and even some oranges, dotted the mountain sides, but most of the trees had yet to change or even hint of color. Determined we had timed our trip well, we figured the higher up we went, the deeper and more consistent the colors would become. With that theory in mind, Gold Camp should be beautiful.

Every few minutes or so, we would pull over, get out of the car and admire the views. But with each mile we climbed, the temperature dropped several degrees. By the time we reached the Gold Camp turn off, we regretted leaving our plaid jackets at home.

We made the turn and waited for a herd of cows to meander across the roadway. It had recently rained, making the world shimmer in the sun. We slushed along the muddy road, hoping to be ensconced in autumn color, but instead the trees stood tall in their summer greens. They were beautiful, but still maddeningly green. Only in the chilly shadows were some Aspens gold.
Electing to try the drive again in a couple of weeks, we made a 200-point turn and headed back toward the city. We had not gone a mile before the rain caught up with us and turned to sleet in the dropping temperatures. We kept going and the sleet eventually lightened to snow flurries. By the time we hit Woodland Park, the sun was out again. We knew the day served as an example of what to expect in the weeks to come. Saturday I bought a pair of snowboots.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. And, if you are reading this, congrats on successfully inserting the hyphen (an annoying bit of URL punctuation I would have happily avoided if possible). Those of you searching for a themed blog--jealousy or eco-friendly living, for example--keep searching. You have fallen upon the blog of a green-eyed English major with the attention span of a two-year-old. No themes, just the meandering ramblings of my addlepated mind.