I'm a card player - did you know?

Around our house my wife Gena and I have been known to play cards when we're unable to afford to do anything else...which happens a lot when you're blessed with poverty like we are.

One of our favorite games is Canasta - it's kind of an old game that isn't as popular as it once was. My parents taught me how to play when I was a kid and I taught Gena and naturally we always employ the Roberts Rules of Order in any household game.

I tell you all of this because we just finished the "rubber game" of our first tournament since we started playing with my new Houston Texans playing cards I got for Christmas...and I didn't just win...no I mercilessly clobbered her with possibly the greatest one hand I've ever had in the forty some odd years I've been playing Canasta.

I already had over 4,000 points as the hands were dealt. According to my planned strategy, this was to be the last hand of the game, but I was going to have to meld 120. Gena went down first - drat! (She was still melding 50 as she had yet to break a thousand in her point total thus far in the game.)

After being forced to freeze the deck in order to discard quite early...I didn't have enough points in my hand to meld 120 anymore. [But a guys got to do what a guys got to do right?] We thrust and parried back and forth all the way down to the very last card that could possibly be drawn when she FINALLY discarded the one card that gave me that huge discard pile. Naturally it took every card I had in my hand to make the meld. Then speaking of naturally I was able to make 5 natural canasta's - 4 others with wild cards, finished laying down the rest of the cards and went out.

Yes, down and out! 4000 points base and 980 points count for a grand point total in the game of 9115 points in a 5000 point victory limit. It was the coolest hand I remember ever playing. Sadly, it was against my wife though and she thinks it would have been a lot more fun to go to a movie tonight...but them's the breaks, babycakes. Movies cost money and card playing is cheap fun - especially when I'm the winner!

I think the reason I'm so excited to tell you this is because usually our games turn out just the opposite. She doesn't seem to remember how ordinarily she's the one with the outrageous good fortune to beat my brains out over and over and over and over and...well, you get the idea.

Anyway, this gloating I know doesn't become me and Gena finds this an unflattering flaw in my character - but hey, I just started this blog - and I wanted to tell someone. Thanks for being here for me. Mike