Mom's Spanish Rice rocks the hizzow! I'm spending a week-and-a-half up north with my family and it's great! The homemade food is excellent and it's definitely warmer than being in SF right now. I've also had my favorite dessert: poppy seed tort. YUM! I got in last Thursday and stayed at Nate's place (it's too confusing just using initials all the time so I'm using real names from now on). He's one of the bro's that will soon produce a new nephew or niece. We stayed up and had a few beers on the night I got in. I flew Midwest Express and if you haven't flown them lately they are not as good as they used to be. For one thing they got rid of the huge comfy seats that they used to have. They are delayed just as much as everyone else now as well. I overheard one of the flight attendants talking about how the whole company is just in "get bought out mode" so they are cutting everything back and pretty much just coasting by. Oh well, it seams all airlines are like that now. Anyway, it was a good Thursday night when I finally got in. Lots of beer makes a delay ok!

Friday night was a blast! A bunch of the family came over to Nate's place and we played cards: sheepshead. If any of you haven't played that card game before, it's kind of like Yuker, but on severe steroids. I personally think when this card game was made up by some really drunk German and it went something like this:

(half-way through hand)
"Didn't I mention that aside from all diamonds being trump, all Jacks are trump too, and are higher than those Diamonds? (drink) Well, here is my Jack of clubs and it's a higher trump than that ace of diamonds. (drink) Oh you have a Jack of hearts? No that's a lower Jack, my Jack is higher. I still win this hand. (drink)"

(next hand)
"It looks like I have the 10 of spades which beats your 9 of spades. What do you got? (drink) Oh, you have the Ace of Spades, damn, you're leading this one. Oh you have the Jack of Diamonds? (drink) You're on my team. A Jack of Diamonds means you're my partner. Yeah, we're winning this hand, those guys are losing. (drink).

(next hand)
"You have a King of spades, huh? My 10 of Spades beats that King. (drink) Oh, I forgot to mention that too, huh? Well, the 10 beats the King and the King beats the 9 which then beats the 8 and that beats the 7. (drink) Oh, yeah, the Ace still beats the 10 though. Yeah, that other hand we played, my Ace still beat your 10, so it's still following the rules on that last one there. (drink)"

(end of round)
" (drink) Ok, lets total all these cards up. No, it's not who won the most tricks, it's who has the most points from the tricks they won at the end of the round. (drink) So let's see, I have some ace's and 10's here. Yeah, those are worth 11 and 10 points respectively. What's all those Queen's worth that you have? (drink) Those are all 3 points each. And those Jacks are only worth 2 points each. Yeah, that's right, tough luck. (drink) And all those 7's, 8's, and 9's aren't worth anything. Nope, those are zero points each. And these Kings I have are worth 4 points. (drink) So it looks like I win this one. (drink) No, I haven't changed the rules on every game of this that we played so far! (drink) Oh, you're going to write all this down this time? Well, I suppose, if you can't remember all this that is. (drink)"

And that is how Sheepshead was invented.

The rest of the weekend was pretty fun as well. We hit an Indian Casino in Green Bay and I promptly lost some money. It was a fun time though. I found a quarter holdem machine that I could sit for about an hour playing without losing more than $2. Sunday night we went over to my other brother's house (Dan) who's expecting and had a great dinner. Well, that's the scoop on the Great Northern Trip so far. More to come...

--S