Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A Masters, A Party, A Frightening New Game -- OH MY!
First and foremost, a hearty congradulations to the Betrothed for having not only, at long last, completed his Carnegie Mellon: Masters of Software Engineering (which appears to also potentially double as a title for a Star Wars sequel, prequel or postquel) with over a 4.0 GPA (I love a good nerd), but completed his masters with constant interuption from me outside the door of the office asking if he was A) Done yet. B) Wanting any ice cream or C) Done yet. Coincidentally, the Betrothed's darling younger sister also verges on completion of a masters of her own in Public Health from George Washington University -- pending completion of a pesky thesis of sorts. All in all, with 2 Masters in our very presence, it called for nothing short of a killer fiesta.
So this weekend we all converged on Pittsburgh, PA to ensure that both were congradulated properly with much IC Light (in the metal cans) and a less-than-satisfying pre-season Steeler game. The grill was warm and the laughter and goodtimes flowed freely.
Friday evening, the Betrothed and I arrived at Pop-Pop's (the Betrothed's 91 year old grandpa who is so unbelievably 'with it' for his age and was loudly singing along with his Patsy Cline CD as we pulled up. Yeah, we heard him from the front yard.). Full of delicious chinese food from dinner and a little itchy for some sport, we began fidgeting with the large blue exercise balance-ball that belongs to Pop-Pop (actual Pop-Pop usage of the exercise ball is currently unknown. But mental images of this 91 year old on the exercise ball is fairly impressive.).Thusly, "Bathroom Ball" was born.
In all honesty, Bathroom Ball has been in the works for over a year. Without rules, a valid point system or even a proper name, I was the uncontested MASTER of Bathroom Ball -- a game, that at it's very base elements involves rolling said large blue ball across the finished basement into either the laundry room (no huge feat) or making it ricochet into the basement bathroom (pretty damned impressive)-- the door of which sits perpendicular to the line of your shot. Spending the night at Pop-Pop's meant that after he was tucked in bed, a few people meandered to the basement to play some pool, belt out a tune on the player piano or roll the large ball around the room. And now, with a boring Friday night on our hands -- and 3 or 4 Bathroom Ball shots already having been made by yours truly -- the Betrothed and I set out to create the very fundamentals of the game that is bound to be at the helm of the new wave of party games. (Secretly I think that the ever-organized man I'm about to marry thought that implementing rules and points on the game would up his chances of beating me without ever having to make the Bathroom Ball shot)
I give you: BATHROOM BALL.
The objective of Bathroom Ball is to quite simply roll or "pinch" the ball about twenty feet from a seated position on the Ottoman across the basement floor to the laundry room/bathroom corner. Your goal is to clear the bathroom door with the ball -- points only awarded if the ball makes it more than halfway into the bathroom. You can score slightly less points if you can make the straight-shot into the laundry room without touching anything -- "nothing but door". And the least points area awarded for a shot that ends up in the laundry room, regardless of how many "nips" it might make of the walls along the way. A "pincher" is given 5 rolls to amass as many points as possible, and the first player to 20 at the end of the "inning" wins.
Yes, I did make a diagram:
(Sidenote: An extra special greeting to one of Saturday's party goers and a rowdy participant of the aforementioned game. In addition to comic relief, she was partly responsible for the strange gastric-nomenclature that befell the aspects of Bathroom Ball. Don't be fooled into thinking that we'd call the act of rolling the ball "pinching" if we weren't calling the ball the "loaf". Well done, M.)
SO:
Does this indicate a level of strange mental illness among the future in-laws? Perhaps.
Does Bathroom Ball have a commercial future? Probably not.
Did I spend the ride home thinking of how I could make our first floor into a revised version of Bathroom Ball? You bet.
Do I suspect that given an opportunity to spectate one round of Bathroom Ball that you'd be lined up on the wall like a 5th grader to "play the winner"? FOR SURE.
So this weekend we all converged on Pittsburgh, PA to ensure that both were congradulated properly with much IC Light (in the metal cans) and a less-than-satisfying pre-season Steeler game. The grill was warm and the laughter and goodtimes flowed freely.
Friday evening, the Betrothed and I arrived at Pop-Pop's (the Betrothed's 91 year old grandpa who is so unbelievably 'with it' for his age and was loudly singing along with his Patsy Cline CD as we pulled up. Yeah, we heard him from the front yard.). Full of delicious chinese food from dinner and a little itchy for some sport, we began fidgeting with the large blue exercise balance-ball that belongs to Pop-Pop (actual Pop-Pop usage of the exercise ball is currently unknown. But mental images of this 91 year old on the exercise ball is fairly impressive.).Thusly, "Bathroom Ball" was born.
In all honesty, Bathroom Ball has been in the works for over a year. Without rules, a valid point system or even a proper name, I was the uncontested MASTER of Bathroom Ball -- a game, that at it's very base elements involves rolling said large blue ball across the finished basement into either the laundry room (no huge feat) or making it ricochet into the basement bathroom (pretty damned impressive)-- the door of which sits perpendicular to the line of your shot. Spending the night at Pop-Pop's meant that after he was tucked in bed, a few people meandered to the basement to play some pool, belt out a tune on the player piano or roll the large ball around the room. And now, with a boring Friday night on our hands -- and 3 or 4 Bathroom Ball shots already having been made by yours truly -- the Betrothed and I set out to create the very fundamentals of the game that is bound to be at the helm of the new wave of party games. (Secretly I think that the ever-organized man I'm about to marry thought that implementing rules and points on the game would up his chances of beating me without ever having to make the Bathroom Ball shot)
I give you: BATHROOM BALL.
The objective of Bathroom Ball is to quite simply roll or "pinch" the ball about twenty feet from a seated position on the Ottoman across the basement floor to the laundry room/bathroom corner. Your goal is to clear the bathroom door with the ball -- points only awarded if the ball makes it more than halfway into the bathroom. You can score slightly less points if you can make the straight-shot into the laundry room without touching anything -- "nothing but door". And the least points area awarded for a shot that ends up in the laundry room, regardless of how many "nips" it might make of the walls along the way. A "pincher" is given 5 rolls to amass as many points as possible, and the first player to 20 at the end of the "inning" wins.
Yes, I did make a diagram:
- the green arrow indicates a "Clog". No points are awarded for a shot that either falls short, or comes in no way close to either door. (A time-limit was never set as to how long a ball will be permitted to roll about the carpet in hopes it might make a break for the door)
- the purple arrow indicates a "Nipped" shot that has made contact with one or more obstacles, but still and for all has ended up in the laundry room. This shot is worth 1 point.
- the blue arrow indicates the "Nothing but door" shot. It is worth 3 points.
- the red arrow indicates "Bathroom Ball". It is a shot found to be possible as pictured here, but also through a complicated shot indicated by the red dashed arrow. It is worth 10 points, as well as a lot of respect.
(Sidenote: An extra special greeting to one of Saturday's party goers and a rowdy participant of the aforementioned game. In addition to comic relief, she was partly responsible for the strange gastric-nomenclature that befell the aspects of Bathroom Ball. Don't be fooled into thinking that we'd call the act of rolling the ball "pinching" if we weren't calling the ball the "loaf". Well done, M.)
SO:
Does this indicate a level of strange mental illness among the future in-laws? Perhaps.
Does Bathroom Ball have a commercial future? Probably not.
Did I spend the ride home thinking of how I could make our first floor into a revised version of Bathroom Ball? You bet.
Do I suspect that given an opportunity to spectate one round of Bathroom Ball that you'd be lined up on the wall like a 5th grader to "play the winner"? FOR SURE.
# posted by Cathy @ 7:48:00 PM 
