The Bento Lady

Each week, Mrs. BigKat and I go out on a Date Night while my mom watches the kids. We normally go to this local Bento place. The food is simple, tasty, and inexpensive. Mrs. BigKat gets the pot sticker platter, I get the teriyaki beef or spicy pork (and every once in a while, the yakisoba), we get 2 orders of egg rolls, and 2 drinks (large for me, small for Mrs. BigKat). And the total is always $13.70. We've gotten to the point where the owner (who I call the Bento Lady) starts writing down our order right as we walk in the door.

A few weeks ago, instead of going to the Bento place like usual, we decided to go to the taco place down the street instead. It was a nice change of pace, so we went there again the following week. Well, when we went back to the Bento place, we wondered if the Bento lady had noticed that we had been gone.

Yeah...she noticed.

As we walked up to place our order, she started grilling us:

Bento Lady: So...haven't seen you guys in a while...

Us: Oh uh...yeah...we haven't been here for a couple of weeks.

Bento Lady: Oh...I see...I guess you haven't been able to get a babysitter then...

Us: Oh no, we have a baby sitter! We just...ummm...uh...can I get the terikayi beef?

Even her husband, Bento Guy acted different towards us. When he brought us our egg rolls, it wasn't "Here's your egg rolls! Enjoy!" or anything like that. Instead he just kind of flippantly tossed the plate onto our table without looking at us as he walked by. I told Mrs. BigKat "We cheated on the Bento Lady. I feel like Tiger Woods."

That was last week. This week, when we went to Date Night, the Bento Lady was still hassling me. I ordered the Hot and Spicy chicken. She looks at me and says "Are you sure you want that? Are you ok with spicy food?"

Wait a second...she's asking ME if I'm ok with spicy food? I was appalled! The guy who puts Frank's Red Hot on everything? The guy who only enjoys chili if it makes him sweat? Yes I'm OK with spicy food! I love spicy food! And to show her, I was going to eat all the spicy food on my plate in record time!

Only I didn't...

Now, normally, I eat all the food on my plate when we go out. The portions at the Bento place are a nice size for me. But it just so happened that I wasn't particularly hungry that day. I don't remember if I had a late snack or had a lot to drink before we left or what. But for some reason, I just wasn't that hungry. I only ate about half of my Hot and Spicy chicken.

Well, the Bento lady sees that I didn't finish my meal. She walks over to our table and says 'Oh! Was it too spicy for you? We can make it less spicy next time!'

GAAAAHHH!!! That sneaky Bento Lady! On the outside it appears like she's this sweet old lady who's concerned about one of her customer. But we both know that what she's really doing is calling me a spicy food wimp to my face! TO MY FACE!

After she left our table, she went into the back and told Bento guy what she said about me. They both laughed at me and high fived each other. Ok, maybe I made up that last part, but I wouldn't be surprised if it really happened.

Date Night

Last night was me and Mrs. BigKat's weekly date night. We decided to do something new. We went to the Family Fun Center and played minature golf! It was a very nice evening out, and we thought it would be nice to do something outside since it was supposed to be rainy for the rest of the week.

Well, right off the bat, Mrs. BigKat took a commanding lead. On the 2nd hole, she got an ace, while I missed an easy putt and had to take a 3. She was up 2 strokes.

I made up a stroke on the 4th hole, when Mrs. BigKat had to take a 3. But on the 6th hole, she came roaring back. She got a 2, while I missed my 2nd shot and mis-hit my third causing me to record a 4. Mrs. BigKat was 3 strokes ahead after the front 9!

I knew I was going to have my work cut out for me on the back 9. But I caught a break on number 10. Mrs. BigKat didn't get enough on her 2nd shot, and it rolled up the little hill...and then rolled right back to her. She ended up with a 4, putting me only 1 stroke back. She got one of those back at number 12. But then came a critical turning point at number 15.

Mrs. BigKat left the door open for me a little bit by getting a 3. I had a very makeable 4 footer which would have cut her lead down to one stroke.

And I missed! Too much pressure! And to make it worse, I hit it too hard and ended up with another 4 footer going the other way! Which I missed as well!

So instead of cutting her lead by one, it was extended by another stroke, putting me down 3 with only 3 holes to go.

Now understand, things looked pretty bleak here. Mrs. BigKat was on fire. Anything within 6 feet was pretty much AW-TOW-MAT-TICK. She was a putting machine. She had gotten a 23 for the front 9. For the first 15 holes, she had gotten seven 2's and an ace, with only two 4's. I figured that I was going to have to make hole-in-one's if I even wanted to tie, and I hadn't really came close to hitting any ace's yet.

Hole number 16 was a longer hole. And it had a brand new carpet on it. In fact, the new carpet was much different from the carpet on the rest of the course, as Mrs. BigKat would soon find out. Even though the hole was slightly downhill, Mrs. BigKat struck her first putt pretty hard, in order to get it all the way down to the other end.

It went about a third of the way and stopped.

The new carpet was like putting in molassas. The ball moved really slow. Seeing how short Mrs. BigKat's putt was, I put a lot extra on mine, and it still came up short! I had about 6 feet left.

Mrs. BigKat took her 2nd shot. And again, the carpet slowed her shot down to a crawl. Her 2nd ended up just behind my first. She took a third and hit it past the hole.

Now I saw a big opening and I needed to take advantage. I knew I had to hit it a lot harder than it looked based on how slowly Mrs. BigKat's putts were going. I gave it a good solid whack and drained it right down the middle of the cup. Woo-hoo!

At this point, Mrs. BigKat was getting flustered. She ended up missing her 4th and took a 5. Her once seemingly insurmountable 3 stroke lead had vanished, just like that.

On to 17. This one was a longer downhill hole with cement bumpers all down it's length. We played decent 1st shots putting us both about 5 feet out. I made my first shot putting the pressure on Mrs. BigKat. I was really nice and made sure that she knew the implications of missing, that she would go down a stroke going into the final hole. I think she appreciated this.

She took her shot...and it went in!

And then out.

Seriously, the ball rolled around on the inside lip of the cup before coming out the front. Mrs. BigKat tapped in for 3, and I now had my first lead of the day going into the final hole!

Now, the 18th was pretty straightforward. It was uphill, and had a small bend. But it looked like an easy 2. I hit my first shot off the far wall and banked it towards the hole. It climbed the hill almost to the top...and then slowly ran back down. It looked like it might stop in the middle, but it kept right on rolling. All the way back down. Until it landed at my feet.

Mrs. BigKat looked quite pleased with this development.

So I took my 2nd shot. This one was much better. It landed about a foot away, so I tapped in for a 3.

Mrs. BigKat was about to go, so I had to run back down to her before she putted. I wanted to make sure that she knew what was at stake (I'm nice that way). I told her 'Ok, here's the situation. A 1 will give you the win. A 2 will tie. And a 3 means that you lose EVERYTHING!'

She thanked me for my advice (ok, I don't actually remember her doing this, but she must have because she's usually very nice about her pleases and thank yous) and took her first putt. She didn't really come close to sinking it and ended up about 5 feet away.

As we walked up to her ball, I made sure that she knew that she needed this putt. I told her again that if she missed, she would lose EVERYTHING!

She started to take the putt...and then stood up. She just stood there looking at me. After a few seconds she said 'I'm waiting for the pressure to go away.'

After a little bit, she felt ready to take her 2nd shot. But I guess the pressure was still there because she wasn't really close. She missed by a couple inches to the side and had to tap in for a 3.

I had just won the BigKat Family Miniature Golf Championship of the WORLD!!!

I was so happy. Mrs. BigKat was less happy than me. But we both had a great time. I had no idea that Mrs. BigKat was so good at miniature golf. Our final score was 48-49. If she had gotten a 3 on 16 (instead of the 5) and made her 2 pressure putts (which would not have been so pressure-y if she hadn't had her Number 16 Meltdown), she would've ended up with a 45 and beat me by 3. 

But she didn't and I won! :)

Afterwards, we went inside and I bought us a dollars worth of tokens (which only ended up being 3! What a ripoff! It's supposed to be 4 tokens for a dollar!)

She used 1 token to play SkeeBall and earned herself 5 tickets. I played a basketball game and scored 63 points! I got 10 tickets. We went to go buy our stuff, but the cheapest things costed 10 tickets. I told the guy that we had 15 tickets, but we both wanted something. So he gave us 5 more for free. We each walked away with a brand new fancy pencil.

I'd say it was one of our funnest date nights yet.

Because I won.

More Games

Our family has been really busy lately. School, soccer, Sunday School, people visiting, men's basketball, birthdays...our weeks have been pretty packed lately. But this week, after the kids have gone to bed, Mrs. BigKat and I have found time to play some games. Here is one of the new games that we've played...

It's the new Heroscape Swarm of the Marro Master Set. There isn't as much stuff in it as the first one. What you basically have is a team of 5 guys (an army guy, a flying lady, a ninja, a guy with a little dragon, and a big robot) against a whole bunch of aliens (including the giant alien shown on the box, and a 'hive' that produces new aliens). I had been waiting to get this set for a while. Mrs. BigKat knew how much I wanted to try it out, so she said that she would play with me (she's the BEST!).

The scenarios that they provide actually worked quite well for us! One new feature is that 3 of the scenarios build upon each other in kind of a story mode. Basically, the 5 good guys are battling the aliens, starting with just a few aliens, but leading up to a big battle against all of them.

This worked really well for a number of reasons:

1) Mrs. BigKat had played Heroscape with me before and doesn't like it when she has to move too many guys. The first scenario really eased her into things because she only had to worry about 3 guys. One of the guys was the guy with the dragon. Normally, Mrs. BigKat wouldn't like to play with him because his special abilities are a little more complex than others, but since he was only one of 3 guys, she was able to figure him out pretty easily. I think she is now more willing to play with characters that have interesting special abilities.

2) The first 2 scenarios definitely provide an advantage to the good guy team (because if it didn't, then it would be pretty difficult to get to the grand finale in the third scenario). I'm a bit better at Heroscape than Mrs. BigKat is, so having a natural handicap was quite helpful and made things more fun for the both of us.

3) The new set comes with multiple copies of some of the alien squads, allowing you to have a whole bunch of them at once. I don't have many of these 'common' squads, so it was fun for me to be able to try them out.

We finished the first 2 scenarios. Mrs. BigKat won both of them, allowing us to proceed to the third and final stage. It looks like it will probably take a little longer, so it will probably have to wait for an evening where we have a little more free time than usual.

I asked Mrs. BigKat if she actually liked the game, or if she only played because I wanted to play. She said that at first, she only played because she knew I wanted to play. But then when we started playing, she actually had a lot of fun. This made me happy. My wife likes Heroscape!

 

We also played another game of Battlelore last night, this time using the Lore rules ('Lore' in Battlelore is where you get to use these special cards that throw fireballs, or move guys from one side of the board to another, or cause earthquakes...cool stuff like that). She was a bit intimidated by the Lore rules at first. Battlelore has a lot of different rules that you have to remember for combat, and I think she didn't want to have to worry about another thing. But as we played, she realized that the extra Lore rules were not very complex and added another interesting element to the game.

The interesting part about the game was that we didn't even come close to finishing (we got a late start on the game), but we still had a very enjoyable time just playing together. I think it was because we were both having fun trying something new (it was only our 2nd time playing Battlelore together and our first with the Lore rules). There were some funny moments (like when I spent several turns, trying to save up 9 Lore tokens so that I could unleash 'Creeping Death' upon her army, only to whiff on all of my rolls when I was finally able to play it).

I like it that we both like boardgaming. With 3 kids, it is very hard to find things that we can do together. We like to watch movies together, but there isn't a lot of interaction during movies. We like hiking together, but our main time together is after the kids are asleep. Boardgaming works well for us because we get to talk and interact and enjoy each others company while we have a great time playing the game. And there are so many great games available that we can pick the game that best suits our time frame and energy level. Plus, since we're already at a table, we can eat dessert while we play!

How much does my wife love me?

You know how much Mrs. BigKat loves me? She loves me so much that she played Battlelore with me last night! It's not her favorite style of game in the world, but she played with me anyways. She's the best! And so is Battlelore!