My wife and I both come from big families so we have to make two Thanksgiving stops. My parents first. The big event here, at least for me, is the Turkey Bowl. It's an annual backyard football game which includes every adult male who doesn't want to be called a little girl for the next 12 months. I usually am horribly out of shape and play until I hurt myself. Winning is important and I'm not planning on embarrassing myself this year so I'm training for it. I've been jogging for a few months and I've started working some sprints into my workout so I won't be too out of shape.

My wife's sisters are staying at my place and I get my bro in law to go with us there and we practice a few plays in the yard before we leave. When we drive up, I see that they've rented a huge inflatable slide similar to this:

[img]http://www.rockclimbingchicago.com/Slide18foot_lrg.jpg[/img]

It's as tall as the freaking house and there are about 15 kids on it. My cousin walks out and tells me that my youngest brother broke his leg. WTF?!? Were they already playing football?

No, he broke it on the slide. . . :shock:

He's an anesthesiologist and he's in decent shape too. I'd have figured he'd be the last person to hurt himself on the damn kid slide. It turns out that he wore his shoes (after at least 5 kids told him to take them off) and jumped down just as his two year old walked out in front of him so he kicked the side and the toe of his shoe caught and when he landed his foot was pointing the wrong way. Dislocated ankle, boke the small bone in his lower leg clean and got a spiral fracture in the large bone. :?

I called him at the hospital and told him that he shouldn't have made it so obvious if he wanted to get out of the football game. Then I asked him how he liked dealing with nurses who didn't know that he was the boss. He was too drugged up to answer coherently. He's a pain specialist so I'm sure that he told then to give him the good stuff.

While we waited my bro in law and I drove out in the pasture and noticed that out among the horses and cows my dad has an actual donkey! I have no idea where that came from. WOOHOO! We stop the truck and get some cell phone pics of each other with the donkey. I get on his back but he starts trotting off and I bail out because I've never even met this creature before and I've got no saddle, bridle, rope, nothing to control him. I missed that pic. I can't figure out how to upload pics from the phone to the computer so I can't show it here. If anyone knows how to do that PM me your cell# and I'll try to send you the pic. Otherwise, I'll get the pics from Tate's camera soon.

Finally we get the football game going and I end up with Alfonso and Tate (bro-in-law) vs Trey, Johnathan and Jay (sis's boyfriend). I'm thinking this is a hell of a deal until Lee, another friend who can't really run or do much of any kind of exercise volunteers to be all time QB. There goes my advantage of having Alfonso's arm and the pregame planning by me and the Tate.

There are three people who I'm worried about:

Alfonso (El Tigre): He's a professional fighter who told me before the game that he's run over 100 miles in training for his fifth professional fight next week. I make sure he's on my team. :nod:

Trey: My brother who is the most competitive. He's in the best shape of anyone there besides Alfonso. He's the ringleader of the villains so to speak. We are partners in business and we love each other but I want to kick his ass in this game.

Johnathan: My nephew, he's only 16 and a freshman in high school but he plays varsity baseball and starts at pitcher and shortstop. He's a great athlete but since there are no refs I can push him around a little. The problem is that I have to get my hands on him first.

The QB sucks but we pull off enough good plays to make it interesting and a good time is had by all. We leave before the game is over for my next stop about 2 hours late. When we show I grab a partner and a grab spot in the garage pool game. I get two shots and run the table in the first game. Then I celebrate with a couple (more) glasses of wine and never make another decent shot. We lose 2 out of 3. I let my partner have someone else because my wife wants to go home. Then I snag another partner when she stalls and win another game just before we go.

This was all exciting stuff if you were there, I hope it's not too boring.

My kickass poker report coming soon.

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Bernie Wayne - You stick with me kid. In a few years you'll be wearing diamonds big as horse turds and farting through silk.

LOL great report.

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I have been blogging. Last updated April 29th. http://www.feltpoker.com/blogs/ugignadl/

I think you can email your pictures to yourself...at least that's what I think I did the one time I did it.

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"I'm disappointed in you, Scotty" -- Michael DeMichele at the 2008 WSOP HORSE Final Table
Check out My Blog, updated 9/03/08