it's all fun and games

Weather wise, it's been a strange winter here in rural upstate New York: not enough snow for sledding or skiing, but not warm enough to actually enjoy the outdoors. So I decided to try a couple new activities this past month.

With this region's rapidly greying population, it's no wonder that a most popular pastime here is... bingo. There are four bingo halls within a short drive from here. Every day of the week a church around here has bingo. My mother decided to try to learn this game and asked me to go with her.

The last time I had played bingo was in grade school. Bingo for money is significantly more complicated. For starters, most players play fifteen or more squares in front of them for each round of bingo. The truly hardcore player will rent a special computer to track 50 squares per bingo round. Instead of one straight line to get "bingo", more complicated patterns are needed to attain "bingo". While I wouldn't go so far as to call the other bingo players "a surly, money-addicted bunch of old loons", let's just say my grade school's bingo game was a bit more laid-back. During each bingo game, I was way too busy scanning my paltry six squares (and checking my mother's cards as well) to socialize with other players. While there were some players who do bingo purely for recreation, the players who are there just for the money do put a damper on the atmosphere in the bingo hall.

While most winter activities like skiing or sledding do need snow, there are (thankfully) some cold-weather activities that don't require the white stuff. To wit: gathering maple syrup. Can you believe I had never, during all the time I lived in Boston, driven to Vermont during sugar season? So last weekend, I drove my family to a maple syrup farm where I could finally see how maple syrup was made. The bad part was that you really couldn't see how they made maple syrup. The good part was they had a large dining area where you could sample their syrup -- with as many buckwheat pancakes as you could eat! And really, nothing says "late winter celebration" like gorging yourself on pancakes and real maple syrup.