Things I Love: Memorial Day, Putt Putt, and Planner Sightings

Today is Memorial Day here in the US, a day when we honor and remember the men and women who have died serving our great country.  We also give thanks to the men and women who continue to serve, who choose to put their lives on the line so that we as a society may live our lives in freedom.  Coming from a family of past and present soldiers, this means a great deal to me (thankfully, none of my family members have been killed in action, that I know of).  While I don’t personally know what it’s like to serve this country (if I had any courage at all, I would have enlisted), I honor and respect those who do.  I support our all of our soldiers one hundred and ten percent.  And while some may not agree with America’s policies and politics, I think it’s beyond important to respect those who fight for our right to complain about the things we don’t like and might disagree with.  So here is to all of those who have served and continue to serve the United States of America, but especially to those who have died for the cause.

Memorial Day weekend is also the unofficial start of summer.  Though the calendar doesn’t declare the start of summer for another month, we Americans use this weekend to start all of our summer activities—barbeques, family get-togethers, just getting outdoors.  For my husband and I, this means the start of our annual Putt-Putt tournament.  From the time the mini golf centers open in the spring until they close in the fall, we visit most of the golf centers across Long Island to get in as many games as possible.  We keep score; we keep track of each game; and at the end of it all, we declare a winner.  The person who wins any game gets a total of five points.  For any hole-in-one (winner or not), we are awarded one point each.  At the end of the game, we tally up those points to name a winner for the night.  At the end of the season, we see who came out victorious.  The loser buys the winner a little something--$50 towards something of the winner’s choice (last time my husband chose a bottle of scotch).  There are also bonus games, games played at centers away from Long Island.  These are worth more points since we are unfamiliar with the courses.  Sadly, I hardly ever win.  But I enjoy the activity, so I’m not about to give it up.  Plus, maybe someday, I’ll just get good enough to win.

Of course, one cannot have a tournament like this without creating a spreadsheet to keep track of the points.  This is what it looks like:

Click to see a larger version

All courses start out in red font.  As we play them, they are made black.  This way, we can see which courses we have played and which we haven’t.  It makes it very easy to decide where to go when we play a game.  You can see from above, I did not win the first game of the season.  Good thing I have all summer to redeem myself.

This morning while at my local Starbucks, I saw a woman with a planner.  (We all know how much I love planner sightings.)  She was waiting for her drink when we walked in.  She had her planner out and open, referring to it for some reason (what the reason was I don’t know).  It was red.  It was personal size.  It looked like it could have been a Filofax, but I can’t be sure.  I thought I saw the black Today marker in there and pages very similar to the two days per page, scribbles everywhere.  But again, I didn’t get close enough to find out.  I could have asked, started a conversation about it.  But I always feel like people will look at me like I have three heads—it’s one thing for people to have and use a planner; it’s another thing entirely to be accosted by a stranger who is so over excited about the fact that you use one—in public.  I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I’m sure she realized I was staring at her/it with great intent.  She probably couldn’t wait to get out of there, away from the creepy girl drooling over a book of pages.  A fun little thing though: my husband also noticed it, turned to me with an “oh no” smile, and asked me what brand it was.  Sadly, I couldn’t say with certainty.  Maybe next time…