The Thirteenth Mission - #25: Surprise

Honey, where are my pants?

This one was easy...and convenient! My wife saw a pair of pants at Target she wanted me to try on and I have been in need of new slacks and a pair of jeans, so we ended up making an afternoon of trying on things.

So while I was trying a few pairs on, I slipped this card into a pair that just wasn't quite right.

I learned two things on this trip:

1 - I'm actually a little skinnier than I thought I was, so...yay!

still should probably exercise a little more and eat a little better...

2 - khaki is really NOT my color

I got one leg on and just said 'NOPE!' didn't even let my wife see them on me...it was that bad.

I know in this deck there are more of these 'hide somewhere' cards and I'm rather looking forward to those. Not as much thinking involved...until next time Travelers!

The Twelfth Mission - #16: Connect

Guess Who?

This week I started coming up descriptors that I could use to fill this card. I thought of physical attributes, you know, hair color (or lack of hair), eye color, facial hair (didn't want to limit this card to just men), height, etc. Then I went into kinds of clothing, jacket, shirt style, slacks, skirt (likewise didn't want to limit it to women), shoe style. In my consideration, I was hoping to find something that could be easy for those who will pass on these cards to do so.

It dawned on me while I was checking out of a CVS, the gal across the counter had the following descriptors, however I did not have the card on me.

I realized these would be generic enough to apply to anyone really. Even the 'glasses' item could be satisfied with sun glasses. 

The next day I was actually at my local ACE Hardware store and the clerk there Noah was wearing a sweater, but I noticed his t-shirt poking out over the collar happened to be a navy blue. And satisfying the other two descriptors, I handed him the card.

Until next time travelers!

The Eleventh Mission - #29: Care

DELAY OF GAME

Before we get into this week's post (or rather what should have been last week's post, but got pushed back because of whatever reason, regardless), we must address this delay of game. Now, in our rules, we did not consider a delay of game penalty, or penalties in general. Whoops!

So I began to think of ways to issue myself some sort of extra challenge that would be commensurate with leaving everyone waiting. The only thing I could think of:

Draw and extra card and have to complete both the primary mission and secondary (penalty) mission.

Thoughts anyone?

Now onto this week's mission:

America Runs on Dunkin'

...and so do I! 

I believe I have mentioned my favorite palace du café, Dunkin' Donuts, and my regular haunt on my way to work. For I guess would be the past year and a half or so, I have been enjoying their On-the-Go ordering through the Dunkin' app.  At first I was reluctant to go down that route as I enjoyed my daily reparté with the staff there.  However, when the school year began and the influx of GMU and NVCC students returned generating longer wait lines, I decided to give it a go. I have not been disappointed. I greatly enjoy walking in getting my coffee and leaving the store while getting looks from everyone in line wondering how I got special treatment (at least that's how I like to envision it).

On this particular day, for this mission, I decided to wait just like everyone else. At first I was a little disappointed that there was no one else in the store. The staff there was a little surprised to see me in line and it took them a moment to remember my order (it also took me a moment, because I usually just tap my favorite on the app and there I go...not very often do I need to vocalize it). During this exchange, and my subsequent fidgeting with my phone for my Dunkin' Moblie app, in walks a gentleman (Ron) with his daughter (Iris) in baby carrier and when I was asked if that would be it, I said 'and whatever this gentleman is having' and subsequently handed him the card.

Now before I finished this post, I stopped back at that shop and there was Ron with Iris again and I asked him who he handed it off to. Apparently that card made it 11 hands that morning according to the store manager.



Unfortunately, none of those hands have logged the card's movement on sneakycards.com, but there is still time. I'm just glad to hear that they are at least moving.

CARD UPDATES

If you remember my coworker Kelly who I mentioned in the Ninth Mission? Well, she finally broke open her deck and began with Mission #4, the largest game of tag!

I'm looking forward to hear how all her sneaky missions go.


Until next time Travelers!

The Tenth Mission: #42: Grow

The 4 R's:

Reading, (w)Riting, (a)Rithmetic, Rhetoric

I may have stretched this one...just a bit. As I only have a week for each Mission, I didn't necessarily have the time to find a class, apply, attend, or whatever...BUT...I had already scheduled our first session with a Trainer from Affectionate Pet Care for our dog Daisy.

Daisy waiting
to get adopted
January 2015

From earlier blogs, you all know that we have a dog. Two years ago, my wife and I rescued a 9-year old retriever mix and she had a bit of a rough go the year before we adopted her. As much as we can tell from her medical records, a divorce (her owners, not a puppy divorce), and there was another dog in the house and it looks like the two got separated through the divorce. At that point she was exhibiting signs of separation anxiety and was put on heavy doses of prozac. A year later she was left at the vet for a new family to take care of her and that's where we come in.

First Weekend Home
February 2015

At first she was mentally not all there, you could see the fog, until we weaned her off the prozac and then she became attentive and responsive to food and got closer and closer to my wife and myself. Daisy is a sweet girl, but can't be left alone. Her anxieties are a lot to overcome, but we've made it work. Our family's schedules are off-set a little, so at least one of us is home 3 days out of the week, but on the days neither of us can be around, we put her in day care. After a little over a year of going to day care and getting to know the staff there, we finally got a meeting with a trainer.

Pumpkin Picking
November 2015

Looking Out My Favorite Window
February 2016

Papa's Production Assistant
August 2016

Happy 11th Birthday
October 2016

Our Trainer, Mary came for a house visit and we started working on a plan for Daisy. Our hope is we will get better at recognizing some of the signals of her anxiety and getting ahead of them and redirecting her behavior. We also hope that we can get to the point of leaving her alone for a couple hours.  We'll see how it goes.  In the meantime, Mary was given card #42 and when she received it, she was a little worried because we already gave one of her coworkers something to work on (see The Eighth Mission - #39: Grow). Apparently that has gone around their office (again...maniacal laughter). I am really loving this game!

The Ninth Mission - #13: Connect (AND THE FIRST CARD UPDATE!)

Apologies Travelers...it appears this post was never finished and posted as promised. This task was completed early in what turned out to be a very trying week personally and I never seemed to get back to this one until getting ready for this week's post. Nevertheless, here is The Ninth Mission! 

"Don't worry be happy now!"

This Mission was quite easy, well...maybe not easy per-se, but well...yes it was easy. I am normally a happy, smiley person so I had to think about how someone makes me actually smile and not just because they told a good (or very lame) joke. In fact, I used to collect all things smiley. On my first day of shooting on my first student film set, I found a smiley bobble in the dirt and kept it with me throughout the day, the following day I found some cord at home and made myself a necklace out of it and wore it throughout principal photography for the rest of the film and every one while I was at Florida State, for luck. Other Smileys I collected include: Smiley Flag, Smiley Beanie Baby, Smiley Do-rag, Smiley Hackey-Sack. I had a sketch that I would draw every so often...the Smiley Roger!  Arrr matey!

Alas, I rather moved on from collecting all things Smiley. Not entirely sure why I gave up on this line of collectibles, and I believe all these have been stored away or lost in one of my many moves.

Back to the present. I have been meaning to give one of these cards to a coworker of mine who is likewise a very happy, outgoing person, Kelly! So I selected her for this one in particular because of her perpetual sunny disposition and how when we interact at work and City related events, she always makes me smile. That and her adorable son, he is just as much the life of a party as she.

As we were talking while getting ready for a meeting, I gave the unsuspecting target card #13, just to find out that she has also received a deck of Sneaky Cards from yet another coworker of ours (that coworker has been put on notice that she will be the target for an upcoming and as yet to be determined card  **muah-ha-ha-ha** maniacal laughter).

Likewise, I believe I will be the target for one of Kelly's cards!

Card Updates:

THE FIRST CARD HAS BEEN TRACKED!

WOOT!  We have card movement!  Well...turns out it was this week's mission.  Thank you Kelly for updating the tracker on Card #13:

Looking forward to see where this one goes next!

The Eighth Mission - #39: Grow

"the other hand"

This week's mission proved to be a bit more challenging.

You never realize how much you rely on your dominant hand for mundane, everyday tasks. I figured it wouldn't be so bad when brushing my hair, but then quickly spiraled downward when trying to brush my teeth and finding the micro movements of my dominant hand could not be replicated by my off hand.

WOW! This is going to be a long day.

Most of my other chores for the day were relatively easy, using both hands simultaneously, until I began cooking...

...how easily these blogs turn into something food related...

...cutting an onion for chili was very difficult, well at least for the speed and accuracy that I have practiced so well with my dominant hand. I kept having to put the knife in my right hand to get the feel for how I usually hold it, and again I couldn't replicate it with my left.  ANNNNDDDD you can't believe how much my hand would cramp up...so not used to working those muscles like that. I am quite impressed with myself for not cutting any of my digits off, but still it was quite a feat.

Later that evening, my weekly D&D group got together and I was supposed to continue the drawing our map, but quickly handed it off to one of my fellow adventurers because there was no way I would be able to properly sketch any form of detail. I even tried taking player notes...NOPE! Totally illegible.  I'm going to have to rewrite those later this week.

The first person I saw happened to be one of the gals at the front desk of my dog's daycare, Tonya. We'll see how her trials with her non-dominant hand go, and where the card ends up!

Until next week Travelers!

The Seventh Mission - #27:Surprise

"words, words, words"

- Hamlet

For this week's mission, I got to infiltrate a library.

I also needed to come up with my favorite book, so I had to think back and remember what my absolute favorite book was. Thankfully my parents instilled in all of me and my siblings a fondness for reading. We had such a library growing up.

One of the biggest reasons our library was so large was the Book It program. We would spend hours at the bookstore finding our treasures, the next adventure we would set our young eyes upon. I always loved the smell of a bookstore!

The Book It program happened to begin in my second grade year, with one of my most influential teachers, Mrs. Whittier of Maple Wood Elementary. More than just my teacher, she was also a family friend. She had such a love of teaching and helped inspire a love of creativity and bolstered my parents' desire to make us all fervent readers.

That same year, we were introduced to several authors that I would admire throughout my life. So when I thought about this mission, I thought back to that year and what books I was really getting into.

My first thought was Marvel Books graphic novelization of The Return of the Jedi. I read that thing so many times front to back, inside out, until it literally fell apart in my hands.

...I never replaced that book...

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a copy of that book in the Fairfax County Library System, so I started thinking of other books.  I included more recent titles that I have read and thoroughly enjoyed:

• Name of the Wind (of the Kingkiller Chronicles) by Patrick Rothfuss
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• The First Heretic (of the Horus Heresy Series) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

But then I was reminded oddly enough during a session with my D&D group about a poem.

Just a quick aside, my character's hands slipped into a magic fount and lost all but his thumb and middle finger on his right hand and ended up with a dagger for a left hand.

So I was reminded of a poem by one of those authors I was introduced to during that influential year.

Captain Hook by Shel Silverstein:

Captain Hook must remember Not to scratch his toes.
Captain Hook must watch out
And never pick his nose.
Captain Hook must be gentle
When he shakes your hand.
Captain Hook must be careful
Openin' sardine cans
And playing tag and pouring tea
And turnin' pages of his book.
Lots of folks I'm glad I ain't--
But mostly Captain Hook!

I decided that the book with this poem in it, Where the Sidewalk Ends would be my target. As I was sitting in the Mary Riley Styles Public Library thumbing through the 40th anniversary of his collection, I ran across another poem that I have often found myself repeating.

Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too
Went for a ride in a flying shoe.
"Hooray!"
"What fun!"
"It's time we flew!"
Said Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.

Ickle was captain, and Pickle was crewAnd Tickle served coffee and mulligan stewAs higherAnd higherAnd higher they flew,Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too,

Over the sun and beyond the blue."Hold on!""Stay in!""I hope we do!"Cried Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.


Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle too
Never returned to the world they knew,
And nobody
Knows what's
Happened to
Dear Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.

For those who haven't experienced Shel Silverstein, I highly recommend.  His poems have stuck with me for a long LONG time: Sick, Sister for Sale, It's Dark in Here, Invitation, Hug-o-War, and so many more.

Until next week Travellers!