{"id":13673,"date":"2015-12-27T18:37:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T00:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=13673"},"modified":"2015-12-27T18:37:44","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T00:37:44","slug":"bowling-league-christmas-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=13673","title":{"rendered":"Bowling League Christmas Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We had a little potluck Christmas party last week at bowling. I&#8217;d never been part of a bowling league that had a Christmas party before so this was a first for us. We had a &#8220;white elephant&#8221; gift exchange of sorts. Everyone who wanted to participate was to bring a $10 gift. There were separate piles of presents for men and women. When bowled your first strike, you got to pick a present from the pile. <\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/23649783731\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"Untitled\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5779\/23649783731_1b3b073725_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" class=\"pic\" height=\"640\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I was a little worried at first because I&#8217;d been bowling pretty bad of late. I&#8217;ve bowled entire games where I didn&#8217;t get a single strike so I was a bit concerned about that. However, I was assured that if you brought a gift then you would get a present no matter what. It&#8217;s just that if you don&#8217;t strike at all, then you get whatever is left. <\/p>\n<p>The best bowlers naturally have an advantage because if you&#8217;re the first one to get a strike then you get first pick. Brian and I participated despite my reservations. I love &#8220;white elephant&#8221; gift exchanges so I couldn&#8217;t pass it up. We just had to take our chances. <\/p>\n<p>Luckily I managed to get a strike on my second frame so I didn&#8217;t have to wait long to pick a present. I ended up getting the one that our teammate Kim brought without even realizing it. It was a gift set consisting of a couple of &#8220;Keep Calm&#8221; mugs and tea. The funny thing is I also got a couple of mugs from our &#8220;white elephant&#8221; gift exchange at work the other day and then Brian got a Marvel Golden Age mug from Jay and Becca. Between Brian and me, we ended up adding several mugs to our collection this year.<\/p>\n<p>When Brian bowled his first strike, he picked the biggest box he could find. LOL. He ended up getting a thermos which, to my surprise, he was really excited about. He couldn&#8217;t wait to use it! He was so excited about it that he actually filled it up with a couple of pots of coffee on Christmas day. It worked great. The thermos successfully kept our coffee piping hot all day.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/23768353692\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"Untitled\"><img src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5728\/23768353692_df109216f0.jpg\" width=\"480\" class=\"pic\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Besides the gift exchange, I was really excited about the potluck. It&#8217;s not everyday that the bowling alley allows you to bring in outside food. I really wanted Brian to make his mini tacos because they&#8217;re always a huge hit when he make them, but we got busy (and lazy) so we ended up getting a chocolate fudge pie and can of whipped cream from Fresh Market instead. We had the pie on Thanksgiving so we know that it&#8217;s delicious and it didn&#8217;t require any cooking time on our part. It&#8217;s lame, I know, but it&#8217;s better than showing up empty handed. And, we really, really like that pie. It was our first time using that whipped cream and we didn&#8217;t have high expectations but the whipped cream was really good. I told Brian, we&#8217;re never buying Reddiwip ever again. <\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/23795570721\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"Untitled\"><img src=\"https:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/570\/23795570721_24066861e0.jpg\" width=\"480\" class=\"pic\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It was a fun night and Brian bowled one of his best games ever. He ended up throwing seven strikes in a row. He was so excited that he exclaimed, &#8220;This is the most strikes in a row I&#8217;ve ever had!&#8221; To which I retorted, &#8220;That happened by the fifth frame.&#8221; We both cracked up. I wasn&#8217;t being mean. I was just keeping it real. LOL.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/23249886504\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"   title=\"Untitled\"><img src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5819\/23249886504_e09107d444.jpg\" width=\"480\" class=\"pic\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>All those strikes that Brian bowled actually pushed me to do a little bit better and keep my sparing on point. Even with only two strikes that game, my score wasn&#8217;t that far behind his. That game was pretty good but overall it was a rough bowling night for me. Brian did great, though. I can honestly say, I have never bowled seven strikes in a row, ever. Brian&#8217;s bowling skills have immensely improved and he&#8217;s been able achieve things I haven&#8217;t. I&#8217;m looking forward to watching him bowl a perfect 300 game, which is only five more strikes than the game above. Maybe it will happen in 2016!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had a little potluck Christmas party last week at bowling. I&#8217;d never been part of a bowling league that had a Christmas party before so this was a first for us. We had a &#8220;white elephant&#8221; gift exchange of sorts. Everyone who wanted to participate was to bring a $10 gift. There were separate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1340],"tags":[83,2576,221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13673"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13684,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13673\/revisions\/13684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}