No-money fun

I will elaborate, though I'm sure I don't really have to - not that that ever stopped me from blathering - about "no-money fun." It is a phrase I first heard used by Mike Myers in his interview with James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo. He talked about the scene in Wayne's World where Wayne and Garth are lying on the car hood waiting for the jumbo-jet to land, and the fact that scene was drawn from the kind of fun he sought out as a young man in Ontario. No-money fun.

druid labs is all about no-money fun. Well, that's only partly true - we're all about fun regardless of the funding, and particularly when someone else is footing the bill. But when we bought our first home together we were concerned about being house-poor, since we had enjoyed, both of us, substantial incomes and no debt or obligations prior. We went to the local library (snag #1. We lived in an unincorporated area of town and had to pay for our library cards, about $70 a year per household, and yet far less than a single trip to Borders) and got books on birding, plants, weather, starcharts - you name it. hobbitt's family has always enjoyed board games and card games and a weird family game called "pass-around pictures." Everyone gathers at the table to begin a drawing, using whatever is at hand - crayons, watercolor pencils, charcoals. After three minutes your picture is passed to the left for the next person to elaborate upon. And so on until you get your picture back, at which point you must give it a title and present it to everyone else. It gets strange: imagine titles like "bad man hurts horse who gets revenge" and "Nepalese goat walking by helicopter" and such. We have all the pictures, by the way, but have yet to scan and post them.

Anyway, you get the picture. Good, clean, adult fun. Kid fun, too. We actually enjoy sitting out on summer nights until after dark, waiting to see who can spot the first, or the most, satellites. Before dark we're playing UpWords (we've played thousands of rounds of this game together and the results are usually thus: BlueHeronDruid gets out to an amazing early lead, only to have it chipped away by hobbitt, who, generally speaking, wins by a wide margin. We've gotten to know each other's style of play so well that we give kudos for finesse, which may not be the same as points. Deft and clever play is well-regarded no matter who wins. I don't recommend any beginners try to play this game with us); or dominoes Muggins; or Scrabble; or WordThief (better played with three or more). Or we'll stroll around the perimeter in the evening and "survey our domain," checking the wanted growth of the shining sumac, or the unwanted growth of the greenbriar; looking for clues that the barred owl house is inhabited; or just generally dreaming about landscaping that actually fits with the demeanor and style of the house.

Perhaps we're easily amused. Faithful readers may remember that the denizens of druid labs actually caught themselves watching paint dry on at least one occasion. And the awareness didn't stop the activity.

No-money fun is good, no-money fun is wise. Then again, so is the other kind.