Pool Girl

For our next carnival, the EtsyBloggers are blogging about a contest or challenge they were in, or how their favorite color is incorporated into their work. Somehow the color blue end up all over my shop, but it isn't my favorite color - I really don't know how that happens...

A Keeper's Jackpot

Anyway, I've been blogging about The Fire Tower Challenge since my Sister and I began the adventure. The challenge requires that we climb a total of 23 fire tower mountains - 18 out of the 23 in the Adirondacks and all five in the Catskills. If you haven't read about our hikes so far, click the picture of me in the right sidebar, standing in the snow in front of a fire tower.

Since I cover the Fire Tower Challenge frequently, I'm going to talk about a little known fact about me. I always had a job in high school so I never played any sports. The first and only official sports team I had been on was the Billiards League my freshman year of college. I was one of the only girls - if not the only girl - to join the Billiards League. It was pretty much a joke and a disappointment, but I didn't have to pay to use the facilities when competing or waiting for an opponent to show face. At first, nobody ever showed up to my matches, so I won my first three by default. I won my fourth match fair and square - the guy I beat didn't appreciate that, making up excuses as to why he wasn't on his game that day. I was doing very well at my fifth match, until I scratched on the eight ball. Lucky for him, he still had several of his balls left on the table. That was the end of the tournament, but not a bad finish for a girl.

At Fat Tuesdays in Key West

Though I'm out of practice now, I actually became very proficient with the pool cue when I was eight or nine. As an only child, playing pool in the basement was one of the ways I entertained myself. When people see a woman at a pool table, I think they have a natural tendency to assume that she won't do well, so it always cracks me up to see the look of people's faces when I sink three or four in a row. My favorite pool match was at a bar near my college. My friends and I liked to go there for half off drinks and free chicken wings on Fridays during happy hour. There was a pool table in the back that the hardcore townies usually dominated, bringing their own pool cues and chalk. On one Friday, my friend's boyfriend and I put our quarters down to claim the next game while the owner of the bar and his friend were playing. The bar owner bet us ten bucks that we would loose, but we were still up for the challenge. Half the bar circled in on us out of curiosity as we put them to shame. He never did pay up....

After my wedding