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Some Wife has a variety of kitchen tools, some more practical than others, and some more useful than I thought, especially when I didn’t know such a tool existed (e.g. lettuce knife).

But the topic of today’s is not such a tool.

It is a tool that is impractical.

It looks like this – side and front views.

It is a cucumber scorer.

I don’t know what exactly it is called, and Some Wife doesn’t know either. The only thing I’ve seen her use it for is to score (i.e. fancily peel) cucmbers.

But it is oddly shaped, and the shape reminded me of something.

And the cucmber tool is vaguely shaped like Wallace, but only in the protruding cheeks. The top of the head doesn’t match. So I thought about it and came up with a match for the top of the tool.

That was better, but Dilbert doesn’t have protruding cheeks so to me the main feature was lacking and this was not the answer.

But inspiration hit me, and I realized the tool was upside-down. So the bumps are not the top of the head but the bottom. If we flip it, it aligns much better with Wallace.

I propose that we call it “the Wallace”. So far it hasn’t caught on, mainly because no one ever asks for the tool.

I have been spoiled by yellow kiwi. I think the label calls it gold kiwi, but we all call it yellow kiwi here.

I used to like normal green kiwi. It was good stuff. Then we tried the yellow kiwi. It was better, so we got it again. And again. The last several times we bought kiwi, it was the yellow variety. So we got used to that.

This last time, they didn’t have yellow kiwi, so we bought the green kiwi. It wasn’t the best batch of kiwi, and that highlighted another difference with the yellow kiwi – they are never bad. Ripe, they are yummy. Not ripe, still yummy. Too ripe, yep, still yummy.

So after all that, we are spoiled. The kids don’t trust green kiwi anymore.

Also, don’t bother with the red kiwi. It’s also not as good as the yellow stuff.

I thought about maybe having it say “Fourwarned is fourarmed”. Alternately, I could have done something with someone’s forearms and left it as “Forewarned is forearmed”. But I liked this version of “Forewarned is fourarmed” the best.

This is a guide for how to play the game Flip 7.

1. How do I win?
By having the most points at the end of all the rounds. Once someone reaches 200 points, the game ends.

2. How do I get points?
By accumulating cards. Each card has a point value, just add them up each round.

3. How do I get cards?
At the start of each round, the dealer gives each person one card. All cards are dealt face up. And then whoever wants another card, the dealer deals another card. You can keep taking cards if you want, or you can stop with what you have and take those points. If you bust, you don’t get any points. If you make a set of 7, then you end the round.

4. How do you bust?
If you get two cards of the same point value, you bust. The higher the point value of the card, the more of them there are in the deck, so the more likely you are to bust. When you bust, you are done for the round and get no points for that round.

5. How do you make a set of 7 cards?
You get a bonus 15 points if you collect 7 cards of different point values. There are regular number cards and special cards, the special cards do not count toward the set of 7, but they can give you points.

It’s a fairly quick game, not much to it. It leans towards the luck side of things, more than skill, but it’s fun nonetheless.

There, now go play Flip 7.

The prices in our local grocery store usually reasonable, like this:

Three dollars and 99 cents per package. Not too bad.

But sometimes they try to trick you into paying way too much, like this:

Four hundred and ninety nine dollars? Nice try.

I am happy to report though, that the sign printer and the pricing system were not in sync.

This is the third of a three-part series. You can also read about the first part of our trip to OBX here.

Day 6:
Mostly driving. Made it from OBX to Pittsburgh.

Then it was evening, then morning, the next day.

Day 7:
We spent the day touring Pittsburgh. I heard that Pittsburgh is very pedestrian friendly and one does not need a car to get around, so I picked a hotel downtown and left the car in the parking lot during our stay.

After a nice breakfast at the hotel, we walked out the front door and headed toward the river, and then walked over the bridge to get to Station Square. It was a few blocks of walking, it felt to me like a good way to start the day and get a feel for Pittsburgh.

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This is the second of a three-part series. You can also read about the first part of our trip to OBX here.

Day 3 Continued:
It wasn’t that long of a drive from the Great Dismal Swamp to Kitty Hawk, so we drive straight to the first tourist attraction on our list rather than going to the hotel. Plus it was mid afternoon and the Wright Brothers Memorial closed at 5pm so the best plan seemed to be to see the WBM first and then just relax for the evening at the hotel.

One thing I learned at the memorial is that Wilbur Wright died as a result of eating bad oysters, which helped further my resolve to not eat non-fish seafood. The memorial thingy is on top of a hill. But the official flight stuff is in the meadow next to the hill so the hill is some sort of misdirection.

Here’s the view from the airplane launch point toward the landing markers.

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