our "House of Cards"

We don't know very many good two-man card games.

This is our attempt at building a "really cool house of cards"...


















At first we started really slow (especially me) since the deck we'd chosen was new an pretty slippery. Things kept falling apart.
















We managed to make a few somewhat nice little card houses, then tried another deck, where we met with a lot more success.
















I didn't say all of the attempts were pretty...















This one fell apart pretty quickly after it was put together. Not that I'm surprised at all by this - it wasn't very stable.
















I like this one alot - it was the first one I tried that seemed to look pretty nice AND stay standing for longer than 30 seconds anyway.

















Jeremy was much better than me at building these - this is one of his earlier attempts. He'd mastered the art of getting them to stand up and stay standing while I sat and tried to sweet-talk mine into staying put.







A few lessons learned:

* If your house of cards keeps falling down, try another deck
* If your house of cards still keeps falling down, walk softly on the carpet so you don't knock them over as you pass by
* Beer will almost definitely make this more fun (a little more difficult too)
* No matter how good you think your house of cards looks - if it's not stable, it will fall down

* If it doesn't work the first time (or 29th time), try again


I hadn't planned on this being a metaphor for our lives, but it's kind of a good one right now. Jeremy is in the midst of planning his return to Canada (sometime in the first week of November) so he can apply for his Working Holiday Visa. In the meanwhile, I've realized that I may be going without pay for 3 weeks in December (due to Christmas holidays and the fact that I'm "guaranteed work" up to only december 6th. This doesn't mean I won't get to work the rest of the month, just that I'm not protected under the umbrella of getting paid even when I'm not working.

So many things I wish I'd known before getting on that airplane last August...

I know we don't have a lot of stability (money-wise), but when you really really want something and work hard for it - it seems only fair that good things will happen.



After two beers and a lot of frustration, we stopped playing with the cards, deciding the only way we were going to get them to look like we wanted was to use glue.

In the real-world case, him getting a job here in London will probably substitute nicely. Getting a second job will help me get through things until that happens (plus it will keep me busy while he's away), plus earn a little extra money for Christmas.

As I prepare for 5 weeks alone in a foreign country, I hope I remember that this is all for the best, and that this situation will NOT last forever.


And maybe, if we keep working hard, we'll get to have one that looks like this:


obviously this one needed a LOT of glue...