Week Notes 45

This post is 45 of 45 in the series week notes.

General #

Quoting from our newsletter

18 Years of Love

We went for our first date on Saturday February 2nd 2008. At the time, we were living in Peterborough and went to the Only Café for lunch after a Calculus 3 exam. We were 19 years old.

Now, we’re living in Scarborough, Parker is teaching Calculus 3, and we have a two-year-old and a five-year-old.

Today, to celebrate our anniversary, we went for a quick date at the Heron Park Community Centre. Auntie Rose watched the girls for us. We got a pair of Kit-Kat bars, a coffee, and a bottle of water. We learned to play Schnapsen, the national card game of Austria, before running home to make dinner for the girls. Times certainly have changed!

It’s been an incredible eighteen years; growing, learning, and living together. The last five years, parenting side by side with the girls in our lives, have been such a blessing. We are grateful for the love we share, the life we’ve made together, and the community that surrounds us.

We’ve never been more in love than we are now.

Reading #

This week, I’m continuing to read La Kunularo De L’Ringo. The translation by Auld is so fluent and colloquial. I find that I’m gaining speed as a I read it. It’ll take me a good long while to finish it, but I’m in no rush.

Writing #

My MAT D92 student and I are gearing up to write a piece for Bridges. We’re going to submit a workshop somewhat similar to the workshop at EMF. It’ll be about string figures, braids, etc. The usual Parker shenanigans.

Playing #

We learned to play Schnapsen during our anniversary date. It’s an elegant card game. Trick-taking, folky, tight, strategic. There is a lot of depth here. I can understand why people play it seriously in tournaments. I wish we’d learned it sooner since it really suits our tastes!

Parlett, D. (1990). The Oxford Guide to Card Games. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Sackson, S. (1981). Playing Cards Around the World. United States: Prentice-Hall.

We learned it first from Parlett’s very concise description, and then read Sackson. Sackson felt a lot more straight forward but, at that points, we already knew the game. Of course, BGG and Pagat have good information too.

Immediately, I want to start mucking with the game. It is played with a small deck of AQKJT9 in four suits. The standard point values are as follows.

A	10	K	Q	J	9
11	10	4	3	2	0

To make the scoring simpler, and speed up the folk process, I’m tempted to just play with the cards of the respective point values.

J	10	4	3	2	A
11	10	4	3	2	0

A number of BGG commenters complain about the fact that one “has” to keep track of their score mentally. It’s a game; play it however you like! In the spirit of experimentation, I’m tempted to play with a short cribbage board.

I put together a little video¹ showing Koura with the Osage extension.

The construction is as follows.

Form Opening A.
Rotate the little finger loops a full turn towards you.
The thumbs pass away from you, over all intermediary strings, and pick up both strings of the little finger loops. Return to normal position.
The index fingers pick up the lower far thumb string. Release thumbs and return to normal position.
Navaho the index loops.
Turn the little finger loops a half-turn away from you.
Perform the Osage Diamonds extension.

Links #

The Technium: Six Selfish Reasons to Have Kids: An interesting and insightful read by Kevin Kelly. I enjoyed his Excellent Advice for Living, and even e-mailed with him about it. More thoughtful stuff.
Cloud Hands: Meditations for a Better Life
1. Get the self-monitoring habit
2. Question your thinking
3. Remind yourself that “it’s a cup”
4. Don’t get hung up on status and reputation
5. Radiate goodwill
6. Don’t be too optimistic
7. Think about death (but not too much)
8. Consider the bigger picture
9. Use common sense
10. Be quiet

Ack! Why is it portrait?! I don’t understand YouTube shorts. ↩︎

Published: Jan 30, 2026 @ 00:01.