Christmas in Indy, Day 1: Painting Prep and Ransom Note

A random image: this sticker, on one of the pole/supports in the basement. It’s a very familiar image from my childhood, but I can’t recall the last time I heard or saw the name Bardahl.

This was a common thing for me, while visiting Stacey and Shane. With them having moved into our parents’ house… I’ve been experiencing a great deal of deja vu, just walking around.

A view of the driveway and yard, before the snow and cold arrive.

Liz, cleaning up some of the hallway trim. As part of our early visit, we offered to help Stacey and Shane with one of their projects. We kicked around a few ideas, and they landed on wanting our help in painting the hallway.

A bit of nostalgia: on the right, the center door used to be my sister’s old room (it’s now Jasmine’s room). The door with the basketball hoop used to be my room, and it’s now Jahnu’s. The old pull-up bar is one I put up when I was in high school, and I’m tickled it’s still up.

I originally thought we’d be painting straightaway, but there ended up being a lot of prep. Under Liz’s guidance, we ended up sanding a lot of the walls, sanding the trim, and doing a fair amount of clean up.

Liz also ended up doing a lot of patch work with the walls, using a combination of putty, spackle, drywall tape, and caulk.

In the evening, after dinner, I got to open my Christmas present early… as it was a game we broke out and played together: Ransom Note.

As a quick overview: the goal is to respond to a series of prompts (some of which are a bit raunchy), using only the words you’ve grabbed out of a bag.

The result is oftentimes hilarious, as everyone sounds like a drunk five year old, with choppy sentences the norm.

L to R it’s Jahnu, Liz, Stacey, Kenny (Jasmine’s boyfriend (!)), Jasmine, and Shane.

We had a good time playing, and while the answers were pretty funny… the reading of the answers was probably the best part.

One prompt in particular stands out. It was: “Politely tell your kidnapper that you need to go to the bathroom.” I forget who gave this answer, but the phrase “juice break” came up. And for the rest of the night (and the rest of our visit), that became a kind of in-joke that we kept going.

I now love this phrase. And I’m probably going to be that guy that brings up an old joke over and over, every family gathering from here on out.

Related:
Christmas, Interrupted