fine whine

I can't help some things. Here I was, playing miniature golf with my in-laws and wife, and what did my eyes espy but a stray golf ball bobbing merrily in the dye-saturated water. Naturally, I couldn't help but retrieve it and continue my merry way along the greens. I gave the "front nine" a decent go, beating the others but as we continued playing I took more and more side trips, picking up wayward and stuck balls out of the water hazards and elaborate (but not well-maintained) pipeworks and traps. By the end of the back nine I'd fallen a stroke behind my father-in-law (a real golf player, if that helps) but had picked up an extra seven balls. This meant that we were able to play a second course (our first, paid-for balls having returned to that mystical subterranean place they always go at the end of the eighteenth hole. So we enjoyed another game for the price of one on a beautiful day, and I lost the second eighteen by several more than one stroke.

Anyway a good time was had by all, and I got to remark at one point (while I was still ahead) that the reason Jessica's dad was trailing me in scoring was that he "didn't have enough balls". And I laughed. And we laughed. And it was good.