"Happy Thanksgiving" and "How Kentucky Rocks"

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  With my girls away with their father, I spent my day with my best friend's family.  We've been friends since our freshman year of college in 1991 and are cut from the same cloth - frayed piece of cloth it is.  So on Thanksgiving with our bellies full of the finest Southern fare, we drove to her house to give her pooch a potty break.   We are out in the yard and she is walking her pup around on a leash.  All of a sudden her foot slips sideways in the wet grass.  She was going down - but, realizing she might land on the dog and possibly kill it she started the long slow stagger-fall.  We all have seen it happen.  It is like watching a long slow train wreck.  When she does finally hit ground she looses her grip on the leash and the puppy bolts.   I, being the ever dutiful friend, yelled, "I've got her!!" and took off after the puppy who'd ran up on the porch, but alas I'm vertically challenged and the steps were made  for the Jolly Green Giant and I didn't make the step and flopped onto the porch.   My friend and I, both still where we fell, laughed hysterically.  To make matters worse there were about 8 people standing outside the neighbor's house on a smoke break to witness this.   We are sure they thought we were drunk.  I even cautiously searched "Drunk Women Rolling In Yard On Thanksgiving" on YouTube, to make sure no one had videoed the spectacle.

I spent the rest of the evening learning to play Rook.  I researched it and it seems Rook came about because religious folks wanted to play cards, but felt a normal poker deck was of the devil, so Parker Brothers redesigned the cards and Rook was born.  It is played heavily in Kentucky and Rook Tournaments play with 'Kentucky Rook" rules.  I was telling an elderly family member about this and said, "I didn't realize that Rook was kind of a Kentucky game."  She said, "So is Chess."  My eyebrows went up in surprise.  "Yes," she said, "Chess originated in Kentucky."  So...take that Fifteenth Century Europe.