I was reading a Facebook entry by Jayne, and she was complaining about her boyfriend. The two of them had come up with a way to hustle people at poker. I started to watch it happen, while Jayne narrated in a voiceover. She said they went up to a bartender and made him a deal that would be too tempting to pass up. He would play against the both of them, 5 cards, one draw, and they would only win if both of their hands beat his. He eagerly agreed. But once they started playing, I could see that the two of them could switch their cards with each other, to come up with even better hands. I thought it was totally unfair, but I was just watching something that already happened. So I got kind of sad, but as the game progressed, the bartender started winning anyway! It fastforwarded to the end, and the bartender had just come out with slightly more money than Jayne and her (unnamed) boyfriend. This is where Jayne complains: "my boyfriend couldn't stand losing and just had to bet his ego. He kept playing double or nothing until he was out eight thousand!" I watched all this play out in high speed. Finally, I remembered that Jayne was married, so this must have been an old entry. Indeed, it was dated 2008.

Afterward, Merry and I decided to go on a mini second honeymoon to a nearby town that specializes in acting old-timey. We went to a museum, and the office was a long room with a desk at one end and a long pile of equipment in the middle. The ticket guy was pudgy and unshaven, but seemed in good spirits as he led us to the stuff we needed to start the tour. There was a large flat screen TV separated into the base and the screen, and I hefted both of them as he took us upstairs. There, we watched an intro video, which included playing video poker. You were allowed to set a weird mechanism to keep certain cards once you got them, as the cards rotated through on three adjacent wheels like a slot machine. But the order of the kept cards would never be quite the same, so you had to figure out the pattern. After watching for 3-4 games, I finally realized that the card settings would "catch" on whichever wheel came up with one first, and that which one it caught would determine the mechanism for the next wheel. So you had to understand the programming. But I soon decided it was too complicated and we moved on to the next activity.

First, they gave us a changing room so we could get into character as 18th century people. We then got large leather-bound books that would lead us through a "murder mystery." When I opened mine, there was a deep square hole through the pages that contained many strips of colored jello. A small text in the corner said that we had to put it together like a puzzle to form a painting which would be our first clue. Fortunately, there weren't many pieces, so I quickly assembled it, forming a beautiful Victorian-style painting depicting a pastoral scene. I think it had angels, and maybe anthropomorphic racoons, leading a couple around. I can't quite remember, but the drawing style was incredibly detailed. We went to the part of the house illustrated in the scene and got our first clue, which I forget. By this time, it was already 6pm, and we had a dinner at 7. So we jumped to the second chapter (which paradoxically opened a second hole while closing up the first), but this time the jello was cut into very thin, small strips and would take forever to piece together. I chose the skip function, which took us through the second and last scenes but which didn't reveal the associated paintings. It ended in a beautiful courtyard garden, with some upbeat story about a supernatural cause which negated the murder, or something like that.

While we were changing back to our street clothes in the changing room, another couple came in to start the tour. I ignored them and kept changing because I didn't care if they saw my underwear. They started chatting with us, but since we were in a hurry, I let Merry talk to them. I initially put on the wrong jeans, which I realized when I didn't feel my wallet or phone in them. I briefly wondered if the other people could tell we were a couple simply by how close I kept getting to Merry while going about my business, and whether if she were a stranger, I'd be called for violating her private space. We then disassembled the TV and took them back downstairs. The ticket guy took me over to a corner computer for payment. It was a touchscreen, and built like a large iPad. As I was entering the payment options, I noticed a large cartoonish (but solid) dolphin wrapped around my legs! The screen showed a colorful cartoon map that reflected that we were at some kind of Sea World that we had just toured, and that I had largely been ignoring the dolphins who were trying to be friendly. Apparently this dolphin had taken a particular liking to me and was now trying to make "puppy dog eyes" to make me feel guilty for skipping out. On the one hand I was sort of flattered, I suppose, but mostly I felt extremely creeped out. I kind of pushed it off of me a bit, and a blast of water came out of the blowhole, hitting the ticket guy and a number of cars behind him. He said, "oh well, they're in here for repair anyway, so I guess a wash would do them some good." It really did look now like we were in an auto repair shop. I finally paid and got out of there, wondering if they ever got any repeat business.