Drink, Monkey, Drink!

"Mommy, fun a pub playing Chug Monkey!"

Those were the first words spoken by Samantha when she woke up the other morning.  I knew, immediately, that a blog post would be imminent, but how to write it without it sounding really, really bad?  Read into it what you like, but I'll start by saying that no, Samantha does not drink beer.  Or any other alcoholic beverages, for that matter.  Neither does her mommy, really, other than the occasional glass of wine after Sammi's gone to bed.  Personally, I hate beer anyway.

But as I had written once before, Samantha loves her occasional visits to the local watering hole to pick up Daddy after a few games of darts or pool.  It's a family-friendly environment, where babies and small children can often be seen having dinner with their parents (oh, and the food is goooood!).   Samantha loves to throw money into the fountain out in the courtyard, roll the balls into the pockets of the pool table (preferably when someone else isn't trying to have a game...), pretend to order food at one of the tables ("Hello!  May I take your order?"  "Yes, please, I would like some pancakes please."  "Coming right up!", over and over again, with Mommy and Sammi taking turns for the roles of customer and waitress), and most of all, playing Chug Monkey.

(I checked the video out below before posting it - it's just a camera phone video of a couple of guys playing the game, but I didn't hear any profanity or anything, so I think it's safe.  It's *crap* but it's safe...) 



Awful, I know.  Samantha freaking loves it.  She doesn't play it properly, although I'm sure she could.  She just likes to make the monkey fall off the stool and laughs up a storm when she does.  Oh, and Sammi holds the high score record for Chug Monkey on the touch-screen, multi-game, bar-top machine, which would indicate that either a) nobody else plays it, or b) Sammi's just really good at it.  My money's on the first option.

I'm thankful that there is also a skee ball program on that machine, which Sammi actually does happen to be good at.  Actually, she's very good at it, and puts me and Steve to shame!  Makes us look like slightly less negligent parents...