SAA-Solitaire Addicts Anonymous

An evil little game lurks on my computer and calls to me when I'm at my most vulnerable. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Yes, that innocent looking card game is out to suck away your precious time. Avert your eyes and click at your own peril! I know. I've been there.

I seem to go in spurts of solitaire playing. I can leave it alone for months at a time, but then I get a little bored and decide one game won't hurt, and before you know it I'm hooked again.

Sis and I were in a little competition at one point. She would get a high score and I would beat it, then I would get a high score and she would beat it. Back and forth it went until I plateaued and she kept beating not only my high score but her own. She would leave me braggy little sticky notes on the computer such as, "New high score 7986, Ha ha!" to which I would leave a little sticky note in reply saying, "Whatever", or "Cheater" and the like. When it just got to be ridiculous and I knew that in my wildest dreams I could never touch her high score I left her a note that said, "You suck" (aren't I the model of good sportsmanship and parenting combined?) Sis laughed her butt off. Her high score is now 9431. We play the timed version of the game and honestly I don't know how she does it. She's a solitaire shark. You never want to play her at Mancala either. The kid is ruthless.

Well after that I kind of gave up on solitaire. It just wasn't fun anymore when the highest score I could get was in the low 6000s. I moved onto spider solitaire and that kept me busy for quite a while until I got about the highest score possible on it. It just wasn't challenging anymore.

So back I went to regular solitaire. Instead of playing against Sis, I decided now I would play against the computer. It would give me a percentage of games won along with my own pathetic score, so my new goal was to raise the percentage. I started out at about 25% because of my own bad habit of quitting a game that wasn't going well to go on to another. Now I was determined to win at all costs. Even to the point of hitting "undo" 50 times in a row to see if I could get the cards to go my way.

I'm convinced the computer is aware of my strategy and deliberately gives me unwinnable games. Sometimes it just gives me all the same color, like it conveniently forgot to shuffle in the other color. Yeah, right, I ain't buyin' it. It knows I want to get to that next percentage and it will do anything to trip me up. It lets me win just enough to keep me hopelessly obsessed. It's playing me like a fish on a hook. Sis thinks I've lost my mind, but hey, I'm up to 41% now!

I heard Larry the Cable Guy doing his shtick on owning a computer the other day. He said he might as well just bought an $1800 deck of cards. I tell ya, I'm kind of feeling the same way!