I hit $500 in my 'fun money' jar and it felt weird, not great

I've been putting $20 cash in a jar every Friday for a year (you know, for coffee or a movie) and finally counted it. Seeing that $500 pile made me realize I'd rather have that in my emergency fund, which is still short. Does anyone else feel guilty when they save for something fun instead of something serious?

Saw a cutterhead setup on the Mississippi near St. Louis that looked like a total accident waiting to happen.

Hit exactly 100 trips to the hardware store on one kitchen remodel

I was doing a small kitchen job over on Carlisle, just swapping cabinets and a sink. I kept a tally on a scrap of drywall in my truck, just for fun. When I wrote down the final number, it was a clean 100 visits for parts, tools I forgot, and one special order tile. The funny part was the guy at the counter started calling me by name after trip 30. Anyone else have a job that just ate up way more runs than you planned?

A client's 'quiet' PC fix turned into a full mouse nest removal

I was at a house call in Spokane last Tuesday to look at a gaming rig that was making a weird scratching sound. When I opened the side panel, I found a whole family of field mice had moved in, using the old thermal paste as bedding. The guy just stared and said, 'Well, that explains the cat staring at my tower.' Had to carefully vacuum it all out with a shop vac and explain why his PC wasn't actually under warranty for wildlife. Anyone else had to deal with an unexpected pest control job?

Spent three hours trying to figure out the scoring in that new train game

Got the new train game, 'Iron Rails of the West', last weekend. The rulebook looked simple enough, maybe 12 pages. But the scoring section was a mess. It said to add points for connected cities, then subtract for unused track, then multiply by some bonus cards. My group and I just sat there, passing the book around. We must have set the game up and scored it wrong four times. Each time we got a totally different winner. We finally had to look up a video online from the designer himself. Turns out we missed that you only score the longest continuous route, not all of them. What a waste of a game night. Has anyone else had a game where the scoring rules were just broken?

Hot take: BIM is overkill for small jobs, or so I thought

I always figured BIM software was just for massive new builds. Then we used it on a garage addition and found a plumbing conflict in the model before we even broke ground. That one catch paid for the software license twice over. Now I push for it on every project, no matter the size.

Update: I used to skip rule explanations, but now I see their value.

Taking time to learn rules upfront makes every game night smoother.