All of a sudden, everywhere I turn it comes up bowling. Suzanne let loose with one of the fundamental shocks to my adult constitution recently when she announced that bowling is OK after all. A few weeks later the unit I work in at Digital had a meeting, and against my strenuous objections the "team-building" event was an afternoon at the bowling alley (I hadn't yet adjusted my way of thinking to Suzanne's new world order).

The event became doubly distasteful when I learned that the bowling alley in question did not serve beer. While I've never actually tried the drink-and-bowl routine, it has a certain romantic appeal to me. So this seemed to be the last straw.

I attempted to stage a palace coup, proposing a change of venue to a nearby miniature golf course. My coup was narrowly defeated and in due course we wound up at the designated alley, one lane away from a screaming pack of pre-pubescent cub scouts. Matters deteriorated rapidly when my former boss arrived with his own bowling ball in a custom bag.

I don't really have a good way to end this story. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention my surprise in seeing the technological innovation since my last trip to the bowling alley, more than ten years previous: the scoring is now computerized. This being a group of computer geeks, you can imagine what happened.

Midway through the second game, the scoring system malfunctioned and someone was not credited with enough pins. He stormed over to the manager on duty and demanded satisfaction. A teenage employee was summoned from the back to rectify matters; he sat down at the console and started punching buttons. An hour later four of us were accomplished "bowling system programmers". I imagine at least one resume has been updated accordingly.