Scrabble Crush

This Girl's Perspective on Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T20:05:00.004-05:00

I'm not going to lie, friends. It was a little bit sad (is a little bit sad) getting through Valentine's Day without a romantic love in my life. And I don't think I'm special or extra-deserving or anything. I know lots of people don't have romantic love in their lives on this day and I saw a lot of thoughts about the day -- good, bad, and indifferent -- scroll across Facebook. These are my thoughts and reflections, in general, on this particular Valentine's Day.

I, myself, went to bed last night feeling rather unhappy with the scene. But maybe I was just over-tired. When I woke, though, I felt differently. Maybe it's the clarity those early waking minutes bring. In that first hour I was up, before office telephones started ringing and legal documents had to be reviewed and created, a distinct feeling washed over me. And that feeling was one of gratitude for having always felt love from my friends even when romantic love was not in my life. I recognize that many people spend their lives steeped in greater loneliness than I.

So I decided to honor the day and the idea of love and companionship. I put on a pink plaid shirt. I bought a heart-shaped breakfast biscuit. I turned on my "Love" playlists on iTunes. The point: to keep my heart open to the idea of someone with whom I can share that part of my soul, maybe to even manifest such a blessing. To be clear, I am one of those who believe that if you look for love, you're much less likely to find it than if you let fate kind of take the wheel. So I don't look...but, yeah, I dream.

And it made me happy for my friends to see the thrilled posts scroll across Facebook, posting pictures of flowers and cards or checking in at restaurants for lunch or dinner with their significant others. I wondered about the slight anxiety or discomfort -- or excitement! -- of those friends in relationships too new to post something with confidence. I wondered if anyone out there still got anonymous love notes or gifts (the last of which I received, I think, in maybe my sophomore year in high school) or if the relative anonymity of the Internet eliminated the need for such pre-planned, tangible offerings.

In the end, I think it's not being "alone" (in that certain context) on Valentine's Day that gets people. I think it's that it sort of feels...well...underlined on that day. But tomorrow that underline will be erased and those of us without partners can all get back to the business of being happy, single adults...with our hearts open to the modification of the "single" part.

Kanawha Valley Scrabble Club Tournament, Sept. 2011

2011-09-24T16:32:00.037-04:00

Guess what. I played in another Scrabble tournament. Yep. You didn't think I would, did you? But I did.

Truth be told, I've wanted to get back into tournament play for a long time now. But life has been a little crazy the last couple of years. There've been a lot of changes and Tina doesn't take well to change. It makes her hide out, socially speaking, and speak of herself in the third person. BUT...I've been studying. And I've been playing lots of expert players online which, in addition to constant trouncings, has given me lots and lots of exposure to good strategy and great words. Plus, I actively seek out advice from these top-rated players and they've all given me helpful pointers that I've integrated into my play (as much as possible with my level of experience).

SO... back to the tournament. Last weekend I played in the Kanawha Valley Scrabble Club's 6th annual tournament in Charleston. As always (except for that one time), I played in the bottom division but I was seeded third, behind Martha Keaton Mills and Joe Larson. I felt good about this because when I find myself seeded low in a tournament, that means there's a good chance I would get beaten so often and badly that it ends up being an emotionally-trying experience. And being seeded third meant I might be able to win some cash!

As I walked into the tournament Saturday, I was in my usual state of late. I was happy, living in the moment, thinking about today and not worrying about the past or the future too much, keeping my spoon in my own bowl, so to speak. I was sleep-deprived because, as I've always said, I'm a night owl living in a daytime world. But I had Claratin-D on board to combat my allergies which makes an interesting partner for sleep deprivation. I saw many of my old friends, gave them hugs and hellos, I met some new friends, and enjoyed all this immensely. And here's what happened next:

Game 1 against Stephanie Howard: What a start. Things just really lined up for me in this game. I drew J, K, X, and three of the S's and managed to play MIDSIZE (72) and some word I can't read in my own handwriting that ends in "ATED" for 80... and I was able to consistently put down 30- and 40-point plays. That game ended 447 (me) to 235 (Stephanie). Starting with a spread of +242 felt nice.

Game 2 against Joe Roberdeau: Now this one was a first for me. I got stuck with the Q but almost won. I fought and fought and fought for this game. Although our draws were fairly balanced, I was unable to get a bingo down but Joe was able to play RIOTER(S) (63) and LANTERN (63). I drew the Q late in the game and wasn't able to play it but I kept an eye on what I knew his remaining tiles to be and tried my darnedest to play out with enough points to absorb the 20-point deduction for the Q. In the end, our score before deductions was 381 (me) to 374 (Joe) so I lost by 13 points. Oh, well. I was proud to have not given up. I felt like a trooper. Score card: 1-1, + 229

Game 3 against Betty King: Not a lot happened in this game. I challenged WINTERER (65) and lost a turn... and that alone is probably why I lost by 18 points. STILL, I was happy. I still felt good. I was still playing Scrabble and that makes for a good Saturday. Score card: 1-2, + 211.

Game 4 against Rob Stanton: I wasn't able to bingo in this game but I was able to draw well and optimize the value of those letters. I drew J, Q, Z, and one of the S's and my plays of DARKER (45), AZINE (52), QUIVER (38), and JATO (52) shot me ahead for a 67-point win. How was I able to get 52 points from JATO? I hooked it onto QUIVER (for AQUIVER) with JATO running across the TWS. Score card: 2-2, +278.

Game 5 against Janice Hatton: My play of FIERIER (70) drew a challenge here and I was also able to play PALTRIER (74). Despite a balanced draw, Janice wasn't able to get a bingo down. Score card: 3-2, + 362.

Game 6 against Victoria Bledsoe: I tried to sneak by with MORRADER* which was goofy, I know, but it was very early in the game and I was feeling reckless. Other than that, an average game in which I played ARMORED (85) and Victoria played DESTINES (74). In the end, 393 TTK vs. 345 VB. Score card: 4-2, + 410.

Game 7 against Rafael Barker: I get to play Raf more often than other players. Not only is he a local club member, but we've been known to get together outside of club to play a few games. I tend to feel like he usually beats me but I think, in actuality, we're pretty even. During this particular encounter, I played INLANDER (58) and SPARING (89) and successfully challenged off Raf's play of ZOD late in the game (an effort to get rid of the Z he'd drawn late), leaving him stuck with it. Final tally: 408 me, 334 Raf. Score card: 5-2, +484.

Game 8 against Chris Ross: Ah, Chris. Another local club member and someone I really like. And although Chris and I drew pretty equally this game, I had a couple of helpful moments. I played STANDUPS (68) which drew a challenge and played SNIGGER (68). I kept the board locked down pretty well otherwise and Chris was unable to get a bingo down. In the end, it was 366 (me) and 307 (Chris). Score card: 6-2, +543.

Game 9 against Zosima ("Leah") Gingerich: Leah, Leah, Leah. I can never beat Leah! And nothing changed here. Although I got away with DINNERED* (62) and stayed consistently on Leah's tail, I was never able to catch up. Turned out to be 347 Tina to 366 Leah. Score card: 6-3, +524. (Cute picture of us in pink: to the right.)

So at the end of Day 1, I had a very respectable W/L and a great spread because my wins had been significant and my losses generally close. I walked away feeling really, really... accomplished ...and, after a delicious dinner at Bluegrass Kitchen with, among others, Andy Murphy, Alex Greenman, Stephanie Howard, Lynne Crowley, and Joe Larson, I felt full, satisfied, smiley, and ever-so-slightly buzzed. I went home, didn't study, and fell into a happy sleep by 11:00. I felt fully ready to face Day 2:

Game 10 against Stephen Henney: Lucky game for me here! I was first to play and was able to put down IDIOTIC for 72 points. Later I played REAVOWS (70) which drew a challenge. I also drew the K, Q, X, and Z and was able to play them for a decent number of points. All that put me out of reach for my opponent and our final score was 394-350. Score card: 7-3, + 568.

Game 11 against Shirley Perman: I had heard that Shirley wasn't having a great tournament so I tried to approach this game with special sensitivity. (Hey, I've been there. I know what it's like to keep getting beat for two or three days in a row. It's hard on the spirit.) Still, I had to play my best game of Scrabble while trying to be a sensitive opponent. I played TEENIER (63) and RELAPSES (72) and drew the J, K, Q and Z and, interestingly, was able to play out my last six tiles with a disconnected 8 of REUnITeD (for 9 points but it's rare that I'm able to play disconnected words). Shirley did get by with PROTHERS* (65) but it was late in the game and, although that play put her within 36 points of me, I had the Q and the Z on my rack still, with an opportunity to play the Q for a lot of points, and didn't want to risk losing a turn. We ended up at 445 Tina and 345 Shirley. Score card: 8-3, + 668.

In between games 11 and 12, I learned that Joe R., the player who had been in first place, had lost a game which moved me from third place to second and moved Raf Barker to first. And therein lay my opportunity to take first place in my division. To do this, I needed two things to happen. I needed to win against Joe R. in our upcoming game...and I needed Raf Barker to lose a game. Raf was 9-2 but my spread was pretty much out of reach for any other player. Suddenly my joy over second place was...strangely...a little dulled. If I could take first place, it would be my first first place in a tournament. And that was something I reallly wanted. Although I felt suddenly different, I didn't feel unhappy or nervous or like my play would be affected. The entire tournament, I had felt focused and I felt such clarity and fluidity in my thoughts. I know the sensation well and recognize the buzz of it instantly. And it feels so splendid. In fact, I'm so mentally "on" when that feeling hits, I knew I would not choke in my last two games. If the tiles were right, I would do right by them. So I kept moving forward.

Game 12 against Joe Roberdeau (again): I have to admit, I went into this game feeling ayy-okay. Joe was really burning it up this tournament but we'd seen that he could be beaten. I did have a small thought that, since I had won two already this morning, I might be up for a loss which would have put first place (and maybe even second place) out of my reach. But I was able to play MEANIES (78), STRINGS (73), and URINOSE (69) over which I racked my brain for minutes. I just didn't see URINOSE for the longest time. His play was taking minutes, too, so I kept hoping he would throw down an S so I could play NEUROSIS. He didn't. And right before I was about to burn off three or four letters, I saw URINOSE. I had played that word before but sometimes you just don't see words on your rack. (I find it helps to either move the tiles around on my rack or the just relax for a second and let the letters float freely in my mind's eye.) But, anyway...phew! Final score: 412 (me) to 281 (Joe). Score card: 9-3, +799.

And Raf won his game. And that meant it literally came down to the very last game for Raf and me. Whomever won our game would take first place in our division. Whomever lost our game would take second. Raf and I get along very well and we respect each other...so we shook hands, wished each other luck, and got the party started.

Game 13 against Raf Barker: The decision maker. All right, I'm just going to come right out and say it. I just could NOT get any good play down on this board. Both Raf and I played bingos for our final plays (he with SIGNEES (68) and me with RIOTOUS (74) to bingo out) but, other than that, nothing special really happened. He was just able to consistently play small, higher-scoring words than mine and those points added up. I was never in the lead and, in the end, he had 448 points to my 304. I had taken second place and Rafael first. Sigh.

Raf was happy...as he should have been. He was excited...all smiles and chatty about the game and the scores and our records and all those very normal things to talk about after a round of Scrabble. And I was deflated. Me being me, I knew exactly how I felt and why I felt it and I was most definitely able to put it into words. I looked at Raf and I said, "I'm a really good loser but I'm so disappointed. I just need a few minutes to let that feeling dissipate." Raf immediately recognized that, as happy as he was with his victory, I was just as sad about first place slipping away from me. He smiled and was gracious and understanding and went to another part of the room to chat while I put my board and supplies away.

Sure enough, 20 minutes later I was able to smile genuinely as I accepted my second place prize. And 20 minutes after that I was able to smile and enjoy myself as I sat having a late lunch at Pies and Pints with Raf and with some of the Pittsburgh players before they got on the road.

So it was a good tournament. A GREAT tournament. And I cannot wait to do another one.

As for this blog post, I'm not so sure it's that great. I'm sorry it's long and ends sort of abruptly. I'm out of practice with writing, you know? Give me time. Time for blogging and time for tournaments.

Scrabble in the Snow: February Fury in Warren, MI

2009-03-01T15:49:00.014-05:00

An "open" Scrabble tournament doesn't divide players into divisions by their rating. This means that the thousandth-something-highest player can end up playing one of the top players in the country. It means that Tina Totten King can end up playing a three-game match against "G.I. Joel" Sherman. This is no Cinderella story, though. I got whupped by Joel Sherman, and rightfully so.

That was last weekend. And despite having zero chance of winning even one of my first three games, that part wasn't so bad. The rest of the tournament, though, was downright dandy.

In what's become a common event, traveling to Michigan for a Scrabble tournament includes a short stopover in the Cleveland area to pick up friends. My usual traveling companions include Dallas Johnson, Pete Ziegler, and George Viebranz. This time we were joined by another Ohio Scrabble player, Kevin McCarthy. There're many advantages to doing things this way. First, it makes the last three-or-so hours of my ride much less lonely. Second, it almost guarantees the rest of the ride will be hee-larious. Them smart people are funny.

During the Warren tournament, I was invited to stay at the home of Steve and Joni Grob who live about 45 minutes from the tournament site. Steve is a good friend...one of many I've made in the Scrabble world. Steve's wife Joni is the type of woman other women want to be hang out with...friendly, kind, and smart. The Grob house is a warm, comfortable place and I felt right at home the whole time.

So, after my favorite pre-tournament breakfast on Saturday morning (egg and cheese on croissant from Burger King and a Mocha Joe), we got those three impossible games out of the way and started onward and upward toward the real potential for me that weekend. (By the way, those three games against Joel Sherman: 249-479, 216-550, and 365-461.) For the other 12 of my games, I went 7-and-5, winning three of the four three-game matches. My highest-scoring word: GROUSER (88) against Rob Long. My best game: 509-317 against Dianne Watson.

Having started as 31st seed, I finished in 21st place. For that, my rating went up 72 points!! Another, higher-rated player also finished 10 places above his seed, so the two of us split the $150 prize for that achievment.

And Steve Grob hit quite a stride that weekend. Faced with incredibly tough and talented opponents, Steve won the tournament and a very nice cash prize to go with the bragging rights. Jason Idalski, the tournament's spectacular director, gave a heartfelt, impromptu speech before handing over the envelope. Steve had kind words to say himself and even Joni Grob was able to make it for the prize ceremony.

As always, win-or-lose, traveling to Scrabble tournaments gives me the chance to see my friends, the chance to compete, and the chance to eat all the Pretzel Flipz I can find while laughing my way down the Interstate. The February Fury, though, definitely had some bonus material. It was a good tournament. It was a good weekend.

Oh, man. I've got to go study.

Photos:
Top - My game against Joel Sherman. I'm the one with the glasses.
Middle - Jeff Clark and me at Saturday's typical group dinner.
Bottom - Jason Idalski reflects on a successful tournament as Steve Grob soaks up a little glory.

P.S. An extra special shout-out to Linda Hoggatt.
Without her, things just wouldn't be as much fun.

Animal Reflections

2009-02-28T20:42:00.006-05:00

The last couple of days I've been reflecting upon humankind's protectiveness of animals. I'm speaking generally, of course. Obviously there are many people out there who aren't kind to animals at all and that kind of ties into what I'm saying. But the trouble we'll go to, even for a wild animal, is remarkable.
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Last year, for instance, a black bear found its way into the river in Charleston. (It's not a stretch to imagine this situation because, although it's "downtown" Charleston, it's a relatively small, valley area and it's bordered by woodsy areas on all sides.) So while Black Bear is making his or her way to the river bank, the police come along and stop traffic so the bear can safely cross the road. I'm sure all involved were excited at the sight of a bear crossing the road in broad daylight and were happy to watch the bear climb the hill to safety. By the way, if you're city folk and can't imagine why people would be happy to see a bear headed into a woodsy neighborhood, black bears aren't like the bears of northwest United States. Unless in a highly-exceptional situation (like protecting a cub, being approached when wounded, etc.), a black bear tends to act kind of like a giant raccoon. They like to get into the trash, tear some stuff up, and usually run at the sight of a human. (The instances of black bear attacks are increasing with housing expansion but that's another story. The point is, don't try to make them your pet and it'll probably all work out fine.)
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Here's the sad example I'll throw in the middle to kind of buffer it:

Yesterday I was turning onto Route 119 from Lucado Rd. and I saw, to my right, a deer which appeared bedded down right there in the gravel. I'll call it a "she" because of the relative sizes of the head and body...making it likely a female. I pulled over and called 9-1-1 and told them the deer was either injured or trapped (and freaked out) and that either way, help was needed. You might think a 9-1-1 operator would scoff at such a thing being classified as an emergency but he said he'd send someone (and by "someone" I knew he'd be calling the DNR's field unit). So as I sat and waited, the deer tried to get up and run away. Without going into graphic detail, it became clear that both of her front legs were broken. She made it to the other side of Lucado and collapsed at the hillside.

I realized that the deer could probably not be saved (because their front legs are very spindly and personality-wise they're not going to cooperate during healing) but I also realized that she didn't appear to be injured other than the front legs. I called 9-1-1 again and told them, for sure, what was wrong with the deer and that she probably needed euthanized because her injuries wouldn't provide a timely end to her suffering. (I didn't say it like that but instead spoke mostly in short phrases forced through tears.) And then I sat and waited, not wanting the deer to make it out of sight and not being able to simply drive off. (I was afraid she might make it far enough away to bed down and, therefore, suffer much longer.)

Many, many people stopped. Many had seen the deer on the side of the road and had come back around the neighborhood to check on her. Several stopped and asked if I had called, or to tell me they had called, 9-1-1 and to ask how the deer would be helped. People were very concerned about this animal even though the relationship between deer and humans is sometimes sketchy. (Deer will eat up your garden and your flowers and jump right out in front of your car...which can cause human injury, too, or thousands of dollars in damage to the vehicle.)

More time passed and the after-school traffic died down. I waited in my van across the road, about 20 feet from the deer. We both seemed resigned to the situation, and she stared at me and I stared at her and there we just sat and sat. About 45 minutes after I first saw the deer in the gravel, I saw the DNR officer's truck pulling around the turn. He told me he would either "put her down" or help her if he could. That was my signal to drive away and I did.

So the deer couldn't be helped, but it wasn't for people not caring...and it wasn't for people not being willing to help. Had it been possible, I'm positive someone would have had her in their Volvo SUV headed off to the emergency veterinary hospital just down the road.
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And then there was the time the combination of roads and animals and people turned out to actually improve some lives. Just a few days ago, a small, confused Beagle wandered onto I-64 and became trapped...and terrified. Motorists stopped along this 60-to-70 MPH stretch of road to try and help the dog. They called 9-1-1 as the scared dog ran back and forth across the road. Somehow the Beagle escaped injury until police arrived. And what did the police do? I know you can guess. They stopped traffic on I-64. The dog took shelter under a truck where the police were able to grab it. Yesterday the Beagle's picture was on the front page of the newspaper and, of course, people were lined up to adopt it.
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If you've watched Animal Police, or even just your local news show, you've probably seen the lengths we'll go to to save an injured or neglected animal. You've probably noticed some decently-harsh sentencing for people convicted of animal cruelty (even though some may consider it humans' place to reign over animals and treat them how they wish). So what does it say about society when so many of our members would spend so much time, so much effort, and so much money to help creatures they don't even "own"? And what is it about animals that cause us to get our protective backs up maybe even more than we would for the guy next door? I think it says our instinct is to protect those we feel are weaker. Or maybe its because animals live lives of relative innocence and they lack human sins. Food for thought, no matter what.

StuffI'mMovingFromMyMySpaceBlogBeforeIShutItDown: June 19, 2006 entry

2009-02-13T19:21:00.002-05:00

We observe our heroine browsing through her old MySpace blog, checking it over for important tidbits she might not want to be lost when MySpace goes the way of glass eating, Wacky Wallwalkers, and the hi-top fade. Miraculously, she spots a blog entry of such high quality that she simply can't make that double-layer click-through then CATCHPA entry to finally see the entry deleted from 2007's favorite website.

Peering over our heroine's shoulder, we read...
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June 19, 2006

KR

One balmy summer night, I found myself on a train headed nowhere in particular. On that train, I met a man who made his living playing cards. It happened that we were both so exhausted we could not rest. Instead, we both stared out the window into the dark night. Eventually, we both tired of the monotony...of the silence...and the man started to talk.

He told me that he had built his career, even his existence, on studying other people's expressions. He could tell what cards they had by how they fixed their gaze. He said he hoped me didn't mind him saying as much, but he knew that I held no aces in my hand. In exchange for a drink of my Crown, he offered some guidance.

I passed the man my Crown, and he drank the last bit of it. He asked me for a cigarette (which struck me as odd since I don't smoke) and then he asked me for a lighter (which was even more odd considering I didn't give him a cigarette). Complete silence fell over the night and the man's face became expressionless. Then he told me, "If you're going to play cards, it's essential that you learn to do it right."

He said, "You've got to learn when to keep your cards and learn when to get rid of them." He said I'd have to know when to saunter away from the table, and when to race away. Then he told me to not ever add up my chips when I was seated at the table, because there would be plenty of time for that when the game was over. He said, "every card player learns the skill of staying alive in the game: recognizing which cards to throw out and which to hang on to." He went on to tell me that any hand could end up winning, and that any hand could end up losing. Mysteriously, he added that the most a card player could strive for was to depart this life while sleeping.

When he was done talking, he looked again to the window. He put out his cigarette (which I still have no idea where he got), and quietly nodded off. True to those cryptic words, sometime during that dark night, the card player met his goal. From his last words, I gained advice worth remembering. His words echoed in my head three more times.

Oh, sheesh.

2009-02-12T18:45:00.003-05:00

The four-year-old just said (about me)..."Her shaked her head no." Her dad corrected her..."SHE shaked her head no."

I guess we should be glad his job is math-based.

StuffI'mMovingFromMyMySpaceBlogBeforeIShutItDown: November 20, 2006 entry

2009-02-08T20:13:00.007-05:00

We observe our heroine browsing through her old MySpace blog, checking it over for important tidbits she might not want to be lost when MySpace goes the way of Trapper Keepers, the kangaroo ball, and guys with one earring. Miraculously, she spots a blog entry of such high quality that she simply can't make that double-layer click-through then CATCHPA entry to finally see the entry deleted from 2007's favorite website.

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November 20, 2006

Super Feminize Me!

I was cleaning out a "catch all" file in my desk today and came across an article I had photocopied from Bust..magazine a year or two ago... It's a light-hearted look at what's fed to women by..society, the media, and other women, in fact, regarding what it is to be a woman... It cracked me up then and I was laughing out loud today reading it again... Enjoy.

SUPER FEMINIZE ME!

The road to excess for the female sex

by Wendy McClure

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Thanks to this year's gross-out documentary Super Size Me, we all know what happens when you eat nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days. ..Or rather, when a guy eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days... We knew what would happen, and given the venerable male traditions of Jackass, Tom Green, and lad-mag beer-bong experiments, we knew it was gonna be disgusting. Still, a guy honking down Double Quarter Pounders at every meal is an exposé on American culture, whereas a woman honking down Double Quarter Pounders at every meal is either a.) in a TV movie about binge eating, or b.) Cameron Diaz. Belch! She's sexy! In other words, a woman couldn't have pulled a stunt like the one Morgan Spurlock did in Super Size Me and have it mean the same thing.

Then again, women have long known the effects of fast-food consumption. We've known, ever since we started reading YM at the age of 12 or so, that fast food totally makes your skin break out, and your prom dress too small, and that the nasty, icky, grody feeling you get inside after you break down and eat some fries at the food court thereby breaking your diet and ruining all your highly ambitious sophomore year makeover plans most definitely means McDonald's is bad bad bad! So that movie was not exactly news to us.

But what about the rest of the stuff that our culture feeds women? Are there other things out there that are bad for us when not taken in moderation-besides fast food, and also besides tanning, Diet Coke, cardio, ginkgo biloba, exfoliation, earth tones, accessorizing, flirting, spray-on butter flavor, highlights, carbs, cyber chats, lipliner, energy bars, conditioner, gossiping, fragrance layering, and vibrator use? There have got to be more things that women's magazines can warn us about, right? And if we're stupid enough that we need to be chastised for abusing salad dressing, then what the hell else might we be susceptible to? That's why I recruited a team of volunteers to investigate - ordinary women, like the ones on The Swan, only less, you know, dumpy. Each one would set out to over-consume an especially feminine pop culture offering and examine its physiological and psychological effects.

I knew there were dangers: after all, most of the girliest pop products out there are intended for occasional use only-as "indulgences," "escapes," "guilty pleasures," "treats," and "splurges," meant to give us girls a break from a world made of steel, made of stone. What would happen when these things were taken in decidedly non-"oh, just a little something" amounts?

My first volunteer, Cassandra L., read nothing but "chick lit" for 30 days, at the rate of approximately four and a half titles (256 pages average) a week. By day 11, she developed a bizarre tendency to fall down in high heels, especially in the presence of male employers and potential suitors, though by day 14 she began to carry a Marc Jacobs handbag, which she used to control her balance. By day 20, Cassandra needed special electromagnetic spectrum therapy to relieve the eyestrain caused by overexposure to the color pink on book jackets. By day 28, she slurred in a unique dialect that consisted of endearments like "crazy sweetie kitten" and weird British-isms like "naff." On her final day, she appeared disoriented as she stumbled up to the counter at a coffeeshop and tried to order something called a "cosmojito."

In order for Jennifer R. to peruse Playgirl every day for 30 days, five years' worth of back issues were needed to provide maximum muscular manpower. The effects set in as early as day six, when she went to her gym, glimpsed actual chest hair under a male patron's tank top, and began shrieking in terror. The routine physical examination at day 15 revealed she had developed an unusually strong right index finger as a result of hooking it through the belt-loops of male strangers whom she'd pull with considerable force into coat closets. She did this with great enthusiasm, though she reported having no idea what to do with them next, other than rip off their shirts and lick their pectoral muscles. By day 21, it was discovered that Jennifer's diet now consisted of only penis-shaped pasta, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce; it was at this point that she elected to end her portion of the experiment out of health and sanitary concerns.

Our third subject, Margaret P., was a fascinating case: she watched five TV movies a day for 30 days, a steady diet fed by channels such as Lifetime, Oxygen, and the Women's Entertainment network. She required intervention as early as day ten, after she began to frantically search for her baby in a supermarket. When well-meaning friends attempted to remind her that she never had a baby, she screamed, "That's just what you WANT me to believe, ISN'T IT?!"

Extra volunteers were called upon to provide in-home supervision for Margaret. This was difficult only for the three days she believed she was under house arrest for smuggling smack for her man; things went much more smoothly after day 17, when apparently she decided the women keeping an eye on her were fellow call-girls. On day 26, she turned to them and asked, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" She then reportedly asked one of them if she could "sleep with danger."

Danger indeed, we decided. Do not try these experiments at home, girls. No, really, we're warning you - we're a magazine, after all, and we know what's good for you.

Black History Month: Read This Book

2009-02-05T16:27:00.006-05:00

Black History Month is meant to celebrate the culture and achievement of African-Americans, to remember or discover significant events like the civil rights movement, and to acknowledge the icons who sparked change in American society. And the necessary backdrop to the celebration is remembering where we've been as a country. George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." That's an interesting thought right now...especially since our country just elected our first African-American president. But to better understand where we are, we absolutely must remember how we got here.

And that's why I love this book -- Remembering Jim Crow. It's one of my favorites. It's not a book of stiff, academic history. It's not a contrived, over-the-top work heavy on rhetoric but short on objectivity. What it is is a collection of oral histories of people who lived during the Jim Crow era...including what you already know and what never would have occurred to you.

When reading Jim Crow, the parts I found most compelling were those where the interviewees talked about the very, very subtle facets of racism and the de facto rules of social subordination. These are the parts of America's history that aren't written in textbooks. Here's an excerpt from an interview with a man named Ralph Thompson, who grew up in Tennessee in the late 1930's and early 1940's:

[Parents] tried to keep you away from things that would be embarrassing when they couldn't fight back.
...
When you look back at it, you can tell why -- because they couldn't defend [us].
...
My daddy, if it was a white person around talking to him in some kind of business format, he would move away from us or tell us to go play or something. I guess it was to protect us from something that might be said to him that he wasn't able to defend.

The book also gives us some glimpses of the subtle but real pressures put on white people in the segregated south:

I can remember at the drugstore, some evenings we would stop in there and get ice cream, and the pharmacist was real nice to us.
...
In this particular drugstore he didn't put any stools at his counter. When you look back, I guess he said I'll treat you as fair as I can and if I don't put the stools here, I don't have to worry about nobody sitting down. You get your ice cream. You have to move on.

Though often sad or even disgusting, this collection of stories will, at some point, lift you back up because you'll not only remember the downfalls, but see the future. Really...if you can make time to read one book this month, I give this one the highest marks and enthusiastically recommend it. Even if you don't have time to read the book right now, you can listen to parts of the interviews on the Internet at http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org.

StuffI'mMovingFromMyMySpaceBlogBeforeIShutItDown: August 14, 2007 entry

2009-02-03T22:50:00.013-05:00

We observe our heroine browsing through her old MySpace blog, checking it over for important tidbits she might not want to be lost when MySpace goes the way of Hammer pants, Dorothy Hamil haircuts, and The Macarena. Miraculously, she spots a blog entry of such high quality that she simply can't make that double-layer click-through then CATCHPA entry to finally see the entry deleted from 2007's favorite website.

Peering over our heroine's shoulder, we read...
______________________________________________________

August 14, 2007

On the road again

Today I drove from Charleston to Union, West Virginia and then on to Roanoke, Virginia in an attempt to find a man that my firm wants to give tens of thousands of dollars. Actually, we're not giving it to him, more like holding it for him. He was a class member in a big class action involving mortgages and the case settled. He's my last missing class member and it is absolutely required that we find him. But he's a hard man to find.

Nonetheless, I don't mind a road trip too much. A four-hour drive is totally do-able. Sometimes I amuse myself with my observations and stream of consciousness. Here is some of what I thought about and saw in my four hours of driving today:

I am unable to hear the song Three Times a Lady without singing the chorus, out loud, as: "Unce...tice...fee tiiimmes a maadaayy." What can I say? As a child, The Little Rascals and Saturday Night Live were two of my favorite shows!

On the way through Lewisburg, I saw signs that said, "fair parking," and "no fair parking." I can't imagine that the "no fair parking" gets much business. Honesty in advertising is great but maybe they should just get out of the business.

Do you notice that, with every really good song that comes on the radio, or from your CD, or iPod or whatever, you turn up the radio? When the volume finally reaches its limits, it's a real downer. Then you're just stuck and your hearing is, of course, depleted and permanently damaged, so now you can barely hear your favorite song!!!!

When I get to a spot with bad radio reception, I either hook up the iPod or search for a CD. Today, I found a CD. It was a CD of love songs that someone had made me when he was overseas with the military. (Aawwww.) That reminds me of another time in the van...I found an unlabeled CD. I put it in and the first song was something really cool like Al Green or something. After that, Kung Foo Fighting. (Also cool, but odd.) After that, another really cool song. After that, the MoviePhone bit from Seinfeld (audio only...duh):

It was like a hilarious mystery!! The pattern went on like that for the whole CD...one great song, then something funny. I still don't know where it came from. Eric probably made it and then just forgot.

And perhaps the three sexiest songs in the entire universe are Crazy for You (Madonna), I'm on Fire (Bruce Springsteen), and Every Breath You Take (The Police). I mean, they're ssseexxxxy. Oh, yeah.... Excuse me for a second.

Ok. I'm back.

I have never driven down I-64 across Sandstone Mountain when it did not smell strongly of burning brakes. That stretch of road must be absolute hell on the truck drivers.

To the lady in the red Corolla: that white pick up truck with a yellow, flashing light in the middle of the grassy median is not, as you fear, a police officer in the wrong kind of vehicle and with the wrong color flashing lights. It is, in fact, a Division of Highways vehicle. There is absolutely no need to slam on your brakes. This causes me to slam on my brakes and annoys me greatly as you'd been playing the "I'm not going to use my cruise control" game with me for about 20 miles. Moreover, there is really, really, really no need to slow your speed down to 55 on the Interstate..cop or no cop. The speed limit is 70.

Somewhere just over the West Virginia border (in Virginia), I saw a tree with maybe 100 coffee cups nailed to it. They were all over the half of the tree that faces the road and went all the way to maybe 15 feet up the trunk. How cool! I wonder if it was Outsider Art or if someone hung their coffee cup on a spare nail one day (so they could carry a package from the mailbox, or a stray goat or something) and just thought it looked damned cool.

I saw this sign when entering the Interstate in Virginia:

I wonder what it means. I bet they don't like The Fonz.

If I ever accidentally leave my cell phone on after talking to someone and while I'm driving on a road trip, they'll be treated to a non-stop Karaoke-like, bad-singing fest like they've never heard before. In fact, if this ever happens when you and I are talking, you'd best just go ahead and try to disconnect the call. My singing voice could seriously break your phone otherwise.

And whatever happened to Eminem? I haven't heard anything new from him since before he remarried Kim and then sort of lost it.

When I got to the Monroe County Courthouse, I walked in and asked the first person I saw in the clerk's office if they knew the guy I was trying to find. They did (they always do in small towns) but they hadn't seen him for years. They gave me his daughter's phone number, though. This reminds me of walking into the Lawrence County, Ohio courthouse looking to find the birthmother of a client. (I had already found her name...now I just needed to find her.) The first woman knew her and sort of knew where she lived. The second guy drew me a freaking map to her house!!! (Here's a nice tidbit: when I drove out to her house and talked to her, she was, of course, wary of me. She asked what her supposed son's name was and I told her, "Brian." Her face softened. She knew that was right. Her voice was very sad when she said, quite simply, "I never wanted to give him up...but my parents made me." She went on to explain that she had been so distraught and inconsolable that the social worker had broken the rules and told her her son's adoptive name.)

When you drive through very, very rural areas...like where cars don't come along but maybe once a minute on the road...and when you do pass someone coming the other direction, the proper and accepted etiquette is to raise your four fingers (on the hand nearest the window) in a sort of modified wave. Everyone does it and I love it!! Okay, this may only apply to West Virginia. I've noticed it now in Monroe County and Pocahontas County.

That is all.

A Short Burst of Reality

2009-02-01T15:38:00.004-05:00

When I got out of my van today (on my way into Taylor Books to study), I grabbed some trash that had accumulated around the passenger seat of the van. The passenger seat of my van could also be known as my filing cabinet/pantry, by the way.

I found a half-full bag of Pretzel Flipz (my favorite snack) that was sealed tight but, based on the chunky feel of the bag, contained Pretzel Flipz that were all melted together. Disappointed at the loss of my beloved snacks, I tossed them in the sidewalk trash can along with empty cups that used to contain sweet tea.

Sitting here in the coffee shop at Taylor Books, I saw outside the window a clean, neatly dressed man (whom I know to live in a shelter) walking along at a decent clip. He paused at the trash can, retrieved the Pretzel Flipz bag from the top of the contents, opened it, and started munching on the chocolate, salty deliciousness. He continued along at his previous pace, still enjoying the snack.

Good for him. I feel wasteful...but I'm happy to have been given the opportunity to think about it.

Follllowww meeeee...

2009-01-31T10:34:00.010-05:00

Ah, sweet winter. Sweet freezing cold, oppressive ice, and wet, wet snow...and dark days. It's not good for the soul, I think, to be this cold and to live in the dark for more than 10 or so hours.

So I've added about a third of the blogs I read to the "Blogs I Follow" tool on Google. I've got two sections to go but also a short attention span. Doing even more to open up these lines of communication and expression help deflect winter's harsh effects, though.

And right now, I've got one follower. Want to lighten and warm my world even more? Become one of my Stalkers and Lurkers. (That's a "follower" by the way. See lower right-hand corner of my blog.) If you follow me, I promise not to lead lemming style and never to offer you any special Kool-Aid.

Thank you for your support.

Facebook's 25 Things About Me

2009-01-27T23:42:00.003-05:00

Since I'm still in transition mode (from working full-time-plus to graduate school and more household stuff), my head is still spinning a little and I've had no inspiration for writing.

This little "tag your friends" thing that's going around Facebook right now at least made me think a little about the type of subjects you'd write in a blog. It's similar to some of the things that were passed around on MySpace back during its peak popularity (before ultra cool people like me transitioned to Facebook).

So it's a good jumping off point to (hopefully) get back into communicating. Without further ado...here is my "25 Random Things About Me" entry on Facebook...complete with annotations:

_________________________________________

1. I eat any single peanut M&M by biting off half the chocolate, eating the peanut, then eating the rest of the chocolate. (You should see how I eat a sandwich.)

2. I'm trying to find time in my schedule to study yoga, Scrabble, poker and Spanish. (OH YEAH...and graduate school stuff!)

3. I love to cook but always cook way too much. I don't want food for guests to run out!

4. I still haven't figured out anything I'm really, really great at. (Okay...don't ever challenge me to a game of Simon...but that's the only thing.)

5. I was born in eastern Kentucky but have shed any Kentucky accent by living in other places. (That's Pikeville, people. The home of Hillbilly Days. Yikes.)

6. My neck turns obviously bright red and blotchy if I have to speak in public.

7. Small, repetitive actions (like the "I'm crushing your head" thing) are like nails on a chalkboard to me.

8. I'm completely addicted to Altoids Smalls mints. I eat maybe 20 or more a day. (If I really like you, I'll still give you a box of them even though I really want them all for myself.)

9. In my younger life, I seriously considered careers in medicine and photography.

10. I still physically cringe when I think about mistakes I may have made years ago...not that they were so bad, just that I can't let those things go. (What's really great is the older I get, the more of these jewels I collect. Is NIYYCE!!)

11. I've been told by strangers or near strangers that I had a calming effect on them. It's one of the most flattering things I've ever heard. (And that makes me more confident in my new career goal of counselor.)

12. I never smiled without feeling self-conscious while growing up. I got braces when I was 19 and that's made a huge difference in my life. (I had a significant fang on one side.)

13. I love the TV shows Intervention, Dr. G. Medical Examiner, and Mythbusters.

14. I've watched the movie Braveheart at least 100 times. (Probably closer to 200 but I couldn't say "at least 200 times" with confidence. What can I say? It was a boring year and I'm somewhat obsessive. Obsessive. Obsessive.)

15. I can't function with any physical discomfort...which is why I'm addicted to those breath mints and to lip conditioner and why I wear loose clothes. (And why I carry dental floss, Band-Aids, eye drops, and nasal spray. If I ever get stuck on an island like Tom Hanks in Castaway, fuhgeddaboutit.)

16. I'm a night owl stuck in a daytime life. My ideal awake time would be from about 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m.

17. I'd love to write a novel. (Like all first novels, it'd be a loosely-based autobiography with enough fiction included so I could also deny the facts if necessary.)

18. Given the right partner in conversation, I could converse in mostly movie quotes. (And I still believe the best, most classic to be, "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?")

19. I love giant fireworks displays and have to be sitting directly under them or I'm totally bummed. I'll travel for hours and wait in the park all day to see good fireworks.

20. I also love giant roller coasters and will travel quite far for them, too. My number one favorite so far...the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point. (It's the only time in my life I felt like I was flying.)

21. I tend to procrasti

22.

23.

24.

25.

The Good News From The Good Doctor

2009-01-09T22:09:00.003-05:00

I have a great family doctor. She's just friendly and thorough and very caring. I'm not the only one who knows this...as evidenced by the two-month wait to become an established patient. (Once you're established, though, sick visits are almost always same-day.)

About ten days before Christmas, a mole I'd had on my back for years suddenly went kind of crazy. Without going into too much detail, I'll say that it went through a lot of changes very fast and, in the end, just looked bad.

Then the last day of my job approached, and my health insurance coverage was, for a time, not guaranteed. In a bit of a last-minute panic, I called my doctor's office on the morning of New Year's Eve and talked to them about the mole. A few hours later, the good doctor was conducting a small, in-office surgery removing a nice-sized chunk of my back, making sure the mole was completely removed along with a decent margin around it. About 20 minutes (and 8 stitches) after that, I was on my way.

Wednesday of this week, I went back in to have my stitches removed and found out that, instead of a potentially-nasty skin cancer, I had had a small, irritated hemangioma. Lucky me!! (Seriously...I'm not being sarcastic.) Moreover, although hemangiomas can be quite aggressive (and difficult to remove because of their high blood flow), the margins of my excision were "clean" meaning that crazy clump of blood vessels is likely done with forever.

Is niice!

New Year, New Scrabble Rating

2009-01-08T22:04:00.004-05:00

A long time ago, I learned that one of the best things about going to Scrabble tournaments was traveling with friends. Most of the time, if I'm not traveling alone, I'm going to tournaments with my friends from the local club (Martha, Brad, Lisa, and Chris). Late last year, I had the idea to start venturing out a little further, riding to the Cleveland area and then carpooling to tournaments in Michigan or Canada with my friends who live there.

So these trips are basically the most fun things ever. Them smart people are funny...and right in line with my own twisted, sometimes perverse, sense of humor. Toward the end of the ride to Canada, it broke down to energy drinks and the "that's what she said" game.

And this last weekend marked my first Scrabble tournament trip of the 2009 (non-2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour) season. I had an easy drive to Cleveland where I met up with George and Pete...then on to Fenton, Michigan for a weekend of Scrabble that was, technically, separate tournaments on Saturday and Sunday.

Although I didn't win very many games either way, I won just enough to get a very decent rating increase (from 895 to 931). Sunday was a little hard emotionally, though. That tournament was what's called an "open" so players aren't divided into divisions based on their ranking. Even though I was being beaten by players much better than me, eventually just losing over and over becomes somewhat disheartening. The day ended with a win, though, which always helps.

Of course, Saturday night had the usual poker tournament, backgammon games, and drinks. Not to brag or anything, but after I was eliminated from the poker tournament I put together this quick sketch of the after-hours games:

NEXT...the Eastern Championship in Charlotte, NC. Until then...it's study time, baby.

Change

2008-12-30T23:44:00.006-05:00

So what's with the radio silence, Tina? Well...let me tell you. Today was my last day working in an office for what I hope ends up being a couple of years. Shortly after my last post, I decided to leave my job as a paralegal and go back to graduate school. I'll be continuing work on my Master of Social Work degree with a focus on direct practice (counseling).

Although I'm completely excited about returning to graduate school, I've never had an easy time adjusting to big life changes. For the most part, I tend to become very introverted, albeit temporarily, until my anxiety and discomfort wane. An bona fide ENFP, introverted is usually about the third-to-last word people would use to describe me. (The last word is "male" and the second-to-last word is "asleep.")

Now I have about two weeks until classes start. I hope to spend the time refocusing, getting the house into better order, and tying up loose ends with financial aid, household business, and so on.

In the words of a philosophical master, "Do or do not. There is no try."

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: VICTORY in Strongsville!!!

2008-12-08T20:49:00.009-05:00

Holy frijoles...NOW we're talkin!!!

I've been to 14 Scrabble tournaments in the last twelve months...and I've finally placed "in-the-money"! This weekend, at the Cleveland Classic in Strongsville, Ohio, I won 11 out of 15 games and finished second in my division!!

If you've followed along with my blog at all, you might know that I've been engaged in many of these tournaments during my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour. I've studied and studied and played and played...trying to prove to myself that I chose to take on a tough game, against tough opponents, and that I could succeed. This weekend's tournament gives me a feeling of progress...a small piece, a beginning to that success.

And it has been a fun year for Scrabble. I've flown and driven all around:

Elyria, Ohio (March);

Charleston, West Virginia (April);

Richfield, Ohio (April);

Pittsburgh, PA (June);

Rocky River, OH (July);

Pontiac, MI (August);

Hudson, OH (September);

Huntington, WV (Club Tourney, October);

South Lyon, MI (October);

Elyria, OH (October);

Durham, NC (October);

Lexington, KY (November);

Mississauga, Ontario (November); and, of course,

Strongsville this last weekend.

The $125 I won for my second place finish in the Cleveland Classic was nice...but not as nice as the other things I gained this weekend. I got 134 ratings points, a poster signed by all the players in my division, a cool dinosaur made out of Scrabble tiles, tons of compliments about the boards I'd made, and, best of all, I got to spend time with friends.

In 2009, I'm not going to play in as many tournaments but I'll still do about one a month. But what a great note to end the year on!! Thank you to Dallas and George (the Strongsville directors) for making this last tournament of the year (well, my year) so fun and comfortable. A very special thank you to all my friends who support this Scrabble effort of mine, who contributed to my fun and adventure, who logged hundreds and hundreds of miles on the road with me, who laughed with me, who helped me study, and who sometimes just listened when I'd lose my mind.

See you all in 2009!!!

Creating: Custom Scrabble Boards

2008-12-08T19:16:00.005-05:00

In tournament Scrabble, and serious play in general, most people play on custom or semi-custom round boards. These and many square boards spin on a base so that each player can easily see his or her tiles...but round boards eliminate the problem of inadvertently knocking tile racks off the table with the corners of boards.

So, earlier this year I made a custom Scrabble board for Brad, our club's director, as a gift commemmorating the club's third annual tournament. Although I have some pretty decent experience with woodworking and crafting in general, this was the first time I'd tried to make a Scrabble board. And I learned a lot! Mainly, I learned all the things that needed to be improved and all the things that needed to be totally changed. Still, it gave me the chance to create something artistic.

Then, back in the early fall, Joe Larson asked me if I wanted to make him a board and trade it for a piece of his Scrabble tile art (specifically, a cool T-Rex I adored). I jumped at this chance because: (a) Scrabble dino is awesome; and (b) I could also put together the board I'd been planning for Martha.

As the promised date of delivery approached, I gathered and prepared all the right materials for the new boards. I'd been thinking about and researching the right materials and methods for months (and even ordered the perfect wood from another state). Wandering through Michael's one day, I came across some scrapbook paper that inspired me with the idea for my own, personal Scrabble board.

A few weeks later, and I've completed the three boards. I'm very happy with the result and I think Joe and Martha are, too. There are a few small tweaks I'll incorporate into the next project but nothing major will change.

This is the board for Joe Larson:

And this is Martha's board:

And this is my very own board:

So now ideas for other board designs are swimming all around in my head. Of course, I'm open to creating boards with specific designs for players (and would love to make enough money to finance the occasional Scrabble tournament). Still, I see myself making at least a few boards without a specific owner in mind. You never know when the same thing that inspired me will inspire someone else!

Observations of the Transient Canine Population on Capitol Street, Charleston, West Virginia

2008-11-28T21:20:00.006-05:00

Friday evening on Capitol Street (especially during a holiday weekend) is not an easy time to find a parking spot. So, even though I needed only pop into my office for a second to grab a book I'd left behind -- yeah, that's right. I've got books. Hardcover. Lots of words. So even though I only needed one of those parking spots for about a minute, the ideal combination of right-place-right-time just weren't working out for me.

On my second go around the block, I saw a red Jeep Cherokee in front of me with this huge dog inside. Just to get its head outside the window, the dog was hunched over like really, really tall guy going down a low staircase. It had a really big, round head that reminded me of the Akita I used to have -- but it was brownish-gray and fluffy with what appeared to be a thick, winter coat of fur. Despite the dog's substantial size (and likely ability to do just about whatever it wanted), the truck window was down all the way and the dog looked friendly, at ease, and...at least at that moment...well-behaved.

So I was thinking, "That looks so familiar. What kind of dog is it?" And then I thought, "Holy crap, that's a wolf!" And then I was certain. I'm not saying I'm right, but I was certain, if that makes any sense. (I used to have a boss about whom we'd say, "Often wrong, never in doubt.") And, you know what? There was a family in Boone County who used to keep Timber Wolves in their fenced yard -- something I actually saw with me own eyes. It was a little scary but interesting how different these dogs looked than a typical, domesticated dog. They had incredibly long, knobby legs even compared to their large bodies, from the neck down giving them a little bit of a horse-like shape. They ambled, graceful and aloof, along the perimeter of the fence and, for obvious reasons, never appeared concerned about potential intruders.

Back to 2008...the red Cherokee was circling the block, too, obviously looking for a spot. I stayed behind him for about two more rotations before he gave up and went another direction. Had he stopped, I was going to stop and ask him if the dog was a wolf. I usually try and avoid questions like, "Bolton! Are you related to Michael Bolton?" but this time I didn't care! Alas, I missed my chance.

I did notice that the vehicle had West Virginia plates, though. Since the dog didn't look like the Timber Wolves I'd seen in Boone County, I did a little bit of research when I got home. Although I didn't find any blog entitled "Red-Cherokee-Fred-And-His-Pet-Wolf-from-WV" or anything, I did find at least one person in West Virginia selling wolf-dog hybrids. The ginormous dog I saw on Capitol Street looked like a combination of "Mac" and "Timber" here on this page.

Maybe I was right, then. (I guess if it was a hybrid it would make me more like 90-98% right.) I'd still like to know for sure.

Home Confinement on Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T19:09:00.003-05:00

To my left is a sleeping four-year-old. To her left, a sleeping six-year-old. The four-year-old is tired...just getting over being sick for about five days. The six-year-old is tired...just starting to be sick today. The six-year-old will occasionally get up and run to the bathroom. She's very private about things like throwing up -- or really just being in the bathroom. Plus, being nauseated, she doesn't want to be touched. Since she has no fever, we're really just letting her sleep and keeping an eye on her for dehydration.

And...we were supposed to do Thanksgiving tonight at my in-laws because they're flying away for vacation early Friday morning. It looks like we'll be self-quarantined here, though, until at least Friday. Even if both kids were to feel great tomorrow, it's too risky to expose my in-laws to the potential germs since they're headed out for vacation.

Isn't it interesting how parents seem to develop a super-duper germ resistance? Of course, aside from medical professionals, we're probably exposed to germs only less than people who work in schools.

So, for us, this Thanksgiving will be spent at home. For no particular reason, I'm thinking that might be okay. No businesses will be open so this day at home might actually be spent...at home!

When Life Gives You A Lake-Effect Snowstorm, Make Snowballs

2008-11-23T22:32:00.002-05:00

(Cheesy? Yes. The only semi-clever title could think of? Yes.)

After our scary Scrabble-travel-adventure last week, I forgot to post the follow-up with this fun picture. This was taken the morning after we had gotten some sleep and we had not died on a snow-packed highway.

And I have to ask...is my nose that crooked or are my glasses that crooked...or both? If it were both, then would my glasses sit straight?

Can A Woman For Equality Participate in Women-Only Events?

2008-11-22T23:56:00.005-05:00

I've been known to play some poker here and there. Since they opened the poker room at the Tri-State Racetrack & Gaming Center, it's been a good place to occasionally sit for a while and forget about any stressors aside from a bad beat. Often when I get back up from that table, I've got a little more money than I started with, and sometimes walk away with a lot more (but, of course, sometimes I walk away with nothing).

And I'm sure you'd guess that, as far as attendance, this poker room of the casino is a male-dominated place. Women probably comprise just about 2-5% of the players, on average there (but more like 60% out where the slots are). So when the casino started having a Friday night women-only tournament, the dealers and some of the players asked me if I was going to play. At first I just said, "Naahh...I don't think I will." The question keeps coming, though, and I have to ask myself why I won't play in it. Yesterday I realized that I would freak out if women were excluded from a particular tournament...so why should I be okay with men being excluded?

Maybe it's overboard but...I don't know. Despite any little jabs I might take at men-folk as a group, I believe that men and women are equal (which does not mean I think we're that much alike). So, if I insist on complete equality, should I ever accept a simple card game that leaves the men out? What about GLBT folks? What about that guy who dresses like a woman, carries a purse, and wears makeup but claims to be sexually-attracted to women?

Last night someone sort of laughed when I told them I didn't think I'd ever play in a tournament that excluded a certain group. He's lucky I love the First Amendment but chose just to let him use it and keep my thoughts to myself. But, seriously...I think the idea of the tournament is that women can't compete as well as men at poker. If we want complete equality, that kind of thinking needs thrown in the muck.

I'm Not Sure Why We Bought Them Beds

2008-11-22T23:25:00.005-05:00

Because obviously they prefer to sleep on the hardwood floor:

There's a child under that shiny, pink blanket. It's my youngest...who started out the night on her bed. By morning, she'll be at least halfway out into the hall. Her sister is about five feet to the left, also on the floor. She also started out on the bed. I've tried to put them back on their beds, but they don't stay. I've asked them why they sleep on the floor...but they just use the standard kid answer. ("I dunnooh.")

I don't remember ever preferring a cold, hard floor over a soft, warm bed. Eric says that, as a child, he liked to sleep on the floor a lot of the time. With these two, I'll find the older one sleeping there maybe 40% of the time and the younger one almost 100% of the time.

So is this something most kids like or is it just some King Family trait?

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: Safe and Comfortable in Erie, PA

2008-11-17T00:42:00.006-05:00

Boy, today has been rough. It was the second day of the MOO Scrabble tournament in Mississauga, Ontario and all of my group were anticipating some decent results, based on Day 1. Although three of the four of us who attended the tournament maybe didn't plow over the opponents as we'd hoped, we each gained a nice number of ratings points. The fourth Scrabble friend came down with the flu last night and couldn't play today. (What a nightmare. Away from home, unable to finish a tournament, feeling like crap, and having to travel with a bunch of people.)

The games aren't a huge focus for me right now, though. I'm coming down off a serious stress-attack. After our fourth game today, I went to pick up my friends Sara and Jennifer who came along to do the tourist thing. And guess what? I got lost....for two hours. There are lots of things that could have improved the situation, but by the time I realized that I could not get myself going in the right direction, I felt like I was so far off the mark that even stopping for directions wouldn't have helped (because there would be too many details). Plus, at that point I was in tears and very, very upset.

Anyway, I made it back to the tournament after missing the entire first game following lunch. I was so shell-shocked that I racked up three huge losses in the last three games. Thank you to everyone who was concerned while I was MIA and who offered me comfort when I returned. (By the way, the tournament people did try to call me when I didn't come back from lunch but my phone didn't ring, most likely because I was in Canada.)

After a long, long day, the crew piled back into the van, each of us ready to get to our respective homes. We knew there were some winter weather warnings to the south...but there was really no other direction to go. Since we weren't quite ready (or invited) to relocate to Canada permanently, we headed out. Following some fast food dinner, a gas tank fill-up, and maybe 120 miles on the road, we found that winter weather.

With Dallas navigating, and offering a great deal in the way of calm, solid driving advice, and consultation on our travel decisions, I drove on for an hour or so. The stormy weather faded in and out, allowing us to build up to a slow-but-reasonable speed and then forcing us back down to 15 miles an hour. When the high parts of the snow tracks started scraping the bottom of the van, I started to lose my energy for it again. While I know there was little chance of a problem, I was fretting primarily over the safety of my five passengers. Secondarily, I was concerned about our comfort (as in how uncomfortable it would be to be stuck in a snow bank with a non-operational vehicle). In a tie for third place, I worried about the happiness of my co-travelers and about maintaining my van in its non-wrecked state.

After a while, I pulled over to let Dallas drive. The decision had been to push on a little way and see if the weather got any better (and if the trip got any better with a fresh driver). We took a break at a gas station, allowing people to make some phone calls and get snacks.

As soon as Dallas' shift started, the roads began to clear. We built up a little speed...up to about 45 miles an hour. As if we had driven through some tiny little sheltered stretch of road, we emerged into a road in bad condition just like it had been. I'm not sure if I should say Dallas is a more confident driver or just a less nervous driver (and I'm not sure if there's any difference) but he seemed to be doing just fine. For no obvious reason (other than your average packing of snow and ice), we started into one of those sideways, spinning slides. Dallas brought the vehicle back into control right away and, right away, it was decided that we would pull off at the next exit and get hotel rooms.

Now we're safe and sound (and starting to relax) outside of Erie, PA. The rooms weren't too expensive and it wasn't absolutely critical that any of us be at work tomorrow. In the frustration of the moment, I wasn't sure if it was better to stop for a hotel or if I was overreacting. Now that we're here, I'm glad.

There's a slight tapping sound on the window where snow and ice are hitting it. By tomorrow morning, though, the roads will be treated and it will be daylight (as implied by the term "morning"). With at least a fairly decent night's rest, we'll press on toward home and hopefully feel better about the process.

Where's Tina?

2008-11-11T20:43:00.002-05:00

We've finally moved back into a home of our own! That's a change back in the right direction -- and nice in so many ways but I'll write more about that later. In the meantime, my access to the Internet is iffy. What's more, I'm working about 11 hours a day right now so I don't have much time at the office to write.

Soon (but not soon enough) our Internet access at home will be activated and I'll be back in the loop! By then, I should have some news about the second-to-last stop in my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour...the MOO!

What's Obama Wearing on November 5, 2008?

2008-11-05T08:03:00.002-05:00

YES WE DID

change his clothes

Scrabble Tour: Lexington, Kentucky

2008-11-03T21:19:00.016-05:00

Obviously the key for my good Scrabble play is comfort level. I've always played my very best games against friends and people I really like, in general. Get me in a tournament game, though, and my brain locks up like an engine with no oil. But, you know, there are many ways to achieve a good result based on this theory.

Of course, I could play only my friends and people I know I really like. I could also waste my Scrabble word list memorizing time with goofy things like "meditation" or "yoga" or "healthy exercise." Seriously...quit talking such craziness. Just stop it.

Although it sounds like the words of a situational alcoholic in the making, during this weekend's tournament in Lexington, Kentucky my relaxation came in the form of cranberry and vodka. I'm not talking about doing shots after every bingo or anything...just one drink over the course of the afternoon purchased at the golf course snack bar. And I tell you what, it was just the thing! I didn't freak out, I didn't get upset, I stayed calm in the face of an opponent's opening bingo...and I won some games.

Actually, this weekend was my personal best, performance-wise. Starting off with my more typical 25-50% wins, once things became more chill, I was able to rehabilitate my record and end at 9-and-6 (and a kick-ass spread of +468)! Not only did I not finish last, only 121 spread points kept me from my first "in-the-money" tournament.

I have no idea what will happen to my rating, though. I guess it will go up a little but there are at least three potential factors:

First, we were seeded based on ratings which did not yet include results for those of us who played in Durham last week (a tournament in which I took a ratings hit). Second, we had four unrated players in the bottom division. Two of them did very well, finishing first and third, which kind of skews the numeric results (as far as ratings go). Third, there are the results of the "Late Bird" tournament (which was early in the morning) to squeeze in. In that tournament, I was slated to win about two games (which I did).

Some highlights (for me):

Best win - 458 for me to my opponent's 224 (a 234-point spread).

Best bingo - STAMPING for 108 points.

Best ice cream - Graeter's with friends.

Best overheard comment in a hushed narrator's voice - "Today...we've secretly replaced Ken's prozac with highly-potent equine steroids. Let's see what happens."

Best setting for a game - the patio outside the clubhouse during a beautiful, 70-degree afternoon.

Best special day - Jeff Clark's birthday on Sunday, November 2nd. (Happy birthday, Jeff! I totally forgot to tell you that on Sunday.)

Best moments overall - Traveling with my NSA Club #620 crew and figuring out how to get the Sirius radio activated without wrecking the Super-Duper Minivan in the process.

Best thing to look forward to next in the 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour - The MOO!

So, you know...even though I don't yet know the technical result as far as my rating and all, I know that I consider this tournament a personal V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!!

As for the alcohol, I suspect the effect will be about the same as that time when I was in middle school softball and ran into a long string of strike-outs because I was afraid to swing at pitches which could, in any small way, be out of the strike zone. The coach made me practice swinging at each and every pitch, no matter how far out of the zone it was. I learned that I could decently hit almost all of them, even if I had to sort of jump over the plate to reach it. It was fun and it served to release the hold the anxiety of the situation had on me. I think this will be about the same. I'm really figuring out just how much not worrying about it helps me play.

And, hey...if I get freaked out again, I'll enjoy my game with a little cranberry-flavored assistance. Who cares? I got ID!

Atlas Loves Scrabble

2008-11-02T00:32:00.004-04:00

Tonight finds me in Lexington, Kentucky for the I ronman Tournament (which I like to call the Ironwoman Tournament). I guess if I really go all in, I'd say it's the Ironperson Tournament. Nonetheless, this stop on my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour is going pretty well so far. It's likely that I won't walk away too disappointed like some other times. We'll talk about more of that later.

But this downtime gives me a chance to show you the newest piece of original art in my vast collection. His name: Atlas.

Atlas is made of Scrabble tiles...and Atlas was made by Joe Larson. Check out Joe's site on MySpace, which includes not only pictures of his Scrabble tile art, but his paintings. (The paintings aren't Scrabble-related, though. Joe was an artist first, then a Scrabble player.)

So now Atlas is living on the desk in my office, in a far corner where he's safe from notebooks and giant folders. It makes me happy to be working on something boring or generally uninspiring and then look up...and remember that I have a life outside of those walls.

Again, check out Joe's stuff. You might find something you really like, or find an inspiration for a custom piece.

If you want to contact Joe, you can do so via his MySpace
site, which includes his e-mail address.

Thyroid Treatment: Before and After

2008-10-28T00:19:00.012-04:00

About three-and-a-half years ago, I noticed I was putting on some weight at kind of a fast pace...but I couldn't figure out why. Since I didn't think my diet was crazy-high in calories, I was especially annoyed by this...oh...baggage (heh). Plus, at only 5-foot-2, I don't have a lot of vertical space on which to spread out those additional pounds. At the peak of the weight gain, here's how I looked:

I chose my driver's license picture because, first of all, it's a pretty decent representation of how I looked...not too flattering, not dramatically unflattering, etc. Yeah, and blame that particular skin tone on moisturizer with a "light" self-tanner. Liars. Secondly, this picture is dated at just the right time. Anyway...during these many months, I was cutting back on my caloric intake and getting more physical activity to try and combat the problem. After having no luck with that approach (and, in fact, still gaining weight), I talked to my doctor about it.

I was disappointed when my initial blood tests came back showing no evidence of what the problem might be. Fast forward to nearly two years later, and I was still gaining weight and nothing seemed to help. I had talked to my doctor two or three more times about it, and I had made it clear to her that: (a) I was not a closet eater; (b) I was doing things to combat the weight gain; (c) I actually know a good deal about nutrition and physical fitness; AND (d) almost no woman on my mother's side of the family has a functioning thyroid gland. Imagine how disappointed I was then when my doctor offered to give me dietary information and tried to talk to me about being "over 30" now.

Ummm...didn't I just tell her that I knew a lot about nutrition? And, further, did she think I'd just clicked onto some magic age (like 33 years, 4 months, and 2 days or something) and then suddenly...BOOM...there goes my metabolism??? Even coming from a woman, I think this is at least partially a sexist thing. I could go into great detail about it, but really the best thing to do is ask you a question. What do you think would happen if a man went to his doctor and said he'd gained 30% of his prior weight in just about 18 months and had, in fact, been doing all the right things to reverse the weight gain...and that he had a family history of thyroid disorder?

So there I go. Off to a new doctor! On the very first visit, my new doctor found the problem. Here's the thing: for some people, thyroid problems don't always show up in blood tests. But with the right kind of physical examination of my neck, New Dr. could feel that my thyroid was enlarged and, after that, she sent me for radiologic tests to determine the exact nature of the malfunction.

Within three weeks, I was on the proper medication and looking forward to a resolution of all this frustration...and a reversal of the great packing on. From what I'd read, people suffering from hypothyroidism who get proper treatment can expect to lose about ten percent of their body weight fairly quickly. I think I passed that point at about the one-year mark. Coincidentally, this picture of me with my dad was taken almost exactly a year after I started my treatment.

I've lost about five percent more of my starting body weight since then. The rest of the excess weight should come off after that but more slowly. Without any other intervention, eventually I will return to a more natural, typical weight based on my normal metabolism. The great thing is, if I ever find time to exercise (instead of studying Scrabble word lists or writing blogs...or working...or raising kids...or laughing with my friends)...if I ever find time to exercise, I will actually see progress this time.

So, good, gentle readers...don't be afraid to stand up for yourselves when it comes to your health care. Even if you don't have "MD" or "PhD" or "Esq." after your name, it doesn't mean you don't know nothin. (Triple negative! Three points! Three tiny finger gun shots into the air...pwew!pwew!pwew!)

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: Durham

2008-10-26T22:00:00.006-04:00

Martha, Martha, Martha. Mi amiga, my confidante...the quiet girl who would have ripped the arms off that crack ho neighbor of Sara's if she'd thrown that beer bottle at my head. Oh, yeah...and she's the one who turned me on to Scrabble. In fact, she tried to convince me for quite a while that I'd enjoy the game. Sometimes now I wonder if she ever regrets that move. I mean, Martha loves Scrabble. And she's better at it than I am. But she's not as "et up with it" as me.

So I'm glad that this weekend had only the average amount of drama for a Scrabble tournament (heh...funny, yes). To clarify, by "drama" I mean me freaking out or tearfully examining my need to be playing this game (or my motivations for playing) after a string of losses (or just a couple of really bad ones).

As for the specifics in Durham, I won zero games of my first five but then six out of the last ten (counting a bye) with a spread of "minus a bunch." I was pretty okay with that result. Despite being somewhat of a natural counselor, I'm about the last one who can recognize that if I'd just stop freaking out about the game, I'd do a lot better. For me, doing a lot better in this tournament came after I had resolved that I didn't care how the tournament went because I was out-of-town with my husband, my kids, and my beloved club members. (Eric and the kids came to Durham to have some fun and visit with Eric's friend and his children. They loved Monkey Joe's.)

Okay...back to the Scrabble blog portion of this...um...Scrabble blog. Our fearless Scrabble club leader, Brad Mills, took third place in his division. (Go, Brad!) Martha came out with a win-loss of 5-and-10 but: (a) her dad is in the hospital recovering from surgery; (b) her kid was back home in Charleston throwing up; and (c) she had a headache all day on Sunday. This is the part where you all send positive energy to Martha.

There was really nothing more notable for me as it applies directly to the game. I played one opponent who really, really frustrated me by knowing (or following) almost none of the rules despite having played in almost as many tournaments as me. (As an aside, the few times I've had to be firm with an adult as I would with one of my children, it's really bothered me. I don't like to adopt that role with "grown-ups.") In contrast, we had an ultra-pleasant 11-year-old player whom I got to play twice. He was cute, hyper, friendly and polite...and on his way to a really good amateur-part-time-career in Scrabble.

Next weekend, I'm heading off to Lexington, Kentucky for the Iron(wo)man 3. The bus (a/k/a Tina's Super-Duper Mini-Van) will head out with Martha, Brad, Lisa, and Chris on Friday night and we'll be staying in some ultra-sweet digs courtesy of Lisa's hotel bargain-finding skills. Eric will see me off with his traditional "Hope you grab a good sack!" (which is his funny but perhaps a little weird way of saying he hopes I "draw the bag"). I hope I draw the bag, too, but also that, as I move through more and more tournaments, my relaxation will increase and thus my wins will increase.

So we'll see in Lexington. And, after that, the MOOoooooo. (Details to follow.) Later!

What's Obama Wearing on October 23, 2008?

2008-10-23T22:21:00.006-04:00

Obama lives at my desk and, for a guy, he's actually got a decent number of outfits to wear...and some nice accessories.

So today, as you can see, Obama wore his grayish-blue jeans and a neatly-pressed Oxford shirt. Note that Obama has taken a well-calculated fashion risk by pairing his hipster shoes with a cowboy hat. Of course, Obama has brought me flowers...and wants to take me for a beer.

Now that's a change of clothing we can believe in.

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: Burning River Blowout

2008-10-21T22:21:00.004-04:00

Even though the event itself was planned and executed so, so well, last weekend's tournament in Elyria, Ohio was "off" for me in a lot of ways.

It was the first time I'd taken the kids with me but not Eric. My sister, Anna, and her friend, Cher'Ron came along to watch the kids and spend some time with them. Though Anna is 19, she's put off getting her driver's license for so long it's become sort of a phobia for her. Cher'Ron, our designated driver for the four non-Scrabblers, developed a bit of a fear, herself, of driving the kids very far from the tournament site. SO, keeping the kids occupied and happy for the weekend was somewhat distracting. They did have a good time, but it took a lot of adjustment and coordinating.

As for my Scrabble games, the first day ended "okay" with a record of 3-and-5. On Sunday, I started by drawing the bag against Cecelia Huber. (If you don't know, "drawing the bag" means that I got pretty much all the premium tiles during my turns.) You know, everyone draws the bag sometimes, and can beat a much better player. I figure I'll get the bag drawn on me, too...so it'll even out.

Well, instead...I was absolutely demolished in three out of the next four games. I mean, I didn't just get beat. I got beat like I stole something. In those three games, the nearest I came to a win was a 144-point loss. Funny thing is, the fourth game was against the number one seed and I came within 9 points of him (a guy who admits not being very good with adding the score). Given the stakes, the need for a mental boost, and the closeness of the score, I would have normally requested a recount. Problem was, I had to run out and get the kids from the hotel before check-out time. So...no recount for me. Instead, another loss.

Are you ready for the best part? During my third-to-last game of the entire tournament, I was so frustrated that I accidentally messed up the drawing of the last several tiles (incorrectly thinking the bag was empty). As a result of this, the director had to come over and spend several minutes reconstructing the last few plays and making step-by-step rulings based on each play. (The director and my opponent, coincidentally, are two of the nicest people you could ever meet. Neither of them did anything to make me feel bad.) So my frustration with myself, combined with the building disappointment about my low success, finally peaked.

Sitting there as poor Dallas had to make determination after determination about my play, my eyes welled up so fast there was nothing I could do to stop it. There was no whining, no sobbing...nothing like that. Just me, sitting across from my fun, gracious, and sweet opponent, silently soaking up a fountain of tears with the sleeve of my sweater. And it was no tiny, single teardrop. These were the steaming-hot, spigot-turned-all-the-way-on type of tears.

When Dallas finally walked away, I looked at Pat and said, "I'm sorry" for having caused such a problem. Pat cheerfully reassured me that it was just not a big deal. Terri walked over and offered comfort by rubbing my shoulders. Linda sat down, let me cry on her shirt, and made me laugh. She told me no less than two stories of crying over Scrabble games, both as a relatively new player (like me) and as an advanced player.

In the end, my record was 5-and-10 and my rating went down just a little bit. Let's hope this upcoming weekend's Triangle Tarheel Trifecta will be the upturn. But, you know, even if it's not that, it will be a weekend spent with my dear friend, Martha, and her husband Brad. They don't get to attend as many tournaments as I've been doing (maybe because they're somewhat more sane), so this weekend is special.

In conclusion...

(1) There may be no crying in baseball, but there obviously is crying in Scrabble.
(2) Dallas Johnson is a wonderful tournament director and the extra effort he puts in really make the events smooth and fun.
(3) I'm really happy to have gotten to know so many nice, fun, and smart people in this regional Scrabble tournament circuit.
And, (4) You have three days. Start sending positive anagramming vibes now (and you can go ahead and throw in some good drawing-the-bag vibes if you want).

Tooth Fairy Finally Caught On Film

2008-10-14T18:35:00.007-04:00

A certain Ms. Isabella King spent the better part of the last two weeks wiggling her front tooth around, purposefully chewing on things with her front teeth, and pushing the tooth around with her tongue. This sweet six-year-old was being as patient as possible waiting for that first loose tooth to come out. It had seemingly given up on any chance to hang on and could be pushed so far that I thought it would certainly fall out right away.

Then, late last week, she returned from school carrying a white envelope (which, at first glance, looked empty) and sporting a big gap in her smile. Of course, it turned out that the envelope held that little Chiclet-looking tooth and that Bella had lost during the day.

So now the preparations for the Tooth Fairy's arrival begin. It's pretty simple, really. When Bella went to bed, she tucked the envelope under her pillow..with the corner sticking out so the Tooth Fairy would be sure to see it. She asked Grandpap to take a picture of TTF if he happened to see it.

Grandpap, being dedicated to the cause (and a good photographer) stayed up long enough to, indeed, catch the elusive Tooth Fairy on film. The girls will sometimes sleep with their light on which really helped when, in the middle of the night, Grandpap noticed the faint twinkle of light zipping around the room. Although it had to be a long exposure, he was able to get this picture of the Tooth Fairy as she hovered in the center of the room just before taking off again. You might have to click on the picture to get a bigger version, but if you look closely, you can see TTF on the right side of the shiny, green trail.

Bella was quite excited to get the traditional cash gift from the Tooth Fairy and also very excited that Grandpap managed to capture her image on film. Pretty neat, huh?

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: South Lyon, Michigan

2008-10-13T20:38:00.012-04:00

I'd have to say this weekend's tournament in South Lyon, Michigan was, overall, one of the most satisfying this year. Actually, the whole weekend was really satisfying.

After a quick flight to Detroit, I picked up my rental car (rock bottom price and all, courtesy of Priceline.com) and headed to IKEA in Canton, Michigan. As I waited for my dear friend, Spinster Girl to arrive, I wandered up the escalator, through the restaurant, and down the "down" escalator. I found myself immediately in the dinnerware area and, looking around, saw no way out (except maybe running back up the down escalator). I hunkered down, not sure I'd ever escape...then...finally, I saw a customer come in through what looked like an exterior door. Turns out, it was the door back to the lobby. So...I made it. (Ehh-SCA-peehh.)

Once SG arrived, we made a quick circle around one part of IKEA, headed back out the door, and looked for a place to have dinner. We got lucky and found a really great wing place where we sat and ate and talked for a long time...and spent very little money doing so.

Of course, once we got to SG's house, the effects of airport maneuvering, a full belly, and a little liquor set in...and it was time to go to to bed.

The next morning's drive to South Lyon was quick and scenic. The only problems were the numerous near-death experiences during about the last 15 minutes because I couldn't help but look around at the beautiful farm-house-y places lining this suburban/county road. Arriving at the tournament site, I was, as always, very happy to see several people I've gotten to know and enjoy from Michigan, Ohio, and thereabouts.

(Non-Scrabble friends...being that this here is, at least in part, a Scrabble blog, I must get all technical now. Please feel free to zone out until a little later. AND...3...2...1...sleeeep.)

The Magitastic Intrawebs Site predicted I'd win 1.4 games. That means I needed a win, a tie, then maybe some sort of penalty for looking directly at an expert player. I consider all this as I walk into the tournament site. And then...

Greetings all around...sit down...blah, blah, blah...promptly get my ass kicked by Jim Widell. Out of respect for, well...me...I won't publish the score here. Let's just say, my only shining moment was successfully challenging his first play (a would-be bingo...VEGGITE*).

After that, I DID have a shining moment, wrangling a victory against Joyce Stock, whom I had beaten only once out of the seven other times we'd played. This was a good game for us...my 464 to Joyce's 358...and a new bingo for me with BEC(K)ING (for 90 points). I also got 78 points with ANTIQU(E) but I let Joyce get me with POUTANES*. An interesting aside, I had to lay down HITTER for the triple after trying like hell to bingo with SHITTER*. (Heh, that would have been a win-win for me.) Of course, now I know SHITTER* isn't good. I can't believe it, though! I mean...c'mon! MOTHERFUCKER is a good word but SHITTER* isn't? The world's gone mad.

THEN...another trouncing (upon me). This time, it was at the hands of the lovely and sweet Barbara Dixon. I did, however, manage a respectable 374 to Barbara's 411. Next, David Brown and I had a decent game, but really nothing very notable for either of us. I will say that: (a) David has been studying the heavy-on-the-vowel words; and (b) David is a super-nice young man who always remains friendly and polite. (He's older now than in his profile picture...maybe somewhere in his early teens.) NEXT...my sound defeat at the hands of Sonia Lyda. Ahh-gain, out of respect for myself, and pure shame, I won't publish the score here. THEN...sound defeat at the hands of Kevin Lucas...yada, yada, yada. (Look at him...he's even smirking at me in his picture!!)

Fortunately (for me), I had a lot of luck when I played Sophia Murzin. A solid player who's over 90 years old, it's unfortunate that Sophia obviously is sometimes forgetting all those words she's known. I'm never disrespectful of the fact that she should be able to beat the snot out of me at Scrabble. However, during our game over the weekend, I won 501 to 320. Of course, I had four bingos with ENQUIRES (104), REVOTING (78), RUDDIEST (60), and LINGERER (83). Later in the day, a player was being quite short with Sophia and, after a few minutes of this, Sophia firmly told her opponent, "Be patient, please. If you're lucky, one day you'll get here, too." It made everyone on our side of the room chuckle...and one person clap.

When Kim Harris and I played, we did so badly that we promised not to divulge our scores if at all possible. So...unless you can demonstrate to me why you really need to know, then you're not going to meet the "need-to-know-basis" requirement. I can say that I won...by one point. My win came after I bingoed out with MANNERS for 73 points (and 17 seconds left on my clock).

Okay, so...trounced by Kathleen Washburn, trounced by Cheryl Melvin (who is so funny and whom I adore), and beaten soundly by Mikki Sutherland (although I did enjoy a moment when I played CLOVERED for 92 points, which Mikki unsuccessfully challenged).

After that, I played the 12th game, my last game of the tournament, against my previous opponent, Joyce Stock. Truly my luckiest game, I won with 524 points to Joyce's 303. My bingos were QUIETERS (104) and UNSTALL* (91).

In the end, I came away with twenty bucks for the high word score in my division (QUIETERS) and twenty bucks for the highest-scoring word using the most letters in the words "South Lyon". That was with UNSTALL* because, yeah, this time it could be a phony. As for my rating in the National Scrabble Association, it should increase a very decent 50+ points!! (I'm quite happy with that one.) OH YEAH, I also took home sixty bucks profit for winning Saturday night's poker tournament at Jeff Fiszbein's house. Woot!! My new nickname, by the way, is "Tina Totten King Poker Queen." It makes me laugh but now I'll never win again since I've written it here.

(Non-Scrabble friends, WAKE UP NOW!)

As I drove my car back to the airport, I had time to reflect on my weekend and my Scrabble Tour. I was happy I had some extra hours to share with Spinster Girl and that we found a great little diner to have a great big breakfast. (I'll let her tell you about that one. I think it's going to be her new "place".). I thought about the time I got to spend laughing with Linda, Steve, Barbara, George, and Cheryl...and laughed some more. (Hey, Jeff...I'd be writing about you too if you didn't have your priorities all messed up with "family" and crap like that. Next time, have your relatives schedule their weddings on non-tournament weekends.) And Saturday night, I slept the best I had in literally months. We're talking seven or eight solid hours with no tossing and turning. Niiice.

So next weekend, it's me, Anna, Bella, and Edie heading up to Burning River. It should be fun. Anna and the girls will swim in the hotel pool and maybe go to the mall. I'll get to play lots of Scrabble and see some of the Scrabble people I like but haven't gotten to see in a while. And the beat goes on...the beat goes on. La de da de de, la de da de da.

The Bird

2008-10-04T23:12:00.009-04:00

Historically, I'd rate my interest in birds as pretty low. During my teen-aged years in San Antonio, the nocturnal Whip-poor-will always drew my attention because it was singing when other birds were not. Against the backdrop of the otherwise quiet night, the Whip-poor-will's clear song felt very special. (You can hear the Whip-poor-will's call on that same link, about halfway down the page.)

Aside from something as unique as that, I just hadn't been too intrigued. But about eight weeks ago, for the first time ever, I noticed a bird in the back yard that I had never seen before. Most of its plumage was a brownish-gray color but the head and upper chest of the small bird was exactly what I'd consider the color "strawberry." The contrast between the darker feathers and the head and the unusual, bright strawberry color made the bird look kind of technicolor.

So I did some searching and found out that this little bird is a House Finch. More specifically, it's a male house finch. Of course, unlike many humans, in bird society, the males are the ones who have to get all gussied up to attract the attention of the opposite sex. The female House Finch looks just like the male, though, just with those brownish-gray feathers instead of strawberry.

I also learned, from my research, that House Finches were first contained mostly within California. In the early 1900's, they were illegally shipped to New York as vogue sort of accessory pets. When the feds began to crack down on this illegal activity, the dealers opened the cage doors and set the birds into the wild. From then, the birds spread west-to-east and vice-versa and it looks they they reached West Virginia somewhere around the early 1980's.

Still, I hadn't seen them before two months ago. A few days after I saw that one single bird, and as I was getting into my van in the parking garage, I saw another one. This House Finch was sitting on the outer wall of the garage, right in front of my van. Shocked to see another one, I sat for about 15 minutes, listening to its song. And Mr. Finch sat and kept his one-sided conversation up until he finally hopped away to another part of the building.

So this was some sort of special connection I'd already developed with this gorgeous little species. After all, one shows up...then this other one sits and chats me up for such a long time. Right? Exactly. The next day, I realized that Mr. Finch was probably bitching me out for being so close to his little house tucked up in the beam of the garage near my van. This time, when he saw me coming, he darted right for the nest. I hadn't seen it before. That's okay. Maybe he's just not that into me.

Nonetheless, here's the most accurate-sounding recording of the House Finch song I've found. Once I heard the House Finch song, I recognize it every morning outside the window. The habitat expansion must be going well!

He Sings Way Too Much To Be A Stoner

2008-09-30T23:11:00.008-04:00

If you live around Charleston, you probably already know that our parish priest, Father Jim O'Connor, has been arrested and charged with felony possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. (Father Jim was found with 72 grams of marijuana in his vehicle and, in West Virginia, anything over 15 grams requires this felony charge.)

So I guess it goes something like this...Father Jim and Joe Deegan (a long-time parishoner, former drug counselor...heh...yeah, I know) were driving along and the cop behind them could smell the odor of marijuana. He pulled Father Jim (hereinafter known as "Father J."...because I'm funny), and J. Deegan (because I'm still funny) over and found that they had both been smoking pot, got permission to search the vehicle, found the pot in a bag, and so on.

Let me say...there is no way I'm saying this is not a serious matter. It is a serious matter. One has to wonder what kind of recklessness would cause a priest to risk his entire career, and possibly his freedom, for such a thing. Right now, though, nobody knows the whole story. Neither Father J. nor J. Deegan have had the chance, in a neutral forum, to tell their story.

If you've met him, Father J. just doesn't seem like a stoner...and a drug dealer is about the last thing in the entire world he resembles. He loves to sing and has been known to sing an entire mass. He's a friendly, outgoing man and, despite having come in after the truly beloved Father Leon who served decades at our church, he managed to make his own way and to be liked. And I think if he was selling pot, we'd have had lots...LOTS more teenagers in the parish. (Justkiddingdontsendmehatemail.)

So...what is really the right thing to do here? Father J. has been suspended pending an internal investigation. The outlook is not good. If you believe, though, that there must be some serious issue for Father J. to have taken such a risk, then one has to think that maybe there is some type of addiction present. Luckily, as far as we know, he has hurt no one but himself with his behavior. And, you know, my son was at Camp Leon earlier this year under the leadership of Father J. After this week's news, my feelings about the camp haven't changed at all.

Now...what if a priest were an alcoholic? If the person who is supposed to be the spiritual leader of your congregation has a very human, self-destructive problem, why does he have to become an example of what happens when people discover your problem...and react by casting you out? I know it's the strict rule of the Diocese that he be removed from his position, but why permanently? If he has hurt no one, why does he not deserve treatment and/or counseling then the opportunity for another chance? Could the whole community not learn something valuable by allowing Father J. to recover from this downfall and stand on his feet again? Why do we teach forgiveness, the hope for recovery from any number of problems, and the potential to return to a state of grace and then turn around and cast these first stones at another human being from the word go?

From the members of the parish, compassion he will receive. Forgiveness is certain. Employment and the ability to hold his head up in the community...not looking too good. I just don't think it's fair.

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: Ludacris Speed

2008-09-28T20:51:00.011-04:00

As we approach October, much of my free time is spent preparing for and contemplating the rest of the year's Scrabble tournaments. It's going to be hectic...but crazy fun no matter what the outcome.

So far in 2008, I've completed seven Scrabble tournaments:

Elyria, Ohio in March;
Charleston, WV in April;
Richfield, Ohio in April;
Pittsburgh, PA in June;
Rocky River, Ohio in July;
Pontiac, Michigan in August; and
Hudson, Ohio in September.

THEN...when I had to cancel my mid-September trip to Fenton, Michigan, it made me a little crazy so, in response, I added not one, but two more tournaments to the list. I had originally thought about letting Elyria, OH go and traveling to Durham instead (the following weekend) because friends were going to Durham and we could carpool. THEN...an opportunity arose to take the kids to Elyria (and Anna, the kids' aunt/sometimes-babysitter and Anna's friend). They can find fun things to do, go to the mall (which the kids love), swim in the hotel pool and so on. AND...Eric and I decided that we would take the kids to Durham so they could all spend some time with one of Eric's best friends who lives there (who has kids of a similar age to ours).

So with everything turning out as it did, the rest of the years looks like this:

Charleston, WV (club tournament) on Oct. 4;
South Lyon, MI on Oct. 11 & 12;
The Burning River Blowout in Elyria, OH on Oct. 18 & 19;
The Bluegrass Ironman (Iron-WO-man) in Lexington, KY on Nov. 1 & 2;
The MOO (Mississauga Ontario Open) on Nov. 15 & 16; and
The Cleveland Classic in Strongsville, OH on Dec. 6 & 7.

You're right...that is Ludacris Speed. But it's going to be great fun. The kids and Eric will get a road trip or two. I'll get to stay with one of my best friends, Spinster Girl, when I'm playing in South Lyon. I'll get to carpool to Mississauga with several players from the Akron/Cleveland area. And in every tournament, I get to try and increase that rating, gain some skill, and, of course, win the after-hours poker games.

Household Politics

2008-09-28T17:13:00.005-04:00

This afternoon the family was taking a walk around the neighborhood and the four-year-old announced, "I'm voting for John McCain!" She was actually doing that kid kind of marching thing and said, "Ahm voting for John Mah...CAIN!"

Anyway, this announcement doesn't surprise me. My husband will do about anything he can to bug me. (He's got serious middle child syndrome and is, how you sayyy...an attention whore.) So, yeah...he taught her to say that.

So I told her that John McCain wants to take away all of her toys and that, more than anything, John McCain hates ice cream. Eric countered that Barack Obama wants to take all of her toys and redistribute them so that all children have the same number of toys.

Edie put her hands on her cute little cheeks, smooshed her face around a bit, then pushed her hair over her face.

It's going to be quite an election season here in the house.

And Speaking of Confusing Things...

2008-09-28T13:57:00.013-04:00

It appears that the WV Secretary of State's website has been hijacked. (Of course, if you're reading this later, it may be back to normal.) The picture on the right is a tiny version of what it looks like right now.

I went to the site today to check on the status of the service of a civil action (a work thing)..which I've had bookmarked for years and my bookmark shouldn't have even taken me to the main page. Right away, the page looked like one of the goofy ones you see when a domain registration has expired and it magically turns into some giant advertisement that, in the tiniest way, tries to pass for the original page.

Well, I guess there's a chance that it wasn't even hijacked but is somehow in the middle of revamping but...also covered with fishy links to advertising. I don't know much about such things. I would guess if the site were legitimately in some state of reworking, it would say so.

In fact, the official State of West Virginia website looks funny. On this one, though, if you click on the links, they appear to go to the correct site. Maybe they overhauled it since I last had a reason to look there.

So...I called someone who knows the Secretary of State. If the site has been fraudulently taken over, I don't want innocent citizens to fall victim to spyware or phishing if they click too far into the links. We'll see but...how odd.

Update (shortly after my post): It's back to normal! Good work, someone!!! Of course, it's always possible that it was just a blip of some sort (even though I checked it several times) and I caught it just at the right time. Anyone more in the know...know?

So Apparently Someone Has A New Phone Number...

2008-09-27T21:41:00.002-04:00

...but they aren't quite sure what it is. About ten days ago, there was a missed call on my cell phone from a number I didn't recognize. From the prefix, I could tell it was a St. Albans (West Virginia) number...but I don't know anyone who lives in St. Albans.

Over the next several days, I received more of these mystery calls and they all had two things in common. First, I could hardly tell what any of the people were saying. They were all men, they were obviously different people, but none of them enunciated worth a damn. Second, each and every one of them began by asking for someone (whose name I couldn't make out) then, when I told them they had the wrong number, they'd say, "Who's this?!"

My response to that question, when posed by a wrong-number-caller is always the same: "Well...you called me...who are you?" Of course, the caller always responds by mumbling some more, or asking again who I am, so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah, all the while I'm reiterating that, since they called me, perhaps they should confess their identity first.

In the end, when they finally understand that they have called the wrong number, each of these people respond exactly the same way. They hang up on me. Without apology. Without a "thank you." Sometimes they call back. (Heh.) Super geniuses of the universe, these guys.

Two or three nights ago, the St. Albans guy called again...at 3:00 a.m. I had the typical conversation with him, but the shortened middle-of-the-night version that I think ended with me hanging up on him. This special genius called right back so I had Eric answer it. Waking Eric up in the middle of the night with a jerk-ass phone disposition is not a good idea. Eric had some firm words with the guy and then hung up.

So the calls continue. Hopefully, someday the leader of this particular Mensa chapter will realize that s/he's giving out the wrong phone number. Until then, I'm not sure there's much I can do about it.

Another Look at One of My All-Time Favorites

2008-09-25T20:45:00.006-04:00

Can you believe The Color Purple is not listed in either AFI's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time or Time Magazine's All-Time 100 Movies? (It looks like I left a word or two out in that last one but that's what it's called.) Anyway, I can't believe it. I mean, I don't know many women who can't recount several favorite, moving scenes from The Color Purple.

Maybe it is a woman thing and, therefore, about half of the population wouldn't be as enamored with it. But even though it was released in 1983, this movie is as visually-stunning, in my opinion, as anything released more recently. As for the story behind the pictures, much of the daring and original plot is unforgiving and sometimes painful to absorb...but the viewer who makes the investment in this journey will be rewarded by sharing in the protagonists' uplifting victories and affirmation.

Phew. Sometimes I go off the melodrama deep end.

So tonight I watched a bit of The Color Purple on television. I didn't really watch the whole thing because it wasn't in letterbox format. (Yes, I'm a movie purist and it drives me nuts to not be able to see a third of the original picture.) I did see two of the most powerful scenes, though. The first one I really get into is where Mister is throwing Nettie out of the house as Celie cries and struggles against him to keep Nettie there. Raw emotion (and a completely committed delivery) is what makes this scene so deeply moving. In a documentary about the movie, Steven Spielberg talked about how hard it was for him to get Danny Glover to really let himself go all the way into character for the scene. The emotional cruelty (and physical domination) Mister displayed toward Celie and Nettie in the scene was just difficult for Glover, even as an actor.

I have no problem at all believing that. Just watching the scene makes me cry every single time. Not only does Danny Glover manage to pull off one of Mister's most heartless moments (despite Glover's real-life status as a nice guy), Desreta Jackson and Akorua Busia held nothing back and you would think their hearts truly broke every time they went through the scene.

My other favorite scene is the final one. Cinematically, just the pictures themselves are perfect metaphors that underline the literal actions...like Celie moving through her friends and family to see who has arrived at the house...and each of the other characters standing completely still, transfixed and wondering as Celie realizes who is there on the road. When the bright, colorful wraps of the travelers float up behind them in the wind and dust, Celie knows it is her sister whom she'd been forcibly separated from most of her married life (and living in Africa).

Hold on...let me get a tissue.

Okay...

This movie is an absolute journey. If you haven't watched it, you really should (maybe more so if you're a woman). If you can handle the heartache, the end will be worth it. Even if you chose to read this, knowing that the ending would be told to you, seeing for yourself will really be so, so much more. Besides, there is so much to this story that I left out. And there is really no way I can do The Color Purple justice with just words.

Scrabble Tour: Hudson, Ohio

2008-09-22T10:24:00.007-04:00

Saturday morning, I packed Bella, Edie, Eric, and Lisa into the van. (The kids were fine but Eric and Lisa resisted getting into the trunk.) So our destination was Stop 3 on my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: Hudson, Ohio (between Akron and Cleveland).

Lisa is a fellow Scrabbler from our club here in Charleston, WV and a co-contributor to our club's Scrabble blog. Our original plan was to travel together and room together at this, her second official Scrabble tournament. Eric and the girls decided to come along, hang out at the hotel pool, go to the Cleveland Zoo, and so on. That was good for me because, even though I was out-of-town in a tournament, I got to have dinner with them and spend a little time with them.

As for the tournament itself, it was an "open-rated" one, meaning that, regardless of your rating, you could potentially be in a match against any other player. The upside to this type of tournament is that if you have a good game, your NSA Scrabble rating will go up quite a bit. The downside, if you're in the lower rankings like me, is that it's hard to get one of those wins.

There were some highlights...I managed a solid win against an opponent who has thrashed me each of the three times we've played each other in the past. Lisa pulled out a win against one of the top-rated players there.

In the end, Lisa and I did pretty well. I came out with a win-loss record of 4-and-7 (even though Cross-Tables only predicted 1.4 winning games for me. Lisa did even better with a win-loss of 5-and-6 when Cross-Tables had predicted she would win 1.1 games. We'll both get a boost in our ratings and I'll agree that, even though my goal was to come out with maybe 5 victories, a rating increase is so much better than a rating loss. (Duh.)

I remain undeterred. Okay...well, I was deterred for about 18 hours after the tournament, during which time I had resolved to never, ever play Scrabble again. Now...I'm undeterred again. I've got at least four more tournaments before the end of the year. Actually, since Eric's work scheduled has been changed around and he and the kids can travel a little more, I may add one or two other tournaments.

Stay tuned for more details!
And donate generously to help me keep this tour going!
All the cool kids are doin it!!

Coincidence? I Think...Maybe

2008-09-16T22:48:00.007-04:00

So am I the only one who sometimes suspects they possess phenomenal cosmic powers...and by "phenomenal cosmic powers" I mean tiny premonitions?

Aside from some serious, hardcore déjà vu (or being certain I had, days before, dreamed whatever inconsequential event I'm witnessing), it sometimes seems like I can, out of nowhere, have a random thought about someone I hadn't seen or thought about in years...and then within a few days they show up.

Sometimes this involves people who were important in my life (or at least semi-important). Other times it's someone I barely hold any memories of...like one time it involved some manager I worked for for only a few months more than a dozen years ago. I hadn't seen her since then, I don't remember her name, etc. I only remember that I didn't like her. She was just mean. She made another employee pick up her candy wrapper off the floor as she walked away. (How power-trippy is that? I hate power-trippiness. Maybe it's because I don't have a lot of power.) So, anyway, based on my experience, I had a thought about this woman then I thought, "Shit, now I'm going to see her. I hope she doesn't speak to me." Sure enough, I saw her for the first time in a dozen years within a couple of days. Luckily, she was only sitting at a table in the food court at the mall. She didn't even look in my direction. (Phew!)

It's a nice, warm feeling when these strong thoughts or recurring thoughts of someone you'd really like to see or talk to come about. If there's a decent chance they'll turn up again soon, there's something to look forward to. Thankfully, that's happened a lot more than the negative people popping up.

Since my take on phenomena (or maybe non-phenomena) is so open-minded, I don't spend a lot of time ruminating about proving or disproving the potential abilities of any person. Because of my education in psychology (and my great brain), I do consider the possible proof against it. In this instance, I figure if everyone who popped into my head and then into my life were local, it'd be much more likely that I had seen them without realizing it and then just was more (unconsciously) on watch for them the next time. But they're not all local. Some are thousands of miles away.

So, has this happened to you (beyond what feels like coincidence)? If so, do you think you're drawing people to you or just sort of "seeing" them coming? If you believe in any such things, I think the latter is more likely. I don't think we know much about space and time and the way human energy travels around, so it doesn't surprise me that no one can say for sure how a premonition would be possible. But...I think that the possibilities are pretty cool.

Scrabble Tour Star Cancels Show: Cites "Exhaustion"

2008-09-11T21:49:00.002-04:00

That's right. I've exhausted all my efforts to find a babysitter for this weekend so I could make the trip to Fenton, Michigan (and the next scheduled stop on my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour). Actually, I had a sitter but that plan fell through. And the role of weekend babysitter has to be filled with someone close, usually a family member or a babysitter you've used for a long time. The kids would be thrown off balance quite a bit by having someone less-than-close be their caregiver for that long. Or maybe they wouldn't. I don't know. Either way, I'm not willing to risk it. Eric has Army drills this weekend so it would have had to be someone I trusted to stay with the kids and keep them safe all night on Saturday, too.

I suppose I can just use this time to study more and then take my opponents by storm in Hudson, Ohio next weekend. Still...I hate cancelling a show.

And That's When It Went All Pear-Shaped

2008-09-04T08:25:00.004-04:00

I was sitting in the Super-Duper Mini-Van this morning at an intersection downtown. A scene unfolded as I sat at the red light and it went like this:

Directly across the intersection, a nicely-dressed man, maybe in his 40's, approached the crosswalk with his seeing eye dog. (I've seen this man before and if he has any vision at all, it appears to be close to zero.) The man pressed the crosswalk button then waited at the intersection. Even though the light was red, the crosswalk signal had obviously not turned to "walk" because the dog was watching it and had not moved.

A young woman sat at the red light in her oldish car and obviously observed the man waiting. No doubt trying to be helpful, the woman gave a short "beep" on the car's horn so the man would know it was okay to walk. No doubt the man heard her and probably understood the meaning, but he did not move. (I'm sure a visually-impaired person must be absolute in their reliance upon their guide dog. It would have to be that way to ensure proper training of the dog...and to prevent misunderstandings by relying on other input which might be misinterpreted.)

So, Man #2 approaches the intersection (where the light is still red but the crosswalk light still says "don't walk") and, seeing that it is safe for him to go, crosses the intersection in the direction of Man #1. As Man #2 passes Man #1, Man #2 slows his gait enough to tell Man #1 that the woman in the car wishes to let him cross. Man #1 moves his head in the direction of Man #2, says something, and waves Man #2 away as if he were swatting at a bee. Man #2 walks on.

The light turns green, I pass through the intersection, and the woman passes through the intersection in her car. Man #1 waits for the crosswalk light to change.

What a mess that was. A man uses what is probably the best practice when one is traveling with the help of an assistance animal and wishes to retain his independence. A woman obviously didn't understand these issues and attempted to be kind and give way to someone who she felt might need it. Another man tries to bridge the communication gap between the other two and is rewarded with a less-than-friendly wave off.

I guess all three of them might have learned something (even if it was small) from that 15 seconds of the morning. As for me, I escaped with only some reflected discomfort. The dog ...well, he or she didn't really seem that interested in the whole thing.

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour: Pontiac, Michigan

2008-09-01T19:05:00.004-04:00

Sitting here in Concourse C of Detroit's Metro Airport, I've got some time to reflect on this weekend's Scrabble tournament in Pontiac, Michigan. Two words come to mind:

Study more.

Really, though. I'm happy with this weekend. The very, very, very best part was getting to spend some time with people I'd gotten to know a little bit before, getting to know them better, and meeting lots of new people. The second best part was getting somewhere around 60 points added to my rating. The award for "most instantly gratifying" goes to the poker tournament on Saturday night (in which yours truly won back her $10 entry fee plus $60 more).

At 20 games, this tournament was far too long to detail here. In the end, I came out with 7 wins and 13 losses. And my point spread was so far down it had to reach up to tie its shoes. (Point spreads don't really have shoes so don't hurt your brain trying to picture that.) Okay, so...this result was more than the Magitastic Intrawebs Site predicted for me.

Now we have a little more experience under our belts. Now we get ready for the Fenton, MI tournament coming up in two weeks. (Actually, it's two one-day tournaments, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.) How do we get ready? Study...more.

Peace out.

P.S. Thanks again to my two sponsors for this weekend's trip.
Their contributions bought either my dinner on
Friday night or all three of my lunches at the Mexican place.
Mmmmm!!!

Boom

2008-08-28T22:38:00.009-04:00

Something just made a low, heavy "BOOM!!" in Charleston and shook the house a little. I thought my father-in-law might have passed out in the shower (because their bathroom shares a common wall with this room). He came out though, because he had heard it, and we went outside. All the neighbors were out...trying to find out what it was, assuming it was nearby...but we could see nor hear anything.

So strange...but also very worrisome.

Update 11:05 p.m.: Oh, no. A chemical plant in Institute (11 miles from here) had a huge explosion. People felt it in Lincoln County. People who lived near there have called the news to say they were knocked out of their beds. There is no "shelter in place" right now but the Interstate has been shut down. Initial reports, though, indicate that there may have been only one injury or no injuries at all.

Update 11:43 p.m.: It still looks like the injuries were few (but more than "none") and a shelter-in-place has been issued for the area from the South Charleston and westward past Institute. I know you probably know this (if you live there), but I just don't want you wandering outside taking deep breaths because Tina told you you could.

Celebrate!

2008-08-27T17:04:00.010-04:00

WOOO HOOO!!!

My InBox this morning had a nice surprise in it! Someone...a Scrabble player...a Scrabble blog reader...a very nice person...was the very first to click on the donate button. My Scrabble Tour now has at least one benefactor!

So this is a whole new thing. I mean, should I get t-shirts made? Should I write this (and any subsequent) sponsor's name on the bottom of each of my score sheets? Should I give a "shout out" if there are any photo ops or radio interviews?

No...no...no (she says, slowly and thoughtfully shaking her head back and forth). We don't embarrass the benefactors. We accept their kindness with quiet grace and don't force unwanted publicity upon them.

So, thank you, brother or sister whose name shall not be spoken here. Your small act and your few (but precious) bucks have earned you a place in (my) Scrabble history.

If you don't want me to put your name on a t-shirt either, you can also donate. Gracias!!

Fast Weeks

2008-08-25T23:49:00.008-04:00

I try not to focus too much on upcoming trips or other fun events very far in advance. It's just that I get so worked up and excited about things. If I start my mental countdowns too early, I just wear myself out...and time seems to drag on and on and on.

But now...I can say that in about three days and 20 hours from this posting, I'll be sitting somewhere around Luna Pier, Michigan, having dinner and drinks with my dear friend, Spinster Girl (a recent transplant to MI). I would be e-mailing her personally about starting my countdown, but I don't want to distract her from her Official Duties, i.e., buying vodka and various things to put with vodka, finding us a great place to eat, etc.

THEN, in four-and-a-half days, I'll be sitting in Pontiac, Michigan, trying my very best to kick off my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour with a few wins!! V-I-C-T-O...oh, nevermind. I think you get it.

SO...tonight I worked pretty late so I can cut out early on Friday, tomorrow I'll be heading out for dinner and drinks with a couple of friends, Wednesday and Thursday I'll be getting ready for the trip and spending time with those...ohhhh...what are they called?!?! Oh, yeah...Kids!!

The week will likely fly by! Between work, gathering my bathroom items in bottles no larger than three ounces, and those kids I mentioned, I won't have time for time to come to a standstill because I'm so excited! And YET...I'm so excited!! It all makes perfect sense if you stand back about 6 feet and unfocus your eyes.

And, you know, I think both events might produce some pictures and entries for this here Scrabble blog/human interest blog. I can't guarantee anything particularly artful and/or incriminating, but one can always hope.

More Than You've Ever Wanted To Know About My Nose

2008-08-18T22:36:00.008-04:00

When I was about 7, I hit an unknown object (stationary, not flying) with my bicycle and flew over the handlebars, hitting my nose somewhere in the process. For months after that, I remember being able to move my nose slightly to the left and right. And for some reason, I didn't tell anybody about being able to move my nose. I don't remember if I was embarrassed by it or what.

Nearly 30 years later, I'm going under the knife. No...I'm not having a nose job! I like my face the way it is, thankyouverymuch, and I think Jennifer Grey's first nose was part of her beauty. What I am having is a surgery called septoplasty. Septoplasty is the surgical correction of a deviated septum. Although this isn't a picture of my nose, this one is close to the way mine looks (the middle, crooked part):

When the one side of your septum is bent in some direction, the opposite side will often grow outward in response. That's why the "deviation" is shaped more roundish than curved. And that's why having one side closed off doesn't mean you can compensate by breathing real good through the other side.

In all probability, that bicycle trauma when I was a kid caused this problem (even though I can't move my nose around anymore). So, last winter, when I made my first visit to an ENT (otolaryngologist) to consult about the problem, I learned that the blockage on my left side was over 90% and that the other side wasn't that much better. Then and now, I've been plagued with chronic sinus problems, the inability to breathe very well through my nose (especially when exercising), and lots more ear infections than most adults.

Despite the fact that the doctor measured my blockage on the left to be so high, he wanted me to try several months of Nasonex and the semi-famous sinus rinse before considering surgery. First of all, obviously, the Nasonex didn't work because a tiny, light mist sprayed into the left side of my nose isn't going anywhere but into the sink. The sinus rinse is awesome and worked well, for the most part, but about one-out-of-five times the liquid would shoot through to the insides of my ears, causing extremely sharp pain (and an hour-or-so of me saying, "Huh? What'd you say?").

So now Eric has a friend working in the same ENT practice. I consulted with him today and we decided to go ahead with the corrective surgery early next month. Although it sounds nuts, I'm very excited!! I really want to get rid of these sinus headaches and ear infections (and some other general grossness).

But you know what?!?!? Eric said I should ask Dr. G. to remove the bump from my nose while he's operating. (Despite the common belief, getting a nose job as part of your septoplasty is not the norm or easy. People with noticeably-crooked noses will have a better look, but even bump removal turns simple septoplasty into a major ordeal, including the swollen face, black eyes, and such associated with rhinoplasty.) Anyway, I told Eric that maybe he should ask someone to remove the blinding reflection coming off his head.

Pawns in Their Not So Little Games (and knights, and bishops, and...)

2008-08-12T21:41:00.014-04:00

You've probably heard of a kid here and there who was not yet in elementary school becoming an expert in the game of chess. The possibility for such great success at the game is surely anecdotal, but I don't think as far from the mark as it may seem. The "common knowledge" that kids' little brains are like sponges is fairly accurate. They soak up, process, and adapt heavily detailed and detail-oriented tasks like chess, Scrabble, video games, and foreign languages.

So today I observed some of this for myself as I sat among a group of kids from age 5 to about 12, all of whom play chess pretty well or started playing just tonight (and picked the game up in one session). I mentioned before that my kids' new school, Piedmont Elementary, has a chess team which won the West Virginia state championship last year. Well, my two oldest (10 and 6) decided they'd like to try it out.

This was the initial interest meeting for this year's chess club as well as the first playing session. And I think the method was perfect. New players were paired with experienced players at or around their same age. While there were a few adult sponsors around, the children mostly learned from each other on-the-fly.

Both Stony and Bella picked up the game pretty well and want to go back. I'm really excited! I'm definitely going to have to learn at least the basics of chess. PLUS, I'm hopeful that the popularity of the chess club at Piedmont is at least a good indicator of the interest I hope to get for School Scrabble, which we are going to start in the next few weeks. (I hope and expect that we'll some cross-over players.)

So how awesome (and cute) is all this?!?!? Here are some more pictures:

Golden Tee - rated M for violence

2008-08-06T00:19:00.004-04:00

A few nights ago I watched a show on MTV about "gamers." It focused mostly on young people who were about 18 to 25 years old who played online, interactive video games all day and night. Heh...there's no way I'm going to make fun. I study word lists with most of my free time.

The show also featured a young guy who made some money here and there in Golden Tee tournaments. Eric loves Golden Tee. Unfortunately, a few years ago, he suffered a major Golden Tee injury. Yes...that's right...a GTI.

You see that white ball in the middle of the control panel? It's what propels the ball forward (and causes a hook or a slice if you don't hit it quite right). If you've never watched someone play Golden Tee, there are basically two methods for moving that "trackball". Some put their fingers on both sides of it and flip their hands forward really fast, as if they were trying spin something in the air. Others prefer a more aggressive approach. These guys...they draw their arm back, hand about parallel to the panel, and punch their arm forward, skimming across the top of the trackball.

And therein, my friends, lay The Sergeant's downfall.

It was early...only about 10:00 at night when a 6-month-pregnant me sat at home in bed. I had only seen my husband out the door about an hour earlier so he could meet up with his buddy for some beers.

It seems that Eric was drinking what was literally his first (and only) beer of the night when he and his friend, D.B., started their Golden Tee game. I know you can already see how this story goes, but let me tell you anyway. Just like he'd done 59 million times before (trust me, I've sat through many, many, many, manymanymany of the games), Eric drew back his arm and let the spring go. As his arm thrust forward, it missed the trackball target, and instead struck the front edge (albeit rounded edge) of the game. Because he had put so much energy into it, he still managed to bust open his hand on the machine.

The cut was right below his middle finger, about an inch long, and all the way through the flesh. D.B., a physician, somehow came to the medically-sound conclusion that a hand all busted up and such wouldn't require any sort of official, emergency medical attention...except with those medicinal implements one could find in the bar setting. They applied some ice to it...maybe some Jäger, I don't know. (To his credit...sort of...D.B. did go out to his car to see if he had a suture kit. Heh...heh...heh. Yeah, I'm not kidding. He did not have one with him.)

Now...I didn't know any of this had happened. When Eric walked back in the house, he didn't speak but only stretched his hand out toward me, palm up. I could see the large cut on his hand and I could see the ligament peeking out from within it. Somehow, these sorts of things are never surprising to me and never shocking. Eric repeated D.B.'s statements that he didn't need to go to the ER. I think my reaction was something like rolling my eyes at him as I flipped my legs over the side of the bed, grabbed my jeans, and put on my shoes.

An hour later, I was admiring the ginormity to which one's ankles could swell even at only six months pregnant as I sat in the uncomfortable emergency room chair. (Does anyone else think those chairs just make you slide down, down, down so you keep having to scoot up, up, up?) At least it was fun joining in with the doctors as they (rightfully) teased Eric for having broken himself on a video game.

And, you know what? Eric's not the only one. It seems that guys break themselves on Golden Tee not only by busting their hands on the console, but by tearing rotator cuffs, accidentally putting their hands through the glass, and, sometimes, by not-so-accidentally kicking the machine.

In the end, Eric's stitches popped out. After that, there's no putting them back in without a whole bunch of yuckiness you do not want to know about. SO...they left it open to heal. Can you believe that?!?! Turns out even a drunk doctor can give some sound medical advice.

East End's Jewel of a School

2008-08-01T23:23:00.010-04:00

When my son started Kindergarten, we sent him to the school in the district where his father lives. It's one of the schools in the area where people outside the boundaries of the school apply to send their kids. That worked out really well for us until Stony hit the third grade. His teacher didn't exactly seem to...oh...how do I put this...like children. Because the teacher wasn't having a lot of success with helping Stony learn, we consulted with the principal who could not even accurately detail the requirements for a "504 plan" (the laws setting forth the details for education plans for kids with special learning needs).

The following year, Isabella was entering Kindergarten so it seemed like a good time to make a switch if we needed to. We enrolled her and Stony in a neat little Catholic school with a real dedication to children and a wonderful socioeconomic and racial diversity. Well, there were some things we ended up really liking about it and some things we ended up really not liking about it. As it turned out, following Eric's injury during his job with the fire department, we just couldn't afford private school tuition anymore (no matter how reasonable). Since we're Catholic, the Diocese would pay up to half of it but...that was still a lot more than the free education we could find in a public school.

So what to do? For months, we pondered the right choice for the kids, what public schools might be a good choice, what would be best for them in making a transition, etc. Many of my friends and co-workers had placed their children in one of our local, downtown schools, Piedmont Elementary. Piedmont is interesting in many ways. It serves children who live in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Charleston, children who live in some of Charleston's large, beautiful (and expensive) Historic District homes, and even children who live in the local shelter for homeless families. It's also one of Charleston's year-round elementary schools, where the children go for about 10 weeks then take three weeks off. Lastly, the school gets extra money for extra staff because a certain percentage of its children are below a certain income level.

So how shocked would outsiders be, then, to know that the school's diverse chess team won the state championships last year? How surprised would they be that I know parents who have taken their children out of the exclusive Montessori school to send them to Piedmont? And how surprised would they be to walk in from a city street and see the bright, airy, open-floor plan inside the school? What would they think to know about Piedmont's math and science magnet program and its partnership with NASA?

Well, let me tell you...I was certainly surprised. Several years ago, Piedmont had some reputation problems including behavior issues and an unbelievably-high turnover rate among students (due to transience in the neighborhood). But when I walked into the school in early July for their open house, I knew almost right away that this was the place for us. The building was filled with energetic, smiling teachers and staff. The principal took time from his (also energetic ) runnings around to discuss my concerns about my son's learning, what material was being covered in what grades, and the issues we'd had in the last school with racial discrimination (going in all directions). We talked about the free, all-day pre-school program in which my youngest, Edie, could enroll. Finally, after talking to each of the kids' potential teachers, I walked out feeling great because of this spectacular find (that so many people already knew about) but also hectic because school started the next day.

Stony put up a fuss at first. Somehow he'd forgotten that, only five weeks into summer vacation, he was already announcing his boredom on a daily basis. Bella was her typical, quiet but mildly nervous self but was very happy at the prospect of first grade, new friends, and starting school the next day. Edie was equally excited because she had recently finished potty training and had been walking around announcing that she would be going to school when Stony and Bella went back.

So now we're about three weeks into this summer/fall quarter. The kids come home happy every day. Stony's math is taking off which is awesome because I thought being in the math and science magnet would really give him the chance to showcase his talent in science but might exaccerbate his historically-difficult time with math.

Bella's teacher confirms that, while her nature is quiet, she's having a good time in school and making some friends. Bella's a sweet girl and has always had fun with other children despite her shyness. She kind of takes it all in stride and, even though she can be a little of a drama queen at home, she always seem content around other kids.

Edie has loved pre-school and has had only a couple of mornings (both late in the weeks) when she was hesitant to go. Of course, this morning was the morning I decided to take pictures and, despite her early bedtime, she was tired and most definitely not wanting to go to school. This is the first picture I tried to get:

And here's the best I did at getting her to be compliant:

So there are competing studies about whether or not the educational benefits of a year-round school are greater. Taken at face value, though, and with my limited experience, the kids at Piedmont appear to be academically successful and happy. I'm already a huge fan of the year-round concept which is gaining momentum in West Virginia and even recently earned the endorsement of the governor. Aside from that, my kids come home every day smiling. Of course, it's too early to tell for sure, but I think this is going to be great.

Regional Scrabblers in the NSC

2008-07-31T22:04:00.019-04:00

My non-Scrabble-playing friends might be surprised to know that, for five days in late July, 662 people gathered in Orlando for the 2008 National Scrabble Championship. For my friends who do Scrabble, you probably already know the players from our region who made the trip and the huge commitment in time, energy, and resources. To the Scrabblers I've had the pleasure of spending some time with, sharing some meals with, or just sharing some of this here blog with, congratulations for simply enduring:

(If I got your stats wrong, please e-mail me. I may not sleep but I do get a little...unfocused at 1:00 a.m.)

	STEVE GROB, Fenton, MI Steve finished 43rd in Division 1 (the top division which had 103 players) with a win/loss of 15-13. Steve writes a little in his blog and the general consensus among those who are in the know and have a sense of humor is that he should write more. I realize it's probably difficult for him to find time, though, because he's a stay-at-home dad and spends hours making flowery wreaths for his hair.
	DAN STOCK is the ever-patient, frequent tournament director from Rocky River, OH. Out of the 134 players in Division 2, Dan came in 16th with a record of 17-11. Dan is seen here wearing a purple shirt but only because he couldn't find one that had a green collar on one side.
	JEFF CLARK (Linden, MI) placed 24th in Division 2 (134 players) with a win/loss of 16.5-11.5. Jeff often finds himself teamed with Dallas Johnson (below) in the task of getting women to pay attention during poker games (after Scrabble tournaments). Is that why they call him "Mr. Lucky?" Hhh.
	GARY PERMAN, Blairsville, PA Gary hails from my husband's ancestral home of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), PA and I got to talk with him some during dinner at Bluegrass Kitchen after the April tournament here in Charleston. Gary completed the tournament with a great record of 18-10 gaining him a 12th place finish in Division 3 (133 players). (I love the Pittsburgh accent!!)
	LINDA HOGGATT, Blachester, OH Linda is fun, not too serious, and appropriately loud when there's not a Scrabble game going on (a super combination). She brought home a 37th place finish in Division 3 (133 players) with 16 wins and 12 losses.
	KEN DUTCH is the director from what is essentially our "sister" club in Lexington, KY. He, too, came out with a winning record of 15-13, putting him in the 42nd spot (out of 133) in Division 3. Ken has given me some good Scrabble tips and is not, as his profile picture would imply, blurry.
	KATYA LEZIN Out of 113 players in Division 4, Katya finished with a win-loss of 15-13 gaining her the 45th place. She's a public-interest attorney in Charlotte, NC and still finds time to volunteer as a School Scrabble sponsor. I'd like to find time to read her book.
	DALLAS JOHNSON (Stow, OH) is also a director and, no, he probably doesn't think it's funny if you ask him if he's from Tex...uh...Akron. When Dallas isn't helping Jeff try to keep poker games moving along, he's winning 15 out of 13 games in the NSC and finishing 48th out of 116 in Division 4.
	JOYCE STOCK (Rocky River, OH) recently had her first first place finish in a tournament!! In the NSC, she placed 41st out of 96 in Division 5, with a win-loss of 14.5 games to 13.5 games.

	CECELIA HUBER (Cleveland, OH) Cecelia wrapped up her week with 15 wins and 13 losses, gaining her the 63rd spot (out of 96) in Division 5. She recently raised $2,000 for the 2008 Cleveland Breast Cancer 3-Day walk by raffling off five custom Scrabble boards! Oh...and she walked 60 miles in three days for that same event!!
	NOAH LIEBERMAN (Charlotte, NC) Noah is one of the up-and-coming young players gaining momentum in the Scrabble world. Prior to the NSC, his rating had gone up almost exactly 300 points in the last twelve months. In the NSC's Division 5 (96 players), he finished 78th with 12 wins and 16 losses.
	JOHN SPANGLER is an attorney from Versailles, KY. He wrapped up the NSC with 38th place out of 80 in Division 6 and a win-loss of 14.5-13.5. John has a booklet of every person he's ever played in a Scrabble tournament...so don't go trying any of your old tricks on him.
	HANNAH LIEBERMAN (Charlotte, NC) was featured in the Sunday Gazette-Mail's photo spread of the April tournament here in Charleston and she's well on her way to gaining the experience to be a contendah. In the NSC, she gave some very experienced players cause for concern, winning 12 games and losing 16, netting the 62nd place out of 80 players in Division 6.

You all played Scrabble for five straight days, and you survived! Barring any change in plans, I'll probably see many of you at next year's Player's Championship in Dayton. Until then, I hope to see you in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Michigan!!

Marriage, Kids, and Pop Rocks

2008-07-28T12:57:00.011-04:00

So today is my and my husband's eight-year anniversary. And I know you know this, but marriage isn't always easy. As a social institution, some days I can't even figure out if I'm "for it or agin it." That being said, my equally-stubborn and equally-annoying husband and I have now been part of that institution (heh...good word) for these eight years and, as of today, we're on speaking terms and tonight we'll go to dinner and a movie. I guess that means it's working on at least some level! (There's a joke in there, people...please don't take that too seriously.)

And days like this always set my stream of consciousness on a path toward childhood. Thinking about the complexities of adult life remind me of how, in some ways, childhood was filled with much simpler things. I was an anxious child...quiet...fairly OCD...but caring...and rarely if ever cruel. I loved to read anything I could get my hands on and I loved to laugh until my side hurt. And I found absolute delight in simple things like Mexican Jumping Beans and Pop Rocks.

I remember having lots of Jumping Beans but, you know, I can't remember how I got them, how long they lasted, or what we did with them when they were "done." (Unfortunately, as I read it now, it appears that "done" meant "dead." I have been terrified of every sort of bug all my life so I'm sure I'd remember if an insect had come popping out of my toy.) Holding them in my hand, though, it was so amazing when something I thought was a bean starting jumping around, giving it a magical quality like a pet rock. Back then, I thought a pet rock would come to life if you gave it enough attention. (Then again, I also lined all my dolls up on the bed in a rotating fashion every night so none of their feelings would get hurt because one got to sleep next to me more than others. Wait a second. Maybe I was not a smart child.)

I don't recall now just what I thought caused Pop Rocks to do their thing but I think I associated it somehow with the moon (like maybe they were from the moon). I suppose there would have been some disappointing point in my life when I would have realized, if I'd continued eating a lot of Pop Rocks as I advanced through science in school, that the moon would not succumb to a giant, foaming explosion if someone had dropped a giant can of soda on it. Okay, I feel like I'm getting off the subject, here. The point is, I loved Pop Rocks. What a simple pleasure could be found in that little package of candy.

Nowadays I'm very aware that somehow, I at once feel like someone pretending to be a grown-up and someone very old. I love stupid movies and goofy humor but sometimes I'm the only one laughing. I look around me and I've got a set of adult problems and concerns, a house full of beautiful children, a career I'm never sure I want, more wonderful friends than I have time to see as much as I should, pills to make me sleep, and a wicked sense of humor. And when I look at my children, I see many of my own childhood fears, my own facial expressions, the same resilience that all children possess, and the same fascination with fun, simple things.

So I'm 36...and ten years ago I couldn't have even begun to (correctly) guess where I'd be in life today. All this feels sort of like snow skiing. There's not much real control and, while letting go and taking a chance will probably be the most fun, it doesn't always get you the best result (e.g., trees and/or falling on your ass). Interestingly, I don't like snow skiing. It's cold and scary and I've never gotten past the falling on my ass part.

My closing thought is the result of this same stream of consciousness I spoke of earlier. Thinking about success in life and family, the only thing I know for sure I'm doing right is that I smile at my kids, hug them until they're tired of it, and say I love them with great enthusiasm and genuineness. You know, that sometimes-juvenile sense of humor I've retained is a check-mark in the "correct" column, too. I find myself laughing with the kids a lot (as does my husband). Maybe someday, after the teenaged years when they hate me for everything I may have done wrong, they'll remember that I looked into their eyes and smiled, gave them lots of hugs, and always told them I love them...and that we laughed together.

Not the Scarlet Letter "A"...

2008-07-26T23:34:00.004-04:00

...but the black Sharpie letter "A". I found that I had to mark my prescription bottle with it or it was only a matter of time before I'd be taking my Ambien during the day...again. Recently my generic Synthroid^* was switched to a pill almost identical in appearance to Ambien. They are also in the same-sized bottle.

Several weeks ago, just before my mother came to the house, I took my Synthroid and set about sorting the things in the house and packing. Several minutes later, about the time my mom showed up, I started to feel dizzy and just not right. When she said my eyes were all glassy and that I should lay down, I realized I had mistakenly taken the Ambien, not the Synthroid. Thank goodness she was there to watch the kids because I had to go immediately to bed where I slept solidly (the kind where you have no perception of passing time) for five hours.

After that, I noticed that I was still sometimes getting the Ambien bottle in my hand (instead of Synthroid) at work. Man, oh, man. What a huge, huge problem that would be. I would end up unable to stay awake (or if I could manage to force it, unable to be coherent or sane) and unable to drive myself home even if the work I had to do wasn't pressing. Talk about coming off as an irresponsible employee. ("Sorry, boss...I've improperly medicated myself again.")

So I pull out my favorite writing utensil (the Sharpie), and mark the bottle in a way that I hope prevents such mistakes. And sometimes I look at the bottle and ponder whether moderate-to-severe insomnia can ever be overcome without medication. Even I'll admit that the comedy of Adventures with Ambien gets a little old. (In fact, I lost my brux guard for several days this week. Turns out, it was on top of the fridge.)

^*Women, thyroid disease is often missed, even when you think you've been checked for it.

If you have symptoms of hyperthyroidism or hyopthyroidism, be sure to push for thorough testing.

I'll probably soon write about my two years spent trying to get someone to recognize that I

wasn't eating myself into a 40-pound weight gain.

Christmas in July

2008-07-25T09:26:00.005-04:00

Charleston's local "light" radio station, V-100, is having their annual Christmas in July today. I love Christmas music. I start listening to it the day after Thanksgiving (and a little earlier if I feel like it). My MP3 Christmas collection is huge and ranges from silly songs, to rock, to Leon Redbone, to classics like Bing Crosby, to Opera. The kids love Christmas music and sometimes they ask that we sing Christmas songs in the van...like last week. It's fun!

You can listen online, too, no matter where you are, by clicking here.

Approaching my Scrabble Tour launch!

2008-07-22T23:42:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow will find me in my usual spots for a weekday, perched in an unhealthy posture on the very edge of my office chair working, marching up and down the street to our main office, or simply darting over to Grasshopper's office to have some fun giving him a hard time. (Grasshopper is what I call our youngest associate. And, yes, I march and dart but rarely stroll.) A number of lucky Scrabble players, though, will be starting the five-day National Scrabble Championship in Orlando. (An interesting number, in fact: 666.)

Although I won't be playing in Orlando, I do have some big plans coming up. I've been studying and studying and studying since I made my commitment to my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour. SOON, it will be August. Before August is over, I'll be on an airplane (courtesy of my husband's new airline job), headed to Detroit. The Labor Day Weekend tournament in Pontiac, Michigan will kick off the big, seven-tournament series I'll complete between August and December. The Rocky River, Ohio tournament officially marked the start of my super fun half-year, but the fall and winter tournaments will be much more concentrated.

But there's a big bonus, you know. Three out of the eight tournaments are in the Detroit area. That means I get to spend a few fun Friday nights with my awesome friend, Spinster Girl. She just moved to Michigan and I can't wait to see her again!!!

Hobbitses

2008-07-22T20:13:00.003-04:00

I found out this morning that a certain four-year-old has been having two breakfasts every day and hadn't mentioned it. I didn't notice on the Pre-K schedule that, as opposed to the other kids in school, they have breakfast in their room every morning at 8:15. I'd been feeding her (and the other kids) breakfast at home each morning before school.

So either we don't feed her enough, she eats too much, or she's a Hobbit. Clever, nonetheless, not telling anyone about Second Breakfast.

NOW there's so much I CAN Tell You About the Underground Kitchen

2008-07-21T20:15:00.009-04:00

Initially I had stuck to the hard-line Top Secret concept of Charleston's Underground Kitchen. Hey, you know...some people worked really hard to dream up these surprises and keep them a secret. Turns out, now that this month's installment has taken place, the all clear for spilling the beans has been sounded.

So, in compliance with the e-mail instructions I received on Thursday evening, Saturday evening I dressed, grabbed a bottle of wine from the stash, and headed out the door to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore. Upon arrival, I found a giant, long table adorned with fancy tablecloths, lined with taper candles, and lit from above by simple strings of small white lights (my favorites for any season). The table was centered right in the spacious row containing, among other things, brackets, plastic For Sale signs, and, if I remember correctly, roofing shingles.

Ummm...did I mention that the ReStore is currently non-air-conditioned (and that on my drive there the van's outside temperature reading was reflecting 94 degrees)? One would think that in my dark jeans and black t-shirt (my new favorite one that blessedly does not hug the midsection), I would have been a candidate for passing out. The building had some good airflow, though, thanks to a ginormous, strategically-placed fan, and was actually not that hot. One of the ReStore people in attendance did say that they're getting air conditioning right now.

So, as the other 29 guests strolled in, I was surprised to see that I didn't know as many as I thought I would. One of my best friends strolled in as the same-sex-hetero-date of another one of my friends that I gained when I started attending book club but, other than that, I had met just one or two of the guests around town. I pre-hydrated with my Vitamin Water and Stoli (yes, it's delicious) while waiting for our seating cards to be distributed so that we weren't placed too close to people we knew.

When I did locate my designated chair, I was seated between two men: an attorney from a local firm I had actually met a few days earlier at my kids' school's Local School Improvement Council meeting, and an attorney from the Dark Side (a defense attorney). I KID, I kid. Everyone deserves a defense I guess. Across from me was a beautiful young accountant who grew up with a friend of mine who now lives in Washington, D.C., a local art dealer with wonderful dark hair (that highlighted her sparkly eyes) and gorgeous artsy jewelry, and a friendly, funny business consultant that I know I've seen around town for years but just never met (whose grandmother had 20 children!!). Oh! I also met a young photographer (eh...one of those people with a gift for looking 22 forever but who was actually almost 30). He was good-natured about my amateur photog groupie-ness and gave me a few tips about shooting digital. To me he looked a lot like Orlando Bloom but I'm not sure why.

So here's where I might get in trouble with Mr. DT. I can't remember what all the food was called. For one thing, I'm not sure it stayed on my plate long enough for me to absorb the name. Anyway, you can soon get the recipes here (if you see the picture of asparagus it's not been updated yet). I remember that the appetizers were curry chicken salad and a really refreshing spread on a pita slice (which looked like very smooth guacamole and tasted very minty). Dinner included a very light, white fish, something else spectacular that had orzo and corn in it, something deliciously like a salsa, and a little dab of soft cheese. Dessert was a chilled apple soup with walnuts and light spices. The wine was varied as it was brought along by each guest. I had a red table wine and then a Merlot, both of which were very good.

For four really fun hours I talked with the people surrounding me about light issues like children, education, social justice, politics, and religion. (Yes, we talked about politics and religion and there was no rumble. You just have to know when you're in the right company. And for clarification, I use the term "rumble" usually like in West Side Story or The Outsiders and not like thunder.) The more serious conversations involved topics like Scrabble (of course!) the online Webkinz universe, the delightfully-ridiculous Sean Connery character on SNL. And...yes, I know I talk about SC on CJ on SNL all the time but it cracks me up just thinking about it. (What's the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck and I can't remember how it ends, but your mother's a whore.)

And by the time I pushed my chair back and headed out the door, it was 11:00. Time had certainly flown by on the wave of good company and frequent laughter. (Did I just mix my metaphors? You bet. I also eat my dinner in secret places so...)

Pretty cool, you think? Yes. Pretty cool. I mean, each and every day we can pay a decent sum of money, sit down to a dinner with our friends, talk about the things we love to talk about, and eat food we know we love...and maybe get a little drunk. At least for now, we have the chance to occasionally dine in a really unique place, get to know other people who appreciate the coolness of dining in such a place, eat some absolutely delicious food, and get a little drunk.

And, finally, a word about the location sponsor. If you have never visited ReStore (this one or one in your town), do so right away. Even if you're not building or remodeling a home, there is a constantly-changing stock of unique treasures, practical materials and antiques that you will either use or just love. The money spent at ReStore helps realize Habitat for Humanity's mission of providing people with decent, affordable, healthy housing. And whether you're undertaking a major remodel of your home, or just changing out an older light fixture, ReStore will gladly add the materials you don't need anymore to their inventory.

(P.S. I had taken some pretty cool pictures of the table and settings but because I'm the Super Genius of the Universe, I failed to take them on a camera with any storage at that moment.)

There's So Much to tell you about the Underground Kitchen

2008-07-19T23:34:00.006-04:00

But, unfortunately, I cannot.

I can tell you that tonight I dined at Charleston's own Underground Kitchen...a social concept dinner party in its second month. The quick run down (and if you want the less quick run down, click the link above), is that the UK is a dinner where you don't know the other guests, you don't know what you're going to eat, and you don't even know where you're going to eat. (The day before the dinner you receive the Top Secret information about the location but that is all.)

Here's what I can divulge:

I had my dinner and drinks at a long, long table with about 30 other people. The seating placements were random in that they were meant to get strangers to talk to each other but planned in that people who already knew each other were separated as much as possible. I dined on a three-course gourmet meal prepared by chefs whose names shall not be spoken. I had delightful, thoughtful, and interesting conversation with unique people. I can tell you that we talked about light topics like civil rights, discrimination, education, and art, and very serious things like Scrabble and Sean Connery on SNL Celebrity Jeopardy (Swords!!). In the end, for a modest price plus a bottle of wine for the communal table, I had four hours of great food, great people, and great conversation.

And I can tell you this: as long as this fun and unique dining experience continues, I will be there (unless, of course, it conflicts with my very important Scrabble schedule).

Click here for the updated version of the night.

Some things never change

2008-07-18T20:02:00.007-04:00

And they never should. This book was published in 1958.*

"I know up on the top you are seeing great sights,
but down at the bottom we, too, should have rights."
-Dr. Seuss

*By the way, Yertle is the antagonist.
Don't go naming your turtle Yertle.
Name him or her Mack.
Well, I guess if your turtle is kind of a jerk you can name it Yertle.

Swimming When I Should Be Working

2008-07-16T22:15:00.005-04:00

Scheduling issues meant I had to leave the office at 2:00 and pick the kids up from school. I had to keep them until Eric got home from work (which effectively meant until after dinner). (Oh! The kids...all three of them!...are in school right now because they're in one of our three area year-round schools. I'm gathering my thoughts and observations on this new situation for us and am going to write about it soon.)

So, after picking the kids up, we all zipped over to Kroger and got some supplies for the kind of dinner you can make when you're getting home sooner than 5:30. Getting home by 3:00, I realized we had about 90 minutes to kill, though, before dinner needed to be started...so I asked the kids if they wanted to go to the pool. In case you don't know, we're staying with my in-laws right now..and they live directly across from one of the local private pools, meaning that having 90 minutes to kill meant 5 minutes to get dressed, one minute to walk to the pool, and still plenty of time to make it worth it.

The pool was almost deserted because of a swim meet tonight (at another pool). All the swim team kids are banned from the pool after a certain hour on meet days so they're sort of forced to rest (theoretically) before the competition. Of course, all the swim team kids being gone means all of the parents being gone, all of their siblings being gone, and so on. Counting us four, there were probably 10 people in the pool.

Stony (who's been old enough this year for the first time to go to the pool on his own) found one of his friends and started doing the high-dive, low-dive rotation with the funny "dives" like The Egg Roll, Cowboy, and, of course, the classic Jack Knife. The girls and I hung around in the shallow end of the pool, where they could stand (or tippy-toe for Edie) on the bottom and I could better ensure their continued survival. They took turns climbing the steps, jumping into the water to each other, and playing "watch me, Mommy!"

Edie (who recently turned 4) would cock her head to the side, squint one eye, and sort of bend down and point toward me...like she was planning on hitting a home run in my direction or something. It was hilarious and the sun made her blue eyes glow. With those eyes and the funny pose (and, of course, that face), she looked just like her dad. Somehow Bella's eyes seemed greener these days...and more so in the sun. Every day in the summer her freckles come out more and more. Maybe its the tan on her face that highlights the green. Nonetheless, Bella was in her Happy Serenity mode (her happiness is more serene than energetic) and she looked so sweet doing her underwater flips and smiling at me when she saw that I was watching.

After a while, the girls and I headed back up the house so I could make dinner and they could rest (with Stony planning on staying behind for about another hour). For several minutes before we left we watched Stony do those specialty dives. Edie proclaimed that he was "so neat!"

Dinner came out perfectly...and it was what I'd consider a summer feast! We had blackened salmon, Parmesan & Romano rice, sauteed spinach, and steamed green beans. (Jealous much?)

After dinner the kids settled into the small amount of homework they had. Well, two of them settled into homework and one four-year-old lost it (which four-year-olds will do when they're tired) and was sent to bed. I didn't bother fixing my post-swimming-air-dried hair, threw on an old t-shirt and comfy jeans, and went back to my office for a couple of hours of work...the kind that's always leisurely when the office is empty. After some more work and Gmail chatting it up with my newly-Michigan-residing friend, I headed back home. Since then, I've done...nothing (except study Scrabble words, of course).

Today was a good day.

The most important things are the hardest things to say (Stephen King)

2008-07-14T22:06:00.007-04:00

The other day someone said to me that they wouldn't blog because they wouldn't want everyone to know that much about them. Well, I got news for you, brotha. They still wouldn't. It's all about what you want to put out there...and it can be as frank or as self-edited as you desire. Real disclosure isn't a requirement of this here blogging world. (And it's not that I'm saying you must blog. I'm just saying it's not like that, you know?)

Someone else said (in a different conversation) that the blogging thing was a sign that we were in the age of TMI. I guess maybe that depends on who you are, too. Among what I could consider "personal" blogs (as opposed to informational ones and such), I know bloggers who, indeed, have told or will tell you everything you never wanted to know about them. I also know those who divulge very, very little of their personal information and emotional thoughts (and often not even their names, although I think those are easy enough to find). I hope to have found a balance between the two things. Years ago, I would have blogged about deeply personal things. Even though I admit that was cathartic, it was a little...eh...heavy at times. Now I try to blog about mostly fun or funny things but I'm especially prone to let go of a little more personal information in hopes of making people laugh.

But I think we actually know very little about each other through blogs alone. They're thoroughly edited for content, read and reread before posting, and each specifically designed to convey what the writer wants, and no more. Similarly, e-mail gives us the chance to edit what we say before hitting the send button (unless we are, of course: (1) drunk; and/or (2) too quick with the send button or "reply all" button). Then we go on down the line with text messages, short phone calls, and so on.

So how...when so much of what we have to say is transmitted via a keyboard...do we achieve any of that great, multi-faceted communication? Face-to-face, of course. There's a pretty good chance to find the truth there, even if it's not what you thought it would be. Does that make any sense? I mean, sometimes people can really express themselves in writing but then also be very, very different in person. Getting to know someone in real life lets you learn their facial expressions, their body language, their neuroses, what they'd rather no one know, and the wonderful things about themselves that maybe they don't even see.

In that vein, I think a lot about communication and communication styles. I notice a lot of body language and I'm fascinated by it. I love how much is said just by how someone directs their eyes when they're talking to you. There's especially that one split second, right after someone feels something and before regaining control, when their body, their face, and their eyes will tell quite a lot. And people's voices say so much, information that's conveyed despite the words, not with the words. (And, for me, that would tend to have the potential for the most sting. It's so hard to quiet the echo of things that weren't said...and maybe that's why...because they weren't said.)

Yeah, that's getting a little heavy. Back to my point. Often I relate these things to tests of theory like the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator or The Hartman Personality Test. (By the way, I am an ENFP and a "blue.") And you know what? If I know you, there's a pretty good chance I can guess which color you are and come pretty close to your Myers-Briggs type. Want to let me guess? If so, the deal is that you have to at least post your initials or Blogging name or whatever (some type of identifier) in a comment so I can comment back then you can comment with your results. (You can take each test via the first two links.)

So I love writing. It's easier to be funny in writing because you have time to choose the right word. Writing sometimes flows from your fingers faster than you can think, because somewhere inside you some inspiration is desperate to get out. But, more than that, I like looking people in the eye. Sometimes you see what you want...and sometimes you don't...but if you're paying attention, you'll almost always see. In writing though, including blogging, there is always room for holding back and for interpretation.

Update: Oops! I didn't realize the Myers-Briggs was a pay test. I looked online and don't find a free one that looks legit, although I can't say I looked that hard. (What's the color for short attention span?)

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!?!

2008-07-13T17:00:00.008-04:00

Remember my big defeat in Pittsburgh? For a frustrated moment after that, I thought maybe my adventures in Scrabble should be over. Then I thought, "Over?!? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!?!" And I've been studying like crazy since then. True to my mood swinging ways, right about the same time, I was struck with an idea to undertake a big series of Scrabble tournaments, dubbing it my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour.

And so the tour (with a shiny new schedule) has begun. The first official (and, so far the shortest scheduled), stop on The Tour was, in my opinion...a success!! DAH-DA-DA-DAH!!! (It was in Rocky River, Ohio, by the way.) I got what I basically wanted, which was to do better than I did in Pittsburgh. Sure...that wasn’t hard to do. If I had done worse than I had in Pittsburgh, it’s highly likely that I would have chucked this laptop out the hotel window (along with all the other contents of my room).
But what I did do was see improvement. In contrast to my previous 2/3 loss ratio (in PGH), I ended up at 4 wins and 3 losses with a positive spread of 110 points. PLUS, I had my first 500-point game (a 525 against the guy who ended up coming in second in my division), AND that landed me the prize for high win, AND I got the prize for high loss (with a 369-point game). Here's a picture of the board after the 525 game:

This weekend, someone challenged me to do 20 tournaments in one year. I said, "No way!" Now that I look at my schedule, though...counting this weekend, there's there's already like 9 on there, with eight being in 2008. Heck, I dunno. Maybe it'll happen. There are already several other tournaments I'll attend in the next twelve months that aren't even on the calendar yet.

SO...we'll see! This weekend was a good start! And a very special thanks to my club members, my Scrabble friends, and my everyday friends for their support in my Scrabble endeavors. It means the world to me. And, uhh...thanks to my husband. Although he continues to make fun of me for being a Scrabble geek, he still lets me Scrabble it up pretty much all I want.

Shot Down in a Blaze of Color

2008-07-09T20:51:00.006-04:00

I recognized a pattern in myself today when Eric mentioned there was a camera (like a real camera, apparently not just a running-the-stoplight camera) at a local, major intersection. "What?!?! We said we didn't want cameras!" (The public had been asked for comment about surveillance cameras in Charleston a few years ago and the response was a big "NO!") Gazing out the window, I muttered, "I'd like to shoot it with a paintball."

Eric replied that I want to shoot everything with a paintball. I had to laugh and admit the truth in it. For instance, I have a slightly younger sister (not the one I talk about a lot) with...how to put this...a really craptastic man in her life. My youngest sister and I have plotted how to fairly deal with him. Hmmm. Paintball...center forehead...pink. Mystery cameras that appear despite the citizens' opinion? Paintball...center lens. Drug dealers messing up Everyone's East End? Paintball...center forehead...purple (an ironic tribute to Jimi and Purple Haze). And this last one is Martha's suggestion for bad drivers: a color-coding paintball system. It would let other people on the road know what to expect from you. For people who cut you off...orange. For people who run red lights...red (duh). Of course, some people's cars would display multiple colors based on this yet-to-be-completed coding system.

Funny thing is...I've never, ever owned, nor shot, nor even held a paintball gun. It just seems like it's perfect as my would-be weapon of choice. I mean, what's a mostly-anti-violence person to do? It's not like I'd ever beat anyone up, but some just need a serious butt whoopin. For humans on the target list, a paintball would be non-lethal, embarrassing, and leave quite a welt.

DISCLAIMER: If you go and paintball something up and try to pin it on me, I will so totally paintball you. Close-range, right in the back of the knee. Think how much that would hurt. But really...I will never, ever really paintball anyone or anything...as far as you know.

My Wordle

2008-07-08T10:43:00.000-04:00

So here is the ever-popular Wordle, this one based on my blog:

Even though it's generated based on the frequency of words, the position is random. I like finding certain phrases hidden or not-so-hidden among the words (which end up sounding something like magnetic poetry).

Some things I see:

Scrabble time

just like morning

Scrabble weekend

better response

Scrabble night

take tournament pictures

today make years

look right now

go home

great playing

something interesting

one good move make another

Scrabble words

started sure course

life signs

something now

Sure, it may sound a little like Tarzan-ese or maybe even Yoda-ish...but you get the point...s.

It's "See You Later"

2008-07-07T10:24:00.005-04:00

If you have one true friend, you have more than your share. (Thomas Fuller)

I often say I'm not a big fan of change in life. That can't be true, though. I'm always looking to change things for the better. I guess what I mean to say is I take great comfort in certain aspects of my life and am never very open to the possibility that variations might be acceptable.

It took me about two years to really get to know my dear friend, whom I'll refer to by her blog name, "Spinster Girl," although I could never see her in that light. SG is intelligent, funny, and a wonderfully-unique person but about 1000 times more introverted than me. (This may reflect more on my crazy all-up-in-people's-face-ways more than on her.) This slow development, though, produced a solid friendship that I treasure and trust.

But now our SG has had to make the tough choice to move on. This town simply could not provide the career opportunities she deserved. A firm in Toledo has snatched her up and on Saturday she drove off in a truck filled with her belongings. Now she's going to live between Toledo and Detroit.

So many here in Charleston are mourning the daily or almost daily presence of our friend. As for me, my discomfort with this change is buffered by knowing I'll get to see her fairly often (because of Eric's new job and my Scrabble tour), and that those times will be something to look forward to. Those times are something I look forward to.

Charleston's Own Underground Kitchen

2008-07-04T08:12:00.008-04:00

Last month, Charleston's first (as far as I know) Underground Kitchen made its debut. What is Underground Kitchen? It's not a restaurant...it's more of a concept. The concept? Serve a fabulous dinner to two or three dozen people, with a secret menu, and a surprise location to be revealed to the guests the day before. The identities of the guests are kept secret and, also, you're not allowed to sit with whomever you came.

Sound socially-awkward, scary, or potentially hazardous to your picky taste buds? Put your minds at ease!! Only the very coolest people would attend a dinner party with so many elements of surprise...and last time the cuisine consisted of: Seared ‘Steak’ Medallions with Plum Sauce over Scallion Parmesan Polenta; Grilled Asparagus Spears and Prosciutto with Honey-Mint-Goat Cheese Spread; Bruschetta with Wild Mushrooms, Tomato, Madeira & Asiago; and Fruited Couscous Salad with Tarragon, Citrus & Buttermilk Dressing. Doesn't that sound just awesome?

So last month I was otherwise-scheduled. This month, I've already bought and paid for my ticket! Last I heard, though, there were only about five tickets not requested for July...but there are about a dozen not yet paid for. You can still snag one of those unrequested tickets (and pay for it to secure your seat) or, if there aren't any of those left, you can let your evil side run wild and snatch a ticket up anyway (by paying).

So, friends...come on over and have dinner with me and the other cool people I know will be there (because they're the cooks). Although I can't yet give a first-hand report, I seriously don't think you'll be disappointed.

Maybe it's the 2008-2009 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour?

2008-07-03T16:18:00.011-04:00

Oh, the universe is definitely leaning toward my 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble tour becoming reality. In fact, with the addition of the Players Championship in Dayton, Ohio next year, maybe my tour will be extended! What better way to end a year-long Scrabble extravaganza than with a five-day Scrabble marathon?

Guess what else? Eric has taken a part-time job that seems to secure this destiny of mine. He's going to be working with an airline while he finishes up his degree...meaning that I can fly for free to wherever the airline flies (and at a reduced cost on other airlines). Now guess where the airline's nearest hub is from Charlie West? DE-troit, Michigan! Detroit (and its surrounding area) seems to be the Scrabble capitol of my (regional) universe. At right about six hours away, though, it sits on the very border of the area I had been looking at for my Scrabble tour. Now, though, a trip to Detroit is likely to take more like an hour-and-a-half and, at most, cost me a rental car for less than the gas money and not nearly as much time. Although airline employees and their families fly standby, CRW is not the busiest airport in the world and I'd have three chances to make a flight any given day (and could zip back down the hill if I had to wait four hours for the next flight). The worst-case scenario: I get in my car at 4:00 in the afternoon (right before the last flight of the day leaves) and drive the same six hours I would have in the first place.

And since Eric's new job is so perfect for me, I'm thinking about foregoing the Durham tournament in favor of South Lyon, Michigan in October. The Durham tournament would offer a few more games and the chance for some trivia or poker after-hours, but...as you are well-aware by now, the South Lyon tournament would give me a chance to fly instead of drive. And that would put me at being away from home no more than two weekends in a row (instead of three).

So...my shiny, new preliminary schedule goes a little something like this:

Rocky River, Ohio on July 12th;
Pontiac, Michigan from August over Labor Day weekend;
Fenton, Michigan on September 13th and 14th;
Hudson, Ohio on September 20th to the 21st;
South Lyon, Michigan on October 11th and 12th;
Elyria, Ohio on October 18th and 19th;
Lexington, Kentucky on the first weekend in November;
Strongsville, Ohio on December 6th and 7th; and,
the Players Championship in Dayton, Ohio from August 1st through the 5th, 2009.

Of course, if I make a big year of it, there will probably be other tournaments from January 2009 until August. And I guess, if I get that used to playing a lot of Scrabble, it will probably go on from there! If that be the case, then I sure hope to see some results from all this studying!!

Want to make a contribution to my
semi-worldwide Scrabble tour?
Great!
Just click here!!

Book Club...and Other Women Things

2008-07-01T22:39:00.008-04:00

So last night was my monthly book club. As always, it's two or three hours sitting around with a lot of smart, funny women...talking about work, men, kids, life in general (and also having great snacks and great wine), and then maybe several minutes on the book. This is a time for which I have great anticipation each month as it approaches and it really does me good. The women I've met there are all smart, thoughtful, kind, and supportive. Some of them are loud and funny and some are more quiet and funny. But I think they're all awesome.

And it looks like many women are getting better physical and psychological health just by nurturing these types of relationships with other women. At the end of this blog entry, I've posted an article in which researchers discuss their findings that women react with positive physical and mental health changes from spending time with, and getting support from, other women.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this concept over the last few years. I didn't need a research study, though, to tell me how important my friends were in my life. And I don't mean like, "my MP3 collection is very important to me." I mean like important as in the difference between simply existing and really living. As for me and the people that have become so important in my life...maybe it's our age...and the fact that many women (and maybe people in general) really seem to figure out who they are in their late twenties and early thirties...and each discover our strengths, our confidence, and our needs. And, as cheesy as it may sound, things like love, friendship and understanding grow when you give them to someone else.

And in these past several years, I've found friends like Melissa and Martha who together comprise a set of traits that epitomize almost everything I've ever wanted to be. (See how I did that? I said "together" they're what I want to be so it takes the pressure off both of them.) I've been equally as lucky to find friends like Sara and Jennifer who demonstrate the steady, constant nature of a true friend.

And this book club, of which I've been a part for maybe the past eighteen months, always reminds me of the commonality of this particular type of woman. More important than the brains, the variety of the very funny or the very quiet nature, and the personal strength, is the appreciation and support for other women.

I may be getting off course, and perhaps even venturing into the area of "rambling." I'll wrap it up now.

Sisters...remember to make time for each other. It's as important as taking your vitamins.

_________________________________________

UCLA Researchers Identify Key Biobehavioral Pattern Used By Women To Manage Stress
ScienceDaily (May 22, 2000) — Researchers at UCLA have identified a broad biological and behavioral pattern that explains a key method used by women to cope with stress - and at the same time highlights one of the most basic differences between men's and women's behavior.

This pattern, referred to by UCLA principal investigator Shelley E. Taylor as "tend and befriend," shows that females of many species, including humans, respond to stressful conditions by protecting and nurturing their young (the "tend" response), and by seeking social contact and support from others - especially other females (the "befriend" response).

This "tend-and-befriend" pattern is a sharp contrast to the "fight-or-flight" behavior that has long been considered the principal method for coping with stress by both men and women.

"For decades, psychological research maintained that both men and women rely on fight or flight to cope with stress - meaning that when confronted by stress, individuals either react with aggressive behavior, such as verbal conflict and more drastic actions, or withdraw from the stressful situation," said Taylor.

"We found that men often react to stress with a fight-or-flight response," Taylor said, "but women are more likely to manage their stress with a tend-and-befriend response by nurturing their children or seeking social contact, especially with other women."

The UCLA study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the Psychological Review of the American Psychological Association, based its findings on analysis of hundreds of biological and behavioral studies of response to stress by thousands of humans and animal subjects.
"The tend-and-befriend method of coping with stress seems to be characteristic of females in many species," Taylor said.

Just as the fight-or-flight response is based on biological changes that occur in response to stress, the UCLA researchers propose that the tend-and-befriend pattern may have a biological basis. In particular, the research team points to the hormone oxytocin as playing a large role in the tend-and-befriend response, in conjunction with sex hormones and the body's natural opioid system.

"Oxytocin has been studied largely for its role in childbirth, but it is also secreted in both men and women as a response to stress," she said.

"Animals and people with high levels of oxytocin are calmer, more relaxed, more social and less anxious. In several animal species, oxytocin leads to maternal behavior and to affiliation.

"Men secrete oxytocin too, but the effects of oxytocin seem to be reduced by male hormones, so oxytocin may have reduced effects on men's physiology and behavior under stress. Oxytocin, along with other stress hormones, may play a key factor in reducing females' response to stress."
The UCLA study also found that women are far more likely than men to "befriend" in response to stress - seeking social contact when they are feeling stressed, with befriending methods ranging from talking on the phone with relatives or friends, to such simple social contacts as asking for directions when lost.

"This difference in seeking social support during stressful periods is the principal way men and women differ in their response to stress, and one of the most basic differences in men's and women's behavior," Taylor said.

The different ways that men and women respond to stress may also help researchers understand why men are more vulnerable to the adverse health effects of stress, according to Taylor.

"Men are more likely than women to respond to stressful experiences by developing certain stress-related disorders, including hypertension, aggressive behavior, or abuse of alcohol or hard drugs," Taylor said. "Because the tend-and-befriend regulatory system may, in some ways, protect women against stress, this biobehavioral pattern may provide insights into why women live an average of seven and a half years longer than men."

"The tend-and-befriend pattern exhibited by women probably evolved through natural selection," Taylor said. "Thousands of generations ago, fleeing or fighting in stressful situations was not a good option for a female who was pregnant or taking care of offspring, and women who developed and maintained social alliances were better able to care for multiple offspring in stressful times.

The "tending" pattern is especially apparent in research conducted by UCLA psychologist Rena Repetti, who, in one of the studies analyzed in Taylor's research, examined the differences between fathers' and mothers' behaviors with their children after a stressful workday.

"When the typical father in the study came home after a stressful day at work, he responded to stress by wanting to be left alone, enjoying peace and quiet away from the stress of the office; when office-related stress was particularly acute, a typical response would be to react harshly or create conflict with his wife or children," Taylor said. "When the typical mother in the study came home from work bearing stress, she was more likely to cope with her bad day by focusing her attention on nurturing her children.

How did biobehavioral differences in how men and women cope with stress elude researchers until now?

"Until five years ago, many research studies on stress focused on males - either male rodents or human male participants in the laboratory," Taylor said. "Women were largely excluded in stress research because many researchers believed that monthly fluctuations in hormones created stress responses that varied too widely to be considered statistically valid.

"But since 1995, when the federal government mandated broad representation of both men and women in agency-funded medically-relevant research grants, the number of women represented in stress studies has increased substantially. Researchers are now beginning to realize that men and women use different coping mechanisms when dealing with stress."

"This is the first effort to identify a new stress regulatory system since the 1950s, and we are very excited about its ability to explain stress-related behavior that has not fit in traditional approaches to studying stress," Taylor said. "For example, people under stress, especially women, often seek social support from others, but until now, we haven't understood why or what the biological effects of support are. We are much closer now."

In addition to Taylor, the research team includes former UCLA post-doctoral scholars Laura Cousino Klein (now an assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State University), Brian P. Lewis (now an assistant professor at Syracuse), and Regan A.R. Gurung, (now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin/Green Bay); and UCLA graduate students Tara L. Gruenewald and John A. Updegraff.

The Move - Part 1

2008-06-29T20:48:00.002-04:00

Well, there was definitely no time for pictures...but the move that took the last two days of our lives was quite a sight. Seriously, the amount of stuff people accumulate is ca-razy. Remember the pile of things I'd started for donation to Goodwill? The pictures in that last post are two sides of the back of our kitchen. By the time our move was over, the piles of bags and boxes had stretched beyond the little wall right where the bags had stopped, spanned from one wall to the other, and came out beyond the wall by about two feet. In the end, I'd say we had ten boxes and 50 bags for Goodwill.

Otherwise, most of our things have gone into storage. Our more commonly used things are here with us at my in-laws' house. The painting I couldn't live without (and still love, love, love) is going to the caring hands of a friend to protect it from the possible damage of storage (even though it's an indoor facility). My boxes of pictures remain with me. Having control of my photographs is so important to me. I've always felt that, in case of a fire, the children and cats come first, then the photographs, and the rest is replaceable.

So the house we're considering renting (at four bedrooms, a rare downtown find) is being remodeled and our final decision will come when we can see the final phases of the work. We all keep pretty busy so hopefully we'll be able to stay out from under each other's feet until we move again. I hope the other place turns out well, though. I've consulted with the police department about it and the street got a great reference from them. It's just our style and still within easy walking distance to downtown locales (including my office).

Wait...did I really just say "move...again?" I'm afraid so. Every single one of my fingers is even sore, but at least if we do it again in a few weeks, there will be way less to carry. One might even consider that having rid ourselves of so much excess chattel, we may even completely unpack all the boxes.

And the only thing that may be worse than moving? Building...and then moving. It's a labor of love, though...eh, Melissa?

Hablamos Español en los Cumpleaños de Edie

2008-06-26T23:26:00.009-04:00

Today, my youngest child turned four. It's hard to believe we've totally completed the baby-raising phase of our lives. Now there are new tests to be faced. Stony will be a pre-teen soon and all I can say is...if teenaged boys cry less than teenaged girls it'll be all good. Of course, after that we'll be guiding two more girls through their teen years. I won't even begin to predict how that might go.

So, since Eric is away with the Army until tomorrow night, we decided to have Edie's birthday celebration this weekend. Because we aren't doing the birthday thing until this weekend, today had to be special in some small ways. First, I got her one of the stuffed animals from Taylor Books that she and her sister love. This is, literally, the softest teddy bear I've ever held. She was really happy to have it...and even gave it a bath later....but I guess that was her choice.

After work, I rushed home, changed the girls into some clean clothes, and then we headed out to Habitat for Humanity's ReStore for a very cool event. (Stony was with his dad this evening.) Amy Williams, the artist who created our beloved Press 2 for Spanish signs, was taking part in a show with Mark Wolfe as part of Festivall.

So these are the signs my kids and I spent two fun evenings searching Charleston for. We had a great time and I just love, love, love these signs. Today, we not only got to meet Amy Williams, but the girls got to make their very own stenciled signs!!

Amy had a great idea for the girls to create two signs: "Hola" and "Adios." I helped the girls as they chose the styles for their letters from the piles of stencils, then they placed their letters on the board (and a couple of swirls). Since the paint nozzle was too hard for four- and six-year olds to press, they held their hands on top of mine as I sprayed the paint where each directed. (Plus, when they were trying to spray it, the process included pressing as hard as they could on the nozzle and turning it around to look directly at the hole to see if it was working.)

The birthday girl ended up with a beautifully laid out "Adios":

And Miss Bella created a very original "Hola." I really think the extra-large letter L was just the touch it needed:

They were both very excited and proud when I told them I couldn't wait to frame the pieces and hang it in their room. This kind of creativity is exactly what I love to see from them and hope they continue. I mean, I just love how children aren't as filled with pre-conceived notions about what looks good, what colors might go together, and all that.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...thank you, Amy Williams! It's hard to believe how much family time and fun we've gotten out of your art. It speaks to everyone!! In Spanish!!

More iTunes Treasures

2008-06-25T13:18:00.002-04:00

When I survey the play lists on my iTunes, there are definitely a few standout favorites. Running through those today, I have to say that I'm always amazed by the awesomeness that is...Willie Nelson:

Can you believe he turned 75 this year?

Ye Olde Days at Seneca Rocks

2008-06-24T22:04:00.006-04:00

In digging through the old boxes, I've come across a lot of older stuff that I haven't seen in a while. For instance, about 14 years ago, I visited Seneca Rocks in the Monongahela National Forest (West Virginia). I found a picture of me, taken atop the rocks. You have to remember, this was the early 90's. Big 80's hair was just starting to make its exit.

So what do you think? I think it's funny but I look at it from a much more philosophical stance than I would have before. In my early 20's, it was the time to wear hiking boots and cut-off shorts but makeup and hair mousse at the same time. Hiking the 1.3-mile trail (on a very steep incline) not only meant that my physical fitness was really good, but that I didn't yet have three small children who would make it about half way before they (understandably) gave out. Climbing over the safety barrier and joining the mountain climbers (and other outlaws) on the very top of the mountain was more of the thing to do.

I just noticed something else...I still had the braces on my teeth then!! Braces were something I had never had when I was younger, but paid for myself when I was about 19. (As an aside, I feel like braces are the best thing I've ever bought. It made a huge difference in my life to be able to smile without being self-conscious. Now I smile every chance I get.) It's also interesting that my arms are so much bigger now but my big ol' knees have always been...well...big ol' knees.

And the view from the top of the mountain? It may be harder to appreciate without the view from the bottom:

If I remember correctly, when the picture of me was taken, I would have been standing right about where the first dip in the top part of the mountain is (on the left side). And you know, I think I could still make the climb up Seneca's steep path because, although I'm pretty out-of-shape, I'm stubborn and have a lot of endurance. Without the big hair, there'd probably be a lot less wind resistance, too. And, yeah, it wouldn't be worth it if I didn't climb over the barrier.

Purging

2008-06-24T21:30:00.007-04:00

So this week has been packing week. We've moving out of this house and into something more reasonable (in size and cost). As many of you know, Eric hasn't been working for a long time, gas prices are insane (especially when you're driving The Super Duper Mini-Van loaded down with a bunch of kids), and even food prices are going up. So this move isn't something we're too upset about. Once you make a decision to take some action, just having made the decision will often alleviate a good deal of the stress.

And this time, packing has been different than it ever was before. Why? Because, so far, I've gone through each and every thing we own and have done a great job of pulling out the clothes and extraneous possessions we really don't need. But, seriously...I'm not sure if you can appreciate this process without pictures. We are a family of two "grown ups," one teenager, and three children. With approximately 50% to 60% of the house packed, I'd bet I've collected 25 to 30 full trash bags of clothing and at least four big boxes of general stuff. It's all in the back side of our kitchen. Here's both sides of that space:

I can't wait until Goodwill comes and picks this stuff up. I'm going to have them wait until Friday, though, so I can try to get as much of whatever might be left into the pile as well. Still, it's kind of embarrassing to have think we've ever even purchased so much stuff that this is what can just discard. But I'm proud to be letting much of it go. It's one of the things I've said I wanted to do for a long time.

2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour

2008-06-23T19:33:00.013-04:00

After my dear friend Martha introduced me to Scrabble, I spent a year or so being fairly so-so about it. I learned the basic words, went to a few Scrabble club meetings, and played in the April 2007 tournament in Charleston, WV. Somewhere between April and fall 2007, my interest in the game got stronger and, by late last year, I was excitedly awaiting the chance to travel to tournaments. So far this year, I've attended four tournaments. And it was going pretty well...until Pittsburgh, which I blogged about here and here. Don't get me wrong. I love Pittsburgh and the people there are some of my favorites in the Scrabble world!! They're all very friendly and say "dahntahn" and "youins."

But Pittsburgh was hard on me. I did so, so poorly. On one hand, it seemed like I was drawing really bad letters the whole time. On the other hand, a good player should be able to work with those a little better than I did.

So...NOW...I've decided to step it up a notch. (Well, many notches, if possible.) With the help and advice, of our local club's loyal director, I've started studying Scrabble words (every day). In order to be well-rounded about it, I've been studying using a three-pronged approach: anagram recognition, word list recall, and flash card study of bigger words. (I bet the non-Scrabblers out there didn't know people actually study this stuff, huh?) Logically, investing this effort into a game I've grown to love (if I'm not hating it at that second), should yield some better play. I should be able to survive the "bad racks" a little better and hopefully play more bingos to give myself a better buffer.

And it's worth the investment in time. Scrabble is about the only thing I do for fun anymore. I have three young children and a demanding job. The past year, since my husband's work injury, there haven't been a lot of extra funds to invest in recreation. But I don't believe you can stay sane, though, unless you have some fun now and then. So, since we're moving to a house that's more affordable (slightly less on the rent and fairly lower on the utilities), I've made a commitment to myself to really go all out this summer and fall traveling to Scrabble tournaments.

Pretty much anything within about a six-hour drive is my target. Based on the schedule right now, that puts me heading to:

Rocky River, Ohio on July 12th;

Pontiac, Michigan from August over Labor Day weekend;

Fenton, Michigan on September 13th and 14th;

Hudson, Ohio on September 20th to the 21st;

Elyria, Ohio on October 18th and 19th;

Lexington, Kentucky on the first weekend in November;

Strongsville, Ohio on December 6th and 7th; and,

Maybe Durham, North Carolina on October 24th though the 26th.

So, yeah, that's a little more than one a month for the rest of the year. Why? I don't know. Because I've committed myself to putting in a huge effort all around (even if it means traveling on the cheap)? Because we've had a tough year all around? Because I've become obsessed? Because I'm a really nice person and I'm giving myself permission?

Whatever the reason, I decided to do it! My 2008 Whirlwind Scrabble Tour!!! Then I figured, if a New Yorker can use the Internet to get strangers to pay off her $20,000 in shopping debt, maybe people would be happy to contribute to my worthy cause!! What's the benefit?? An investment in hope and my effort and helping someone who has, in the last 36 months, spent 26 months standing in the background of her husband's military service, his dedication as a firefighter, and his subsequent injury. The second half of 2008 is going to be my (half) year!!

So, anyone who feels as excited about my whirlwind tour as I feel about my tour, or who just wants to see if I can pull off this studying=winning thing, or who just figures "what the heck!"...then you may ask yourself, "Why don't I click here?" No contribution is too small (or big...heh). Live vicariously through me as I throw my responsibilities to the wind (except for the studying thing)!!

(A huge "thank you" to Chris. Chris has been one heck of a pal not just since he came to my birthday dinner, but especially this last week. Of course, feel free to link to this post, too!)

Camp Leon

2008-06-21T18:11:00.017-04:00

Last weekend, my son departed for church camp...his first time at an overnight camp. Even though his nature can be a little shy at times, I wasn't too panicked for him to go. Since he's an outdoorsy kind of kid, I was sure he'd adjust quickly and then have a great time with the fishing, horseback riding, swimming, and all. The camp is about three hours away and, although it's at a place called Camp Tygart, the week our church is there, it's referred to as "Camp Leon." Father Leon has been one of the most favorite priests in our area for about the last 30 years. My husband attended the camp with Father Leon for years. (In fact, Father Leon's notability in my in-law family includes having taken custody of Eric when he arrested for drinking on the beach during a chuch trip when he was 15.)

So a few people asked me through the week if we'd heard from Stony and the answer was "no." We all agreed that that was probably a good thing because there would probably be no calls unless there was a problem. Then last night the girls and I went up for the family night that was to include a bonfire and skits by the kids. (Eric is on military duty right now.) When we got to the camp, though, Stony was ready to put his bag in the car and leave. I figured the week had been so-so for him and he was ready to go. I was kind of bummed but it definitely could have been worse.

Still, we trekked what I'd guess was 1/4 mile along a path and past the lake to the clearing for the bonfire and skits. Turns out I was ill-prepared. It was already about an hour past the girls' bedtime. I had brought no chairs, no blanket, and no flashlight. There was no bathroom within reasonable walking distance for children. About the only thing I had thought in advance to do was dress the kids warmly. Soon, I was holding my four-year-old (which was killing my back) as she started to get sleepy and my six-year-old was getting tired, too. Two valiant men (Chris and a local doctor from our church) rescued me from bad parent hell by offering up their chairs for us (which I gratefully accepted).

What we did get to see was pretty entertaining as there was a huge bonfire that threw sparks into the air like tiny, glowing snakes that disappeared into the night sky. The older kids (I think counselors) had carried the flame into the camp, appearing straight out of the woods in full tribal ragalia, including cute, plastic "grass" skirts. Each group of kids performed a skit and, if I do say so, Stony's group was very funny and seemed well-practiced with their performance of Camp Leon Idol. Stony was the light man for the performance which I think suited his nature.

Right after Stony's group's skit was over, it was just getting too, too late and, being even more helpative, Chris agreed to lead Stony back to the van so I could take the girls there and wait. Even more, Chris loaned me a tiny, LED light which was the only thing that led us safely along the pitch black path (with a steep drop on one side). Do you remember when I said I wanted to go live in the woods? Fuck that!!!! Turns out I only want to live in the woods during the daytime. The woods at night are scary. Beyond the flashlight's illumination of our path, you could not see a thing. There were noises in the woods and the obvious sounds of movement. Deer? Unusually vicious black bear? No way to tell...at all. The girls were terrified and the walk probably took 50% longer because they were clinging to me. My older daughter proclaimed it to be "scary as crap." ("Crap" is her favorite descriptor since about mid-way through Kindergarten. It's not always as a bad thing. She may also refer to a cake as "good as crap.")

After what felt like a really long time, as the girls dozed in the van, tiny orange, white, and blue orbs started floating out of the darkess from the direction of the bonfire. As the campers and parents emerged from the shadows, Chris appeared with my son all safe and sound. Then Stony started recounting for me, in that rushed voice that young boys have, about the things he did at camp. His new friend, Jed, came to tell him goodbye and that he'd see Stony at the pool in Charleston and then they did that hand-grab-type-handshake thing. It was awesome and I was so relieved and happy. As Stony got into the van, he began excitely telling the stories of horseback riding, natural waterslides in the creek, putting salamanders in the girls' bunkhouse, and getting bombarded with water balloons through their bunkhouse windows. He said he wants to come back every year and that he loved camp. Later, in our hotel room, he proclaimed that "today was a good day."

My son was all tan and happy and filled with fun stories for me and his sisters. Despite the late hour and all the complications that came with it, it was, indeed, a very good day.

Brick Walls

2008-06-19T10:11:00.015-04:00

Supposedly by late this fall my firm will be moving into its "new" building (actually a historic building that being renovated and rehabilitated after years of bad remodeling). Until then, like many of the offices downtown, my office has a brick exterior wall. I love the look of it. But like many of these old, brick buildings, a lot of the mortar has come out from between the bricks. One day I started sticking things in the spaces (with paperclips). I'd actually like to fill the entire wall with smallish things held up by paperclips in the mortar cracks...but I'm not sure I'll have the time to collect enough appropriately-sized (and interesting enough) things. The three things there now are (left to right): my ACLU Board Member name tag; the piece of Scrabble art I won at the NeoScrabble Spring Fling back in April; and my alphabetically-ordered name tag from also from the Spring Fling.

It's not like you can feel a breeze coming through the bricks or anything. The wall is probably a foot thick. There is one spot where, if the temperature is just right, and you look at just the right spot at just the right angle, you can see a sliver of light...but that's about it.

The one problem we do have that I attribute to the vintage walls...tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tinytinytiny spiders. Orange ones. (And some only slightly larger brownish ones.) I know the orange ones are actually Red Spider Mites but if I said, "I have mites in my office," then people would probably consider that a skin condition or the result of poor grooming. And they look like spiders so... AND you can only see them when they get on your papers or get on your skin so, when you smash one, there is left a very visible, bright orange streak.

But do know what happens when you find and/or kill a tiny spider every day or so in your office? You begin to feel like you always have tiny spiders on you. I find myself closely examining my arms whenever I feel the slightest...maybe...something (which I'm probably usually imagining).

It's okay, though. I don't like the paranoia I've developed about them, but I can deal with the spider mites (and the less commonly-appearing but slightly larger brownish spiders). IF, however, I were to locate even one large spider (or a mouse or something like that) in my office, it's unlikely I'd ever bill another hour of work. It'd be too hard to accomplish anything with my chair smack in the middle of the room, my legs pulled tight to my chest, slowly spinning around on watch for any mouse or big spider that might be planning a sneak attack.

Nothing Screams "I'm Important" Like Screaming "I'm Important" Into Your Cell Phone

2008-06-17T20:18:00.009-04:00

Who wants to know all about a certain financial sales guy ("B.C.") who works for a certain investment company ("The H.") and his very important phone calls today? Better yet, who wants to know all about B.C.'s clients (and The H's clients) who purchased financial products today, hold old they are, their addresses, and how much money they have to invest?

I'll admit that I'm somewhat possessive of my favorite downtown (but more specifically Capitol Street) food and coffee spots...but if the feel of our quaint, homemade ice cream shop, independent coffee/book/art store, brick-paved sidewalks, and historic buildings is gone, it's just another day at the office. And every day I share this space with my co-owners which are comprised of my fellow Charlestonians and our visitors who usually understand, even if intuitively, that this is a cool space and one should not be, well...uncool.

I'm not a xenophobe. I love people. I talk to people everywhere I go and I'm sure strangers often think I'm nuts for getting all up in their beeswax if the mood strikes me. But B.C. was so clearly not from here, and was so clearly clueless. How do I know for sure? FIRST, the six degrees of separation that exist everywhere else in the universe are reduced to two in Charleston. If you don't know a person, someone you know knows them. And I had never even seen this guy. SECOND, he said he's not from here on his cell phone.

But the problem is, B.C.'s employer (The aforementioned H) supplies him with a cell phone that very obviously has a weak microphone. B.C. is forced to sit in an otherwise peaceful, chill Ellen's Ice Cream and conduct his very important business in a voice so loud that I'm sure he's going to lose said voice any second. I'm sure it was killing him knowing that everyone else was trying to get enjoy a short respite from the office life while he was forced to work work work work WORK WORK WORK.

My point is, I find a lot of comfort in certain things staying the same. It's one of the reasons I like living in Charleston. I like the places and I like most of the people, who I consider to be open and friendly. B.C. disturbed the peace one can usually expect with your White Bean and Arugula Soup. He was not only obnoxious and obtrusive, but disturbingly lacking in any concern for his clients' personal information. Luckily, we don't get many of his kind round hya. (Melissa was similarly-surprised when she encountered some Ralph Nader supporters on the street, who not only lacked in manners but civility.) So that's all I've got to say about that.

OH! One more thing. Isaiah...the only aggressive semi-street person we have downtown...the one who makes you listen to some wonderful, happy, crap story before he loudly accuses you of lying and racism when you won't give him money...I've had two fairly serious run-ins with him. I mean, ask me for a dollar for a beer, and don't insult my very humanity, and I'll probably give you five dollars. But act like an ass, especially in front of my children? Heh. Both times in the interactions with Isaiah, my occasionally-surfacing fluid temper (the one that makes me extremely calm and makes my words, albeit sharp, flow calmly and coherently) took over and I was not intimidated. Today, never remembering who anyone is, I'm sure...Isaiah approached me with his wide grin and started with a few words. Before he got within five feet of me I shot him a severe look and he said something like "Urrgghhh" and retreated. Score three for Tina.

Duck Hunt

2008-06-16T22:08:00.007-04:00

My son's dad hunts and Stony has had a .22 rifle since he was five. During duck season (December and January), his dad took this video:

It strikes me he much younger he looks with his hair uncut. (He's actually almost ten there and had tried to grow it out like a lot of kids do but it's so straight he didn't really get the look he was going for.) Just a month or so later, here's how he looked with his hair cut much shorter.

And, yes, I recognize the irony of saying how pretty an animal is right after you've shot it. Personally, I wouldn't like to hunt...but I eat meat (with the exception of beef) so...what can I say? And they did follow the tradition of not killing any animal just for sport by having duck for dinner. I guess it also follows the trend around our house, which is to eat organic foods and free-range meat as much as possible. (Here's a chance to plug Bluegrass Kitchen, one of my favorite restaurants ever. They serve only organic food.)

The point of my story...and I always get around to the point...is the way Stony talks cracks me up. He sounds like he's reading from a script! Funny how, when he's writing, the typically-slow fourth grade writing speed, along with his tendency to get distracted, hinders the expression of his thoughts. Someone had the great idea once (really, I'm not being sarcastic) of getting him a laptop. The point was getting him to type, and able to get what he wanted to say out before he forgot. It's really too bad The Evil Genius keeps ripping the keys off his keyboard without anyone seeing her.

Colon Blow

2008-06-16T14:58:00.007-04:00

I'm sorry about the title, but I just had to say it. I've been watching Saturday Night Live since I was way too young to watch Saturday Night Live so trust me when I say that there's not much that's funnier than bodily functions. (See also Annuale.)

On a related note, my firm does many great things for its employees...one of which includes having a big selection of fresh fruit brought in every week from the Purple Onion at the Capitol Market. Yes, we are special. (We also have bottled water with the firm's name on it.) So, if you're busy busy busy and don't have time for lunch or are just uninspired by the selections within walking distance, you can grab some fruit and some very special bottled water and just keep working.

I also keep less-perishable food in my desk drawer (like milk and beef). Okay...actually, I keep almonds and cereal in there. Today, I had All-Bran Complete Wheat Flakes and an apple for lunch...and I read the cereal box while I was eating. All-Bran has 1 gram of soluble fiber and 4 grams of insoluble fiber per tiny, unrealistically-sized, 3/4-cup serving. Hmm. "What's the difference?" I asked myself and set about finding out.

Turns out, eating a lot of fiber is something akin to drinking a lot of poison. Apparently one must work your way up from, say...a flake of All-Bran every day, and develop an immunity to certain health hazards like "dramatically swollen belly," "smelly office syndrome," and such. It's like that guy who injected himself with a little snake venom over and over for a long time so he could handle them without suffering a fatal bite.

But don't you worry, my friends...I've always had only two preferences when it came to cereal: Wood Fiber Health Flakes or Lucky Charms. My tolerance to fiber has been in place for a long time...and I stay away from Lucky Charms as much as possible because they're so delicious I could eat a whole box. (In all fairness, All-Bran is very delicious, as well, and very satisfying for a meal.)

For the rest of you, be warned. All-Bran may be good for your heart, but the more you eat the more you will...be healthy.

Creating

2008-06-14T19:39:00.013-04:00

I had one art class in college...Art 101. Actually, I had Humanities, too, which involved some art history and art appreciation, but I've only had one class in which I created art. The instructor, Paula Clendenin, was someone I admired right from the start. She had zero tolerance for anyone who cut up in class which, because it was a required course, was sort of often. Her response was either an icy stare or, the next time, a short but firm invitation to leave (which you could not turn down). But what I think Paula taught me for the first time was that everyone has some art inside them.

On and off since that class, I've felt the need to create something. It's rare that I've ever gotten, or maybe taken, the opportunity to do so. For about the past year, though, the need to express myself has gotten stronger, and has lately become sort of an obsession. I've been purposely open to inspiration, in that looking-but-not-looking sort of way (like you're supposed to do if you're "looking" for love).

And last year I took the plunge and bought a pretty decent digital SLR camera but I still haven't gotten to really even explore all of its functions. I think it does a good job, though, and if you've got the eye for subject matter and framing, you can create some decent pictures. Here are two I took at West Virginia's capitol back in January (or maybe it was February):

This one needs exposure adjustment here and there but I was really pleased with the overall look of it. Actually, when I look at it, the darkness conveys how I often feel about what's going on in there.

The dome inside the capitol is sometimes obscured with scaffolding for repairs or cleaning, but this time, on a Saturday, I was actually able to lay down on the floor and take this shot from below. I'm not that much of a clean lines/geometry-style person in real life but I love some good shapes and lines in photography.

So as far as I know, I can't draw or paint...but lately I've been wondering why I don't try and do more of this self-expression via the construction methods I've learned over time. I can use most any woodworking equipment (with the exception of maybe a lathe) and even probably most metalworking equipment. I can cut and work with glass which I really enjoyed during a stained glass class I took a few years ago. AND I can arc and gas weld...at least I used to be able to so I figure I could pick back up any information I've lost pretty easily.

I've got two things in mind right now. First, I've got six of those giant, metal 3D stars that people put on or around their houses. (Wait, would that be 3D or 2D?) Anyway, I'd like to rough-cut the interior out of them (I guess using a torch), leaving just the outline of the star, the inside lines, etc., then reinforce the back with a welded, star-shaped frame, then build and mount stained glass pieces in that interior space. Second, I want to put the lessons I learned building Brad's Scrabble board to use building boards for myself and for Martha. Here's the board I've already done:

For one thing, I learned a lot about working with the glass-like epoxy gloss coat which is one of my favorite parts about the whole thing. (It makes the paint underneath look like it goes all the way through.) I've also fabricated what I consider a pretty successful prototype of a Scrabble board grid. Before, getting your hands on a usable grid meant finding and ripping apart and old board with a good grid (because new ones have paper/plastic-like surfaces that are just impressed with the grid shape). My first try at the grid-making produced something that wasn't quite right but, much to my relief, needed adjustments I could discern and probably correct. And, since making Brad's board, I've had several strokes of inspiration for various designs and methods.

Part of me wishes I'd gone to RIT and gotten a degree in photography. A big part of me wishes I had the time to go to the much more local WV State University and get another degree...in art. Although I'd only need somewhere in the vicinity of 45 hours to do that, most art classes are actually 6 hours of class time per 3-hour credit. Assuming that, at least for now, I'm left with the skills and tools I've got (and perhaps a gas welder to borrow). Luckily, I've decided...if that's what I got, then that's what I got. So we'll see how all this desire to create goes. Right after the move, I'm on it.

Scrabble Blogs

2008-06-13T23:11:00.007-04:00

In an attempt to be consistent with the title of my blog, I have been accumulating a list of Scrabble links and other Scrabble blogs. I guess this would be considered a "dynamic" list (does that word apply only to literally moving or can it be figurative?) in that I'm always adding Scrabble blogs as I come across them. Sometimes I'll delete a blog if its 100% technical in nature because...eh...I like to strike a balance between fun and serial.

So...Scrabble bloggers...if you know of a great blog (or link) I'm missing, give me a shout! This includes LiveJournals since I've discovered the OpenID!!! Why, you ask? Because:

I'm simplifying my life and I decided to let go of any regular maintenance or time on my MySpace and focus more on the written (or typed, as it may be) word. And although I know a lot of Scrabble folk use LiveJournal, I have a strong preference for the more colorful, modifiable format of Blogger. Then tonight I was browsing around some of the Scrabble blogs listed on my page, and came across one that, like me, enjoyed interspersing some humor into the non-funny world of game recaps. Even though I don't have a LiveJournal, I explored the OpenID login option and found that I could actually log in using my blog url!!! Maybe this is yesterday's news to you guys (or last month's or last year's) but I'm pretty psyched to have figured it out.

304 Blogs...

2008-06-13T10:06:00.007-04:00

...West Virginia, that is (the "304" representing our area code...not the number of blogs). Thanks to 304Blogs for adding not only this, my personal blog, but the West Virginia Scrabble blog! You've got a great collection of cool West Virginia stuff going and I love it!!

Thanks, again!!

The Five Dollar Haircut

2008-06-12T23:19:00.012-04:00

Making appointments for myself is something I try to avoid if I can. It's just too easy to become overscheduled, lose efficiency at work, or cut into Scrabble time. This desire to be more appointment-free, and to cut down on driving time and gas money, has led me to try and get as many things as I can done within walking distance from my office. Therein lies the reason for my humidity-sensitive hair curling out around my ears the last few weeks (like extra ears of some sort).

It's not like I didn't try to get a haircut. Trying to walk in to a salon that advertises "Walk-Ins Welcome" is like trying to get a prescription filled at Wal-Mart. They look at you like you're eight shades of crazy and tell you they might be able to accomodate you in about five hours. I'd even tried calling a day or two in advance to the high-end salon at the end of the block. It was frustrating to not even be able to get this haircut I so desperately needed when I was willing to pay a premium price for it!! And now...I'm so glad that didn't work out...because I've discovered the five dollar haircut.

In the opposite direction of the day-spa salon, but still on the same block as my office, there's a school of cosmetology. I KNOW...I know. The idea of getting my haircut at a beauty school scared me, too. My hair is short, and, in theory, getting it cut will only make it shorter. There's not going to be much room there to repair anything which might go wrong.

But yesterday I'd finally had it with the hair, and there was no way I was going to spend hours sitting in one of our local walk-in salons, waiting for my turn to be fit in between people who actually had appointments. Besides, I'm still in counseling for the walk-in-mall-salon experience that made me cry the night of my birthday dinner. (Crying because of a bad hairstyle is hard to explain, but all that's a whole other story. I will say that Eric thought I had wrecked the car when he answered the phone to find me choked up so badly on the other end, and Melissa eased my pain by reminding me that it never looks as bad to anyone else as it does to us.)

So I marched into the beauty school, as confident as always when I'm doing something I haven't thought through enough (which is "very"). I reminded myself that: (1) cosmetology students are likely to be very careful to not make mistakes; and (2) from what I've heard an instructor checks each hairstyle during the process and double-checks the style before you leave. And it's a fivedollarhaircut.

I guess the next student who was "up" on the list for was Taylor. ("Taylor" like Taylor Dayne and not Taylor Hicks, although Taylor Dayne was kind of masculine back in the 80's.) About twenty minutes later, Taylor had done a great job with my hair and, although my hairstyle is...um...simple, it looked exactly like my other short cuts. I was so pleased that I snapped a picture of Taylor and me BUT the angle was odd and a piece of my hair looked weird (although it's not). I didn't think it was fair to post it because then it would look like I didn't really get a good fivedollarhaircut...but just need new glasses. Anyway, the one thing no stylist has ever understood about how I like my hair is that, unless I'm wearing cocktail dress or something like that, I don't like my hair to look too neat. And I don't mean I want it to look that purposeful sort of messy....which looks too planned.

So I bounced back to my office (as in "light-footed," not like 2006 Hip Hop slang) and ran my fingers through my hair until it felt more natural. Are you dying to see the result? Are you? Are you? Are you? Beg no longer, my friends...and bask in the glow:

Hablamos Español, Parte 2

2008-06-12T20:40:00.025-04:00

My post about Amy Williams' "Press 2 for Spanish" city-wide art installation piece drew a lot of positive feedback. Maybe the combination of a simple art piece, a primary color, and trying on new vocabulary words draws us back to a time when life was easy and happy and, even if there was a bump in the road, we were very resilient.

So this light feeling about the signs has stuck with me since the morning I first saw el reloj on my way to work. A few people sent me hints about where I might find other signs including the statement that, if we were to head out for gourmet pizza and red wine, we might just happen upon a sign.

And along those same lines, there was a sign marking one of my favorite restaurants ever, Bluegrass Kitchen...where you can enjoy a popular favorite like the Black Bean Burrito or one of the special entrees that are almost never the same, but always divine:

And although I've never gotten around to trying the hand-made selection of baked goods at Charleston Bread, I've heard only great things about it.

Then as I trekked around the block today (running errands during lunch), I passed the transit mall (or is it called "bus mall"?)...and I hadn't noticed how big the trees in that area were getting. Everybody deserves a retreat from the midday sun...and although there are a few people can make walking through this particular park uncomfortable for a woman, many just have no place to go during the day. I suppose sometimes it's hard to pass the time waiting for a cooler resting spot and good meal.

Finally, the kids and I used another nice, pre-bedtime drive to cruise around and capture some more of our now-beloved signs. The kids munched on tiny fish sandwiches (the bread...I'm not sure how big the fish started out) which are perfect for a less-than-messy meal in the van. Right before heading home again to put our two youngest in bed, we stopped in front of Ellen's Homemade Ice Cream and gave the new, young man working there a run for his money. I'm sure when I walked in alone to get our treats, he didn't expect that I would be ordering five different flavors of ice cream scooped into five separate cups. Like all of Ellen's employees, though, he was good-natured so I gave him a nice tip. (Work is hard, ya'll!!)

And, these, so far, are the last of the signs we've found:

That last one is the East End Dog Park, by the way. The boys in the picture were pretty set in their positions right behind the sign and, since they're kids, I didn't want to make them very recognizable on the Internet. (Yes, I know I've put pictures of my kids on the Internet, but I'd rather leave those decisions up to a child's own parents.) Plus, there's only so long a 30-something-year-old woman can stand and take pictures of early teen-ish boys before it just starts to look weird.

So that's 18 signs for us. Far as I can tell, there's at least one more that's on the artist's MySpace profile page. As of today, that one still eludes me! Sadly, at least one of the signs has already been taken (liberated? removed?) but I have a feeling the one I can't find is in a spot that I could would come across if I were walking down The Boulevard instead of driving. So we'll see about that one and if any others are revealed.

Thank you for all this fun, Amy Williams! I love what I interpret as the more serious message behind them and I've love the lightness of searching all around Charleston for them.

Viva Festivall!!!

Fran & Dave

2008-06-11T15:20:00.005-04:00

I don't really know Fran and Dave, but I know that they've moved into the woods. I'm so jealous. I want to move into the woods. I want to chuck these giant piles of crap we've accumulated around here, pack up the three-tents-in-a-tent that we've yet to even use, and go cook on a fire.

Hablamos Español

2008-06-09T20:01:00.035-04:00

¿Qué es todo esto? Hablamos Español en Charleston, West Virginia. Un artista denominó a Amy Williams lo demuestra.

I noticed the first of these signs as I approached my office today on Capitol Street and I thought it was probably something for a school field trip. Immediately I was reminded of signs I would see when I lived in San Antonio...the ones that marked the transition into the migrant neighborhoods, where all the signs would be in Spanish. The basic colors of the signs and the simple, stenciled transmission of the necessary information always stood out on the cluttered backdrop of the city. So I still didn't know what this particular sign on the clock was for, but I really liked it.

Later in the morning, I walked back out of the building and, coming from that direction, I noticed another sign in the windows of Ellen's Homemade Ice Cream:

Finally, I walked out about lunch time, heading to my favorite coffee shop (slash cafe slash book store slash art gallery) a few doors down. Spotting yet another sign (in the coffee shop window), I asked the woman at the book and art counter what was up with the signs. She said they were part of city-wide installation piece called "Press 2 for Spanish" by local artist Amy Williams. She said there were even more signs around Charleston and suddenly I was hooked! All of a sudden this cool sign mounted on a clock post became a hide-and-seek that was way even more cool!! I decided to find out more, and e-mailed the artist. (If you go to her MySpace page, and add her as a friend, you can see pictures of any of the signs that I haven't yet come across..or may have already seen yourself.)

So as I walked from my office at the end of the day, and headed for the parking garage, I photographed the three signs I'd seen and prepared to look online tonight for the rest. (The Man has blocked access to MySpace in our building.) On the way to the garage, I saw this:

Then, on the way to pick up my youngest sister, Anna, from her job, I saw this...

...and then I saw this...

I had, just in the nick of time, snatched Anna from the jaws of insanity (she works eight hours a day in the infant room at a daycare center), when we saw this sign and I pointed it out to her:

Maybe we're just an overly-excitable bunch, but Anna was a San Antonian for only the first six months of her life. Assuming she didn't get out much for random street sign reading at that point, she isn't at all used to seeing street signs labeled in a language besides American English. When I told her that they were art and that there were a lot more of them around, she was drawn into my quest to undertake this sort of scavenger hunt with no clues.

So we went home, finished up the second bath of the day for the girls (which the babysitter had been so very helpful to start after a hot afternoon at the park), and took the kids to get something to eat. After we had packed the children back into the van, bellies full and sleepiness setting in, we set out to find whatever others signs we could. We drove back-and-forth on the four streets that run parallel along the river in our small city. We made our way down The Boulevard, then circled back toward town, making sure to pass the hospitals and the downtown fire station (all places we thought a sign might be spotted). We jumped and pointed when we saw anything red, white, and square (including for-sale signs and yield signs).

Usually, though, we would zip by a sign somewhere we weren't expecting it, yell and point as we drove by, then make a quick circle around the block, timing the stop lights so we could get a picture without obstructing traffic. As simple as it sounds, this was a fun time. The almost-four-year-old, like nearly any child her age, was lulled to sleep by the warm night and just driving around. My older daughter and my son showed off the random Spanish words they could think of from school. Anna asked good questions like "What makes that art?" and talked about trying to schedule an art class this fall, her first semester of college. It was a continuation of our conversations during a recent art show near our house where she got to see people her age (and younger) recognized for their urban art and realized that artists don't always look like old hippies or wine-sipping, black-turtleneck-wearing pretentious folk.

So we circled the blocks and photographed all the signs we could find before the time set in to get the other kids home for bed, too. Here they are:

It's time like this that make being a parent seem easy. It's not easy...but sometimes it seems that way for a minute.

Oh! And we were glad that we didn't know in advance where the signs were. I still don't know where they all are, but know for sure that I missed at least one, based on the artist's front page of her MySpace. I'm not sure I'll look at the her other pictures for a while. It'd seem like reading ahead to the last page of a book. But in this book, you get to interpret your own story. Whatever it means to Amy Williams, it can mean a dozen other things to you, or maybe nothing at all.

(Feel free to share with me any signs you might see, too!!)