Since we are not doing Nationals (or whatever it is called this year; I get my years confused easily these days) I'm officially going into full sowpods mode. I don't care if it burns me at club. I really do not care.

The only two tournaments I'm remotely interested in playing at the moment are both Texas and both #sowpodscollins#.

So club people, feel free to look askance. Catch me in a terrible error of continents.

Edited to add the very important clarification that several of the tournaments being planned, like Terry's HO tournament, sound really fun and great. I'm just in a British kind of mood, whatever that is.

Mini club report

Truly mini.

John and I had committed to showing up at 4 and hanging around until 5:30 in case anyone didn't get word that there was a Philly tournament and that other people were out of town as well. We played while we waited, one collins game, until Ronnie showed up. We finished up, with some kibbitzing about which words were good in our book, and then switched gears and each played Ronnie. They were very mellow games, all three. I'm really used to the Game Parlor background music of WoW theme song and bickering over miniature rules and roleplaying hilarity.

No #-only bingos. We learned one by looking up John's RIGHTEsT after the fact (STREIGHT#). But it was fairly easy to bend our brains back around to the better Tetris-y options available using the little #s.

I am still using too much time on my clock, which always happens after a long period of no live games.

I had both Vs in both games. This may be the very first time I have played DIVVY in a scrabble game.

cross forum, cross platform, cross players

Madman Kefka (1:52:49 PM): these are the exact same, word for word, arguments that WoW players are making to try and justify casual players getting rewards similar to hardcore raiders

listeme (1:58:27 PM): and there are a lot of people who assume as soon as the topic comes up that the top players just want their money
Madman Kefka (1:58:46 PM): what is silly to me
Madman Kefka (1:59:01 PM): is how many people think they, having never made it past, say, division four, think they know the motivations of the top-rated players in the world
Madman Kefka (1:59:11 PM): or anything of the effort involved
Madman Kefka (1:59:51 PM): the casual argument in WoW always, always comes down to someone saying "raiding is easy," having never set foot in anything outside of karazhan - they assume that it is as simple as devoting the time that they do not have to it, which is astoundingly far from the truth

The Game Parlor is not the most popular spot to hold Scrabble club. It is a busy place, and I think that is the main complaint, although it is also rather far for some people to drive.

I dunno. I come away from there feeling so UP. For one thing, today my boys drove back to college, and the guys that were playing Magic all over the place reminded me of them. The arguments and the rule-quoting and the lovely excellence that you have to understand at least a little bit to notice... it's all stuff that reminds me of MY guys. Then there were WoW folks at terminals, the usual scruffy guy kind of WoW folk, but one father-son pair hanging around in Mulgore just nearly made me teary. The little boy was keeping track of his quest loot with such excited dignity.

And the noise and the chatter, it's okay for club for me, because tournaments are not like that. It's like wearing extra weight on your practice runs. When I get to tournament games and have the luxury of "what's this -- quiet??", well, I will be running like the wind. That's my theory anyway.

It was also great to see XPMorgan in person and play him, even though I did steal most of the consonants. I should have been a better hostess.