aaeilms

I can seem to muster no enthusiasm for scrabble at the moment. My moral outrage towards Hasbro is eclipsed by my moral outrage towards political liars and criminals, at least for now. My creative energy is pouring into fiction (as apparently is the case for those political liars), and autumn is keeping me busy with winter preparations and school things.

Tuesday night club is impossible. Sunday afternoon club is nonexistent. The only tournament I have on the horizon is logistically tricky, and I need to study a LOT for it. And without enthusiasm, that is tough. CGP is full of topics like "should I be outraged if my opponent does math aloud?" and while I'm sure that's very interesting to those few that are outraged, eh, I'm not finding it compelling.

I don't know. Am I temporarily retiring?

I just can't find it in myself to CARE about the game right now.

Potomac, the headquarters of britishness

Off we trekked to play Collins with Bob and Vince. (Vince is not studying the british words, but agreed to partner with Bob, which was kind of him.) We played four team games, split the power tiles, split the games, would have split the money had we played for money.

We played a scoring variant -- 10 points extra for any non-two Collins-only. This necessitates knowing the difference. I'm embarrassed to say that Bob got away with an extra ten for PARDY. (Challenges of #-ness are allowed; they cost 10 to the loser of the challenge.) We also let them get away with the entirely dictionaryless FUNKSIA*, which is ridiculous. I am glad we are playing 5 point challenge in these matches. I need to learn when to risk those points. Certainly I should risk them more often than I'm doing. The sureness line is not entirely clear to me yet.

Overall a good session. Bob is obviously studying.

Quick, punctuate!

You don't really have to. It's not a test. The blanks are T and S.

I'm finding it useful in keeping the categories straight in my brain. For some reason, it actually even helps to remember the new additions.

So on this board, there are at least one of *phonies, #british-only, @new, @#new-british, and unpunctuated because people think it's normal to consider English American-only.

Not that I'm bitter.

No one is immune

Here in the heart of Dictionary Rebellion, USA:

"That's not a word! That's a word made up by a stupid british person."

(Referring to HUMORESK#)

Working on British 11s

Kitchen world scrabble venue

Key:

On the windowsill are the pots that various offspring made from kindergarten to second grade. Most kids made lumpy ashtray things. Mine made lumpy castles and monsters (and ashtrays). One of the pots gets knocked off every day. I don't know why it hasn't broken yet.

Bookshelves were a Christmas present from John when I was in the apartment. This is the third time he has installed them.

Sagan the cat is not allowed on the table. She pretends amazement whenever we attempt to enforce this.

The paintings are part of a series my sister did when she was in art school. I wish she would paint more, but she is currently obsessed with dressage.

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.