At the moment of triumph, I suck

In our scrabble game tonight I was getting my ass handed to me in a neat and tidy way, as usual. Then, luck changed and I played RAVISH, then ZERO with a double letter tile on the Z, then QUIZ with a triple word tile. And finally, I played QUAIL off the Q. It kicked ass! I walked away with my highest game score ever in scrabble (we keep track of these things) at 308, only two points away from Leif’s highest score ever of 310.

Then, like a complete idiot, we dumped the tiles back into the bag with out taking a photo. But, Leif saw it too, and is a good enough sport to verify the story.

We fish you a happy holiday

Friday we took the spud to the county fair.

We had a blast. The spud was tall enough and brave enough to ride all the rides. Of course she also wanted to try all the carnival games, but I was not about to shell out a truck load of cash for her to either come away empty handed or worse yet, win a crappy toy that she didn’t need and would soon be forgotten in the deep dark recesses of her closet.

However, near the back of the fairgrounds we came upon a game where for one dollar you would get 6 ping pong balls. If you could land a ping pong ball in one of many little cups you won a goldfish. I had a soft spot for this kind of game, as once as a young spud myself I actually was allowed to play this game at a fair and won a fish. So thinking there was no chance that chance would favor my family twice in two generations, I let the spud play. Her second ball went right into a cup as if meant to go there. A perfect toss. So then I stood there sweating it out that she’d get more balls into cups. Luckily, I think, we only walked away with one fish, but the guy handing out the fish was kind enough to grant our request for one of the multicolored fish. It’s really rather pretty, for a cheap feeder goldfish.

Good job, Spud.

A big day at the Jones house full of random activity and absolutely nothing of substance

We had flash flood warnings yesterday.

Need I say, it was a high scoring Bookworm day. For those of you keeping track, poop is a legitimate scoring word, but there were no bonuses on the letter tiles during the one chance I had to play the word, so it only scored 1800 points. Loo apparently is also a legitimate scoring word. I had two bonus tiles on that play, so it got me 2730 points.

I would have preferred to play scrabble, but one needs a partner. The spud, being just six, is still having trouble commanding the spelling of C-A-T and is not really ready for it, Leif, however, is a very challenging partner, but he’s having insomnia this month. He’s officially being upgraded from basement troll to vampire. And not one of those lame teen angst sparkly ones. He’s a gritty one. A handsomely rugged one. Lately he’s been into shaving with this old fashioned safety razor and shaving soap you use with an honest to god shaving brush. Because he often doesn’t emerge from his bat cave until dusk, when I go to bed my room, which is stationed right next to the main bathroom, still smells of the lingering clean fragrant shave soap. Yes, I’ve been mostly alone these last few weeks with no real diversions; no school, no job, crappy weather, no where to go and no money to go there anyway, only a neurotic panicky dog, a 6 year old for companionship and the arousingly vague smell of shave soap. I’m going a bit wonky. Mmmmm gritty vampires. Forget about the impracticality of that. Definitely a lot wonky.

Too much information shared? Probably. Apologies.

Lest, however, I make too light of my day, I did manage, in between levels of Bookworm, to do 5 loads of laundry (including the ‘poop rug’ in the basement bathroom where Rupert feels compelled to do his dog business when the weather is too scary to venture outside the warm, dry safety of the den), tidy up the kitchen, take the dog for a short perambulation between storm bursts, charge the battery on the spud’s new cell phone, and look up book prices for fall classes. I also watched a couple episodes of Ramsay’s My Best Restaurant (not quite as much hollering and a few less f-bombs than Hell’s Kitchen or even Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares) with my favorite resident vampire before drifting off to sleep, dreaming of gritty, yet clean shaven, men.

Well, we have about 2 seconds of sunshine today. I should probably make some use of it.

Happy Tuesday to you all!

Just so the brain doesn’t rot whilst on summer holiday….

In my glorious 4 week holiday between my first summer class and my remaining summer classes I am taking great care to keep my mental faculties sharp.

Sharp as tacks.

Sharp as, Damn! I cut myself.

How, one may ask, does one do so?

Why, silly, by playing hour after hour of Bookworm. I mean, after all, it is the rainy season, and I’ve seen hardly 3 hours of sunshine all in a row in the last three weeks. I’ve read nearly every book in the house. Well, every book in the house that isn’t going to teach me something practical. Even on the cold, dark side of practicality we need some frivolity sometimes….

Anyway, I’m very impressed with myself and simply must share. I managed to score 9360 points on a single 4 letter word last night. VIVA. Yes, if you don’t play Bookworm, that’s a pretty good 4 letter word score. In fact, I think it’s my highest ever. I’m going to start a tally.

Well, I can’t afford to go to Cabo or Cancun. Humor me.