Finally.

Primetime on the Scrabble Board

Things had been going so well. Then Joanna fogot what she was doing and played LINTS, which ruined everything. She feels really bad about it. I'm advocating we turn it into a Multiples of 13 game to maintain our prime number status.

In which Joanna issues a Challenge.

So far, so good.

Let's get together to discuss our vows of Chastity, Poverty, & Obedience

Nun Clubs

I didn't put much stock into these when Joanna first mentioned them. Then I did some research.


This Nunclub is some type of quasi-religious social club, based in St. Catharines, Ontario that reached its apogee in late-2006. They organize events like these:

• We will be meeting every other Sunday night, starting October 21st. One Sunday will be the study - the following nun nite will be a response to the study. The goal of the next few months will be transformation. This is not about learning more information, but about growth - in relationship to God, to each other & to our world.
• I still want us all to have fun together - and I think that this will actually be a great experience for all of us to share...

I like that they're still hoping to have fun together, even during their transformation. Also, I found this drawing, which is almost funny, there.

If religious transformation isn't what you're about there's also the United Nun Club. This club is "all about promoting the Nun Pigeon and the hobby." Don't miss the photo section for some of your future club-mates. Is that what you thought pigeon enthusiasts would look like? Does that cute little Yellow Nun make you enthusiastic anyway? If so, this is the club for you. You should know that Nuns are not the showiest of pigeons though, as PigeonFarms.com shows us.

The Jacobin is officially my favorite breed of domesticated pigeon. If you're interested in purchasing one for your own enjoyment there are many opportunities to do so online, for instance jacobins4sale.com.

1300 = ...

1. My highest 'scrabble' score ever. Cheapened only slightly by the non-conventional board layout and the blatant setups by Rochester Whitney.
2. My PSAT score in 10th grade.


Yes, I play scrabble against myself.

Our worst fears have been realized...

Not long ago I was excited about crossing the 1700 barrier in Scrabulous rating. How modest I was.

Class Warfare on the Scrabulous Board

Darcy and I are currently playing 4 games of Scrabulous at the same time. This is both time consuming and exciting. Today I played OEUVRE. I felt this was both a prudent use of excess vowels, and a pretty classy play. Darcy followed with POON. What a tramp.

Hello, my name is Whitney, and I'm a Scrabaholic.

Darcy may have recently beat me for the first time, but I have done something even better. The allusive 500 pt. mark is mine! Key plays included:

MONKIER - 72
OVATIONS - 72
RECOUPLE - 78
QI - 64

This latest victory has brought my Scrabulous ranking up to an impressive 1657. If I hit 1700 I'm going to buy myself a new pair of shoes. So I can do a little dance.

Joanna and I, as usual, are involved in a game of Scrabulous at the moment (I'm winning). Just before playing GAVEL she made this comment:


To which I hypothesized that she might have been stuck with 'esoVagus' instead of 'esophagus'. She replied:

O.C.D.

Jobonga's outdated latest sent me scurrying off to the O.E.D. to see what I could learn about sny. Turns out that the only thing of note is that all of our definitions are more interesting than the lexicographers'.

Fortunately I also noticed the entry directly preceding 'sny'.

What a nice little word. Of particular interest I suspect will be meaning #2. I personally wouldn't mind a little cat-snuzzling right about now. WARNING: while included in SOWPODS, 'snuzzle' is not valid in a TWL game of Scrabble or Scabulous. Even if you do have a blank to make that extra Z.

Interestingly (to me), the O.E.D. doesn't come out and say that 'snuzzle' is a portmanteau of 'snout' and 'nuzzle', which seems fairly possible. Instead, etymologically speaking, they give it as a (possible) variant of 'nuzzle' and suggest comparing it to 'snoozle'. Okay, I will.

Not very useful really since we're just sent off to compare something else, but at least I know I'll be dreaming of "... pigs snoozling in the straw" next time I'm back in snoozledom. I can't wait. And since 'snoozle' is in the TWL, you should be expecting it to appear on my Scrabulous Bingo list in the near future. Beware.

Phone Redox

I was talking to Jobonga last night. During the course of our conversation, in which we both continued to claim that we had nothing to talk about, a couple of familiar topics came up.

1. Scrabulous: This is a big part of our lives right now. I am fairly proud of my record in Scrabulous. Of the 30 games I've completed I have only lost 1, to one Jessica Hindman. Jessica is studying non-fiction writing at Columbia and has the dubious honor of being one of only 2 people in the world that have incited my wrath during a Scrabble game (the other of course being Ms. Moschenross and her defiantly errant use of QUO ). On the other hand, I think I'm probably the only one to have done that to Joanna, I mean jobonga, with the infamous JANITOR play back in 2002. There was no illegality involved in that though, just coercion.

Anyway, this is the final board of my one loss (yes, I take pictures of my Scrabulous boards, just like my Scrabble boards). And it is quite possibly the most amazing scrabble board I have ever been a part of. The center horizontal wasn't crossed until the last 4 plays of the game. Stressful. Most importantly, notice I only lost by 3 points.


2. Ugly People: I saw a cute girl making out with a shockingly ugly boy yesterday on campus. It happened right in front of me and their visual disparity stopped me in my tracks.

3. Sweaters: Joanna still hasn't provided an accurate count of her knits, but after taking stock of my closet this morning I feel much better about my sweater position.

Sweatering In Blue

Sweater Thursday came as a surprise to me this morning. I woke up in a hurry because I had to finish grading my students' last homework of the semester and then get them entered online before my first section at 9:55. I would have finished this last night but Jobonga called me. And despite her claiming on numerous occasions that she didn't have anything else to say to me, we actually had a lot to talk about. Some highlights: Libertarians are disturbing, especially since they're usually well-off white kids from the suburbs; someecards has a card for every occasion, remember that next time you wish to express something/anything; I'm not a huge fan of christ, specifically if you list him as one of your interests on Facebook; Boston = New Year's '08.

Anyway, the point is I was in a rush this morning, what with entering grades and having to walk to school through 2 feet of (mostly shoveled) snow because the bus never runs on time. I ended up with this blue vee neck, which I like, but which has a few moth holes in it. In this picture, while home for lunch, I contemplate my next Scrabulous move.

Lazy Scrabble

Breakfast this morning was partaken at Lazy Jane's on Willy Street. Tommy drove Martin, Deji, and I over to Hippy-town, Brad wore a santa hat, and an impromptu Scrabble game broke out. You may take issue with some of the words played; UO is certainly not in the Official Scrabble Dictionary and neither is TROL. Whatever, it was only Breakfast-Scrabble.
Not After-Dinner-Scrabble. And we needed to keep things moving. More to the point, I'm currently addicted to Scrabulous. Specifically, the Facebook incarnation of Scrabulous. [If you don't know what this is, you should figure it out. And then start a game with me. I'll probably win, but you'll have a good time anyway.] I'm currently playing 6 games, one of them with my alternate Rochester personality, and have begun compulsively checking to see if it's my turn to play yet. And when it's not my turn I am compulsively planning my next move. It has sapped what little productivity I used to have when at the Hmong Lab. HMONG, by the way, is not a valid Scrabble word. SMAZE is though, being a combination of smoke and haze. I recently came upon that curiosity while trying to make MAZE into a 5 letter word. It worked, and scored me 75 points. Which just goes to show, no matter how much I complain about people using arcane Scrabble vocabulary like AA, ZA, WEND, or JO, I'm clearly not above using it for my own personal gain.