Scrabble Online or How to Survive Without TV

Sandi and I are playing Scrabble online. This is FUN! We're using the Scrabulous website and playing by email. If the two games we've played are any indication, we are pretty evenly matched. But I gotta tell you, I really worked hard for my win!

Playing Scrabulous is free, easy, and addictive. Sandi and I played the first game slow, over a couple of days. The next one we pretty much sat by our computers waiting for the emails to come in. Being the antsy sort, I kept clicking on "refresh screen" to learn her next move. The only equipment I'll need, besides my computer and the internet, is possibly a Scrabble Dictionary. Merriam Webster is on my computer but I don't think that is considered official. It helps though. When Sandi spelled "xi" I had to look it up. That's when I learned you could use the spellings of Greek letters in play. Amazing! It's been years since I last played and we were pretty simple with the rules then, no proper nouns or foreign words. That was about it. Guess I need to reacquaint myself with the rules.

Sandi being good at this isn't surprising. Looking online for the above image, it's from Wikipedia, I learned that most of Britain is in love with the game. She probably played every other day when she lived there. Another thing I learned was that scrabble is available for cell phones. That sounds like fun!

Scrabble is helping me deal with not having a TV. Mine died Friday. I'm not ready to invest in a new one yet. So I'm looking for things to do to fill in the hours I used to spend watching "So You Think You Can Dance?" and "Numb3rs." This is doable. I've got a friend who only recently got satellite to watch. Before that she and her husband did other things. They did have a TV, but, not liking the selection of available shows...or the ads that go with them, they watched DVDs of series they'd heard good things about instead. The summer we landed on the moon my family went on a month long camping vacation. I survived that with no TV and I can survive this.

There are blessings to be had from going TV-less. They are electricity hogs. Yesterday I unplugged it, along with the DVD player, the digital converter, and the powered antenna. That should cut con$umption a bit. The activities I hope to fill the time with will, I think, make my life richer and more productive. I'll read more, listen to music, and practice my guitar. Maybe I'll get some yarn and try crocheting or knitting. I might even go outside for an evening walk. Cooking, cleaning, playing with GIMP and the photos I've taken, there's lots I can do. One thing I'd really like is to find myself spending more time with people. So I think I'll try to make one or two of the evening events at church.

Peace! Hope! & Joy! And with that Peace some Quiet!

Dibs and Dabs of Stuff

This morning I'm grinning from ear to ear. San awarded me the "Just Plain Fun to Read" award. Yay! Thank you San! It's proudly displayed on the right sidebar.



Thursday evening I rediscovered the public library. Wanted something new to read. Didn't want to face the dangers of walking into Barnes & Noble...or any other bookstore for that matter. So I stopped by on my way home. While there I picked up a copy of the latest book by the late Madeleine L'Engle, The Joys of Love. Apparently this had been in the possession of her family and is published posthumously. At my friend Micheal's suggestion, I'm trying out a book by Lois McMaster Bujold, Cordelia's Honor. Michael and I've been functioning as good personal libraries for each other lately. That's a great way to save and keep in touch with friends. The third book I picked up, and am in the process of reading now, is Maria V. Snyder's, Poison Study.

Getting books at the public library has been added to the lifestyle changes list.

With books I'm like a kid in a candy store. It can be hard to choose. When I have more than one new book I sometimes use a method for choosing which to read first. Two or three of the most interesting looking (it's a mood of the moment thing) get into bed with me and I read a few lines or a page from each. The one I get hooked by at the time is the one I start with and read for the next few days. That's what happened last night with Snyder's book. I was hooked in the first paragraph. Wow! Talk about good writing. You wake from a nightmare caused by experiences you lived through. You're in prison. You're walking towards your own execution thinking "how nice to have it all over," and then boom, you're getting offered one of those jobs which might kill you, but while you do it your still alive. Who couldn't get hooked by a book that does that in 6 short pages?

While at the library, I proudly noticed that Susan's book Shelter was on the shelves. Yay, my friend is known locally too!

Michael is teaching me how to play Dungeons & Dragons. This is apparently going to take some time because the game isn't being played yet. He is in preparation still because he's writing the scenario and needs to gather a team of players to play it. What we've been doing towards my part is design my first character. The story is set in an alternate US history. It has lots of cultures in it and I'm a Half Elf, Asian-American, Female Sorceress. So far we've done the creation dice rolls that tell you what your strength, knowledge, and some other stuff are. Then we added the extra points by race and selected weapons I'm supposed to be good with. Those were longsword, rapier, and short and long bow. Now I'm in the process of reading through a list of feats to choose one which I can have as a starting feat. Why they call these feat I've no idea. They seem sort of like talents to me. But I'm new to this and maybe talent has another meaning in the game.

And on a frustrated but also affectionately amused note, now that my desk top has been cleaned and decluttered (for the most part), Hyram has decided that it is his favorite perch again. So he keeps jumping up in the middle of the desk. And I keep shoving him over to one side. His tail flicks a lot and when it disrupts mouse movements I lift him down. He turns around and jumps right back up. So we're in the battle for computing/cat perch space right now. I love that he wants to be close to me. I love how he purrs when he's up here even while flicking his tail swiftly and roughly. But I don't love to have my mouse, in my hand at the time, flicked by his tail so that my efforts to work are disrupted. Oh well! Maybe someday I'll get a deeper desk and have more room for him. I'd give him the entire side of this one but so much of the back edge is lined with stuff that he'd knock off and I'd then have to crawl under the desk to retrieve them. At least Hooboo hasn't decided he wants the space too so there are no cat fights going on while Hyram rests on his new throne. :)