damn this slow ass live coverage. i need to know what's going on in orlando and i need to know NOW!!! go tommy!

Just thought I'd leave you with a little something fun as we head out to the RedEye. It's fucking freezing in Minneapolis, by the way!
Courtesy of anendlessnight.

Instructions: Open up your iTunes and fill out this survey, no matter how embarrassing the responses might be.

How many songs total: 3815
How many hours or days of music: 12 days

Most recently played: "Circles" - The Ensemble at Salaam
Most played: "Helplessy Hoping" - Crosby, Stills & Nash (22 plays)
Most recently added: "I Remember Painfully" - Daniel Johnston

Sort by song title
First Song: "A-Plus" - Hieroglyphics
Last Song: "Zombie" - Fela Kuti
Sort by time
Shortest Song: "The Ironman Takeover Skit" - Ghostface Killah (0:05)
Longest Song: "Introduction: What is Existenialism - Hubert Dreyfus (1:14:40)

Sort by album
First album: "Aaliyah" by Aaliyah
Last album: iTunes considers "Youth" by Matisyahu

First song that comes up on Shuffle: "This Time Anything Finite At All" - Songs: Ohia

Search the following and state how many songs come up:
Death - 29 (but most are Death Cab for Cutie)
Life - 27
Love - 151
Hate - 8
You - 326
Sex - 21

That was fun. Tag, you're it.

Tom and I have been playing some incredible Scrabble. Nothing like some awesome home games to make me get back on the horse again! I joked that the reason I keep tanking tournaments is because I don't want anyone but Tom to know how good I'm getting...I even got to play the title of my favorite Pearl Jam album: BI(N)AURAL! That was definitely a highlight of our weekend games...
In other news, we're looking to move ASAP after discovering that our super's shoddy furnace fixing left us with carbon monoxide pumping through the house for nearly six weeks! Eeks...
So it looks like the Red Eye then Dallas for us, cause we'll be trying to move before the end of the month. Phew...well at least we didn't die. And that sort of close call, puts it all back into perspective. Carbon Monoxide Posioning = Death, Scrabble = board game that should always be fun (win or lose)...
PS: we saw Once, this weekend. Great fuckin' movie!

So Tom and I decided yesterday morning that we should head to South Lyon, MI to play this weekend. Saturday's a divisional tournament and Sunday's another NAST satellite tourney. I'm so excited to play again! I've even been trying to get in some study since I got Baron's new Scrabble Wordbook. It's by far my favorite study tool, but proved useless when studying from the old version and I found myself challenging acceptable bingos that I'd never encountered before.
We are also signed up for Lisa Slankard's tournament in Elmhurst, IL the weekend after Thanksgiving. And in a sure sign of my insanity, I volunteered to work on Thanksgiving if need be, because I'm just too greedy to pass up triple-time pay. I've also secured our plane tickets and sent in our entries for New Year's Eve weekend in Albany! And to complete it all, we've got our tickets (still need to send in entry fee) to Minnesota for the Red Eye during MLK weekend.
Hooray! Work is winding down and I'm back to playing some scrabble. Now, let's hope I can pick up 62 points before New Year's so I can play up. Have a great weekend everybody. Good luck if you're playing if not, get to studying.
x's + o's...

I'm now rated 1138. I got a 101 point bump this weekend without acceleration points. I can't really get into all the details, but I will later. Here's a quick summary. During the NAST early bird, despite one early drubbing by David Weiss it was like I could do no wrong. My break served me well and finally getting over 1000 has relaxed me during tournament play. I was in third place before the final game, edging out Steve Hartsmann by spread points. He shellacked me in the final game, taking away those crucial spread points and knocking me into 6th place. I won $20 for the class prize and another $20 for high word of the tourney: V(E)RIFIED for 110 points...double double bingo biotches!
Feeling confident after the NAST I fell back down to earth losing my first two games of the main event. After a quick cig break with Tom, I put my head back on straight and won my next four before playing my "scrabble daddy" Lesley Salas. Lesley wins after I chicken out on UPSTAIR to bingo out. I finsh the day 4-3. But Sunday, I go 4-1, including a 9 point and 3 point win, which are upheld via recounts. I take 4th. Gain another 20 rating points and some cash for the scrabble fund. I'm feeling good and I should move into the 9th spot on the top 10 ratings gainers when it's all said and done over at cross-tables. I'll do a more detailed account later in the week.
Thanks all for your congrats and well wishes. I'm finally feel like I'm catching up to my Scrabble boys...

sorry for my silence. i've been working 70 hour weeks, literally. i work 12 hour days and on the weekends as well. i'm burnt out! no time for study, no time for play, not even any time for tom...4th quarter sucks.
i'll see you all again soon. i'll start playing again and posting again.
i hope you're all doing splendiferously. i'm off to notre dame this weekend for some much needed tourney play and next weekend's the dells. i have no expectations of doing well, as i haven't been to club in weeks. i'm just excited to spend some time with tom, scrabble friends and play this crazy game we all love so much. and did i mention i'm stoked not to be at work over the next 2 weekends!
ps: i'm now 1017!

Hey guys! I've been unusually quiet, haven't I? Well, we decided to play in Chicago over Labor Day weekend and it was a lot of fun. Jeremy ran a great tournament. At the last moment (literally the morning of), I was moved into the next higher division. I felt nervous and unprepared and played a pretty terrible tournament with moments of sparkling brilliance. Tom, however, continues his astounding play and finished in 2nd place, after starting the first day at 7-0!
But here's the kicker: I'M FINALLY OVER 1000!!!! I'm at 1001 to be exact and sheesh, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. 1000 was just a mental hurdle and now that I'm over I'm ready to put the time and effort into getting really good.
We're headed to Fenton this weekend. I'm hoping to pick up some more points in Sunday's Late Bird Open!
Happy September everyone! Can't wait for fall to get here...

...dayton was fun. blah, blah, blah.
after seeing my rating rise as high as 1060, i'm back in the sub-1000 world, where i'm rated 979.
back to the drawing board. i however, despite my rating loss, did play the best scrabble of my yearlong career. with this new enthusiasm (and the love of a good man, wink) i am reinvigorated and plan on finally breaking through. we've got lots of tournaments lined up. i've been studying and getting in playing sessions with chicago's finest. i'm soon to be jobless and i'm actually kinda looking forward to some much needed time off...
sorry, i'm so quiet. life is whirling around and i didn't want to rehash dayton's soul-crushing game in which your hero deals with a CHEATER!!!
i'll be posting soon...congrats to the lost boys of scrabble (pete, george, tom and especially kelly mac) on ripping shit in dayton, smash and grabbing ratings points and keeping me levelheaded between tears. i love you all like family!
ps: kurt's coming to stay with us for a few days starting tomorrow night. should be interesting, to say the least. mwah...

...I'm taking a Scrabble break. I'm burnt out...if I'm quiet over the next week or so, that's why. I just need to clear my head of all the bad Scrabble baggage that's been building up. I love you all. I'll check in on your journals here and there. Feel free to call or email...
I'll be off trying to get outside and enjoying something unrelated to words, tiles and points. Hey, don't worry 'bout Tom, this little bout of scrabble-depression, isn't contagious. He's studying like a mad man for the Players Championship.
See you soon fools!

A quick entry. I'm in for some long work hours and I'll do a full MI Madness writeup on Wednesday when my schedule's back to normal.
In the meantime, just wanted to let you know that I still haven't cracked 1000! I finished 8-6, +461. That was good enough for 11th place out of 42 people and as the 20th seed. I'm pretty stoked about 11th place considering I was 3-5 after the first day. I really pumped it up yesterday finishing 5-1. The one loss was an 11-point heartbreaker that I could have one if I had listened to my gut. But my performance was pretty stellar. Not good enough though, as I've dropped from 999 to 990. Screw the ratings system!
So today, here's my own humanopodes...

Hey guys! So in familiar fashion, Tom and I are headed off to play Scrabble this weekend. I just did some quick math this morning and since moving to Chicago, Tom and I have logged 1866 miles of driving. After this weekend, the total kicks up to 2448 miles and counting...we've got Urbana and Dayton drives coming up as well. And as most of you know, I don't drive. So here's a hearty thanks to TomTom for being my chauffeur and transporting me around with a smile. To begin to repay my debt, I will try to get a learner's permit on Tuesday morning, as I don't work until the afternoon.
I'm so excited for Michigan Madness. We're going to rip shit, yo! And could this be the weekend, I finally crack 1000. It's been an epic journey full of highs (EUdAI(M)ON) and lows (too many to name just one). And I'm ready for the next chapter to begin...finally! Keep your fingers crossed for me.
If you're playing this weekend good luck, unless you're sitting across the board from me. Have fun gang! Be safe. And I'll see you soon! x's+o's-em

...and no, I don't mean Marlon! Hey guys. Well, I'm sitting here at work on Monday morning excited, energized and refreshed. What a wonderful weekend of doing nothing. Saturday, we went out to see Tom's family for a barbecue. That was a nice, chill couple of hours in the burbs. His nieces and nephews are adorable and I was more than happy to play with them for the majority of the afternoon, if only because I knew that eventually we'd be leaving and that's the relief in dealing with children (sorry to sound so anti-kid, I'm not really; I just know that I don't want any myself). After the burbs, we headed home and chilled out for the rest of Saturday evening. Sunday, we were up by 7:30 or so, which is actually sleeping in for me since I seem to pop up around 5:12am no matter what time I go to bed.
And then the Scrabble began. We probably played ten games this weekend and I think I ended up 3.5 (-180). The last few games were so brutal that we both decided we'd had enough of playing. Can you imagine? This week, we're each going to devote 1 solid hour at home to study. That's on top of what we can manage at work. Today I'm working on vowel dumps (4-8 letters) while reviewing the fours. I also need to finish my song for Michigan Madness. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag yet, so I can see the looks of surprise/horror/glee when I bust out my Scrabble karaoke parody. Tom's been helping me write it and we've been having so much fun trying to get it as stoopid as possible. I know there are going to be some awesome parodies. ipecac_icecap let me in on what he's working on (not one, but two songs!). And I think he's going to set the bar pretty high. I think if they come out like I think they will, they'll be pure majesty.
Yesterday we also had the pleasure of going to visit etheridge2 while he was umping no less than 5 games at once down at beautiful Grant Park. Jeremy's answered the casting call of that new gameshow Power of Ten. And Tom's helping him get his casting tape together. I don't know about you, but I'd love to see Jeremy on national television, yukking it up next to Drew Carey. I wonder just how many of our Scrabble brethren are going to end up on the show.
Michigan Madness is going to ROCK!!! I'm still trying to figure out how I can fit a thinly-veiled come-on to Chuck Armstrong into my Scrabble song. Will this be the weekend I make my move? Well, that's about it. I'm feeling good. I hope you are too. Back to studying.

It was the best of times...it was the worst of times...



But aruspex is victorious and finishes in the money at 3rd place.

( More madcap adventures this way... )

hey fools. back from the most awesome weekend. as soon as mr. kowalik emails me the pictures, i'll do a full report including game writeups. no internet hook-up on the road, so i apologize for the silence. but boy do i have some stories for you, my friends! and i've only got two days of work this week before tom and i begin our week of music extravaganza! woot...
erica

...so right after work, Tom and I are headed to East Lansing for more Scrabble! I'll have my laptop and since it'll be us chilling waiting for aruspex, I'll have more than enough time to transcribe the games I've been writing out by hand! We've lost our fourth roommate, pbzeigler so it should be a quiet evening at the Red Roof Inn.

if you're in the midwest, got your scrabble jones going, get your ass to east lansing this weekend. run by two of the nicest guys in the scrabblesphere, jeff clark and mark garrod, it promises to be an interesting, challenging weekend. it's basically an open. 2 division split right in the middle of the field. contact jeff (810-347-0571; bgscrabble@aim.com) or mark (517-281-4786; garrodma@msu.edu) and let 'em know you're coming. you can pay cash at the door! they couldn't make it any easier unless they drove you to the site...

So yesterday was awesome...as evidenced by our own hometown hero, Mr. Jeremy Cahnmann in his finest pimp regalia.

Too bad, I didn't get a full shot. He's got full on silver platform shoes, a pimp cup and the whole nine yards. Today's outfit promises to be just as ridiculous. Tom is tearing shit up at the tourney and we didn't wait around for final standings yesterday, but he should be in the top 3. After a 1-3 start, I managed to win all four games after lunch. We're playing great scrabble, it's super early and I'll have a longer post tonight. Bye babies!
x's + o's -em

hey all. sorry for the lack of posts but last week was sort of spent in a whiskey-induced haze. we started celebrating my birthday on wednesday and i've been drinking ever since. now that things are settling down i'll be back to regular updates.
so chicago is awesome. i really love it here already. tom and i have been playing scrabble nonstop since i landed last saturday and i ventured to the chicago club on sunday. despite going 0-5, i had a fairly good time, though by the end of the afternoon my brain was scrabble-fried. tom and jeremy had a cool game, where jeremy laid down WAITLISTED, tom challenged and it came back as good. leave it to the conman to bust out some crazy ten....
it's pretty dead at work so i'll probably spend the week studying scrabble words at my desk. when i start talking about my scrabble obsession among my new co-workers they nod enthusiastically for about five minutes then i'm ranting and raving still and i can see them looking around for the nearest exits! some things never change...
arden cup's looming large now and i feel good. i'm excited to play in a multi-day tourney and still be able to come home at the end of the night. i'm going to play hostess for jeremy's friday pre-arden throwdown. it's a role i think i was born for! scrabble hostess! squeegman and samhampton are crashing with us over the weekend and as jeremy's place becomes more crowded we might try to help pick up the overflow. maybe.
so that's what's going on in my world. i'll see so many of you this weekend. i'm so excited! how are you doing out there?
x's + o's -em

Hmmm. So I woke up this morning after polishing off a large bottle of Jack Daniel's with my friend Izzy and her man. There was a box of Popeye's chicken on the floor, my keys, iPod and wallet were strewn about. I didn't remember how I got home from their place (I walked). When waking up in this state, the first thing I usually do is check my cell phone log to see who I drunk dialed.
The outgoing calls list showed an eight minute call to HWSNBN! I panicked because I know how I can be when drunk. I sent a sheepish text message saying I hoped that I hadn't been too bad on the phone.
A few minutes later the phone rang and HWSNBN explained to me that yes, I had drunkenly called him, insisting that I was not drunk. And I proceeded to whine about what a terrible Scrabble player I am! Hah, drunk dialing to talk about Scrabble. You know I'm obsessed. Apparently, I went on and on about him, GV and PZ leaving me in the Scrabble dust...and how I don't want to be in the bottom division while they move up and up and up. It's true. I feel that way. But instead of getting drunk and whining about it, it's time to hit the books like I did way back when. Now where's my palm....

...after about 30 hours of hibernation, many shots of NyQuil and a couple of bags of cough drops, I feel wonderful!! I took the day off yesterday to just sleep and lounge around. I even cracked a book for the first time in months without feeling guilty about studying word lists...
HWSNBN is all moved into the place. Unfortunately, the assholes at Comcast can't get us any reasonable appointment so he's been without internet for nearly a week now. And it'll be another week before we get it. Actually, not until I get there! Sheesh. So I've been going through ISC withdrawl cause there's not really anybody else I want to play with. On the other hand I enjoy the random phone calls throughout the day asking me to look up an address or a phone number....makes me feel special.
I'm having a small, intimate going-away party with family and friends on Cinco De Mayo. I'm tying up some last loose ends at work. And in great news, I've got a job. I land on Saturday the 12th and was orginally gonna start working on Monday the 14th. I've had to push it back to Tuesday, the 15th due to the Comcast situation. I'm actually kinda grateful for another day off to decompress and process the big change. My birthday's on that Wednesday, the 16th and we're contemplating watching the White Sox take on the Evil Empire! We'll probably just play scrabble and drink whiskey as I am wont to do...
Blah, blah, blah. On and on I go. I still think I'm going to wake up and find out that the past two and a half months have been some crazy dream. But it is starting to come into focus a bit. On Tuesday, we sorta finished deadline. The retoucher was done anyway. She's become a great friend and as she was checking out with me, I realized that I wouldn't see her in the office anymore. I'm sure I'll see her when she comes to visit Chicago and when I return to New York, but it was just weird to realize that I wouldn't see her on a regular basis. We shared a long hug and when she pulled away, we both had tears in our eyes. She blinked hers away and I full on started sobbing. Sheesh.
I'm sure there's more tears ahead for me this weekend....I'm such a crybaby.
Anyway. Hugs and kisses to you all...good luck to all my peeps playing in Portland and Buffalo. And special good vibes being sent to the Hudson crew, especially my Scrabble boys (TK, KM, GV, PZ)...rip it up fools!