if only i could do this for a living

i finished the last game today and figured it must be around 7 or 8pm, and it was a little after 4. the bbq was excellent - i actually felt completely relaxed for part of the time. driving back to the tourney site, the butterflies in my stomach returned to flight.

not much to report, really - good synergy, findable bingos. huge swing in my last game vs robin when i got to bingo out with (RE)COUNTER and got 32 off her rack. that was my first really straightforward win - everything has had great positions to think about. three of my losses have been really excellent games.

lisa and i play a second time tomorrow morning. four more - wish me luck!

I keep forgetting to finish this. I'm 8-7. I'm paying more attention to how all my friends are doing than to my own games. It'd be nice to have a good second half - I'm 3-2 in the second half and playing at the middle tables.

• Start with crap, trade, he trades, draw seven consonants. Gets better from there, though some of my decisions are still pathetic. Play with me!


• Mrr. Played iNGROW*, stayed on, turned tiles like crazy, made good choices til pre-endgame. Bad. Play with me!
( Read more... )

There have been something like three sunny days in the entire month of June here in Kittery/Portsmouth/Durham. I'm wearing a sweater today and it's June 30. I'm looking forward to going to Albany, where it's supposed to be in the mid-70s. It's also supposed to thunderstorm almost every day. Hopefully it'll stay clear for the bbq! In any case, I'm excited to wear summerier clothes. I will pack things that can get wet without being see-through. I've traveled every weekend for the past three - I haven't even unpacked my things from last trip yet. Oy!

front hooks for:
EERILY
ETHOXY
LIMPSY (lacking strength or vigor)
PACIFY
RICKEY
RUDERY
TROPHY

bonus: the five adverbs that end in -LY and compare [-LIER, -LIEST]

answers ( Read more... )

• Good game up til some lack of drawing at the end and not reading my opponent's plays well enough. Learned KIBBLED. play with me!


• Total brain fail on front hook to HONES. Changed rhythm of game. play with me!(note: names backwards).


• Eh, nothing else to do. Straightforward moves lead to sure loss. play with me! (incomplete file due to lack of being able to read my handwriting).


• Start with CLYSTER, which is apparently good! Drawing + board control + magic bingo lane for my 90s band/valid bingo of ERASURE.
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• i almost lose by challenging ROILY and then trying OUTBOIL* - she would have challenged MOZO late in the game if i drew slowly - her not knowing it and not hooking an S basically let me win.


• 56 tiles played to his 37, starting with KEITLOA double-double. PINONE* for 30 (only PINON and PINONES - I had no idea). he took it well.


• lanes open just when i need them, LAZE overlap for 72, three bingos. he took it well, too.


• nice long plays WARKED, DUCTILE (non bingo through something), DECANT, with him repeating almost every word i played. made me want to play offensive words just to see if he'd say them out loud. he challenged MOoRAGES, which made the win much easier.

indian delivery dinner mmmm. seven blanks in four games, playing no higher than the 31st seed, so it's a good thing that i have four wins.

• we like to help each other win. last time he helped me, this time i returned the favor. horrible awful pre-endgame. i steal his sweatshirt in protest (not really - he left it at the venue, so i adopted it). play with me!


• poor jesse. he's due for a 600-200 win against me some time soon.


• put me in front of a board at 945 and watch me self-destruct! draw all power tiles, score 334.

i have a dell at work with pentium 4 processor, 2.8 ghz, how much RAM should i have if i want to run word, excel, quackle, zyzzyva, firefox and dreamweaver all at the same time?

also, i'm leaving work now. please nag me about quackling my games. i need to do them and have no intrinsic motivation to do it.

Um... yeah. It was my worst tourney in awhile. I couldn't focus, my first four games were almost too easy, and then I ran into trouble later. I gave away a couple. I drew two blanks out of 10 in the five games against the highest seeded players I faced (and went 0-5), and all but one against the lowest four I faced. I had three bingoless games (winning none) and in general, this wasn't a high bingo, high scoring tourney, with only 65 bingos total (36 me, 29 them). I had a lot of word knowledge problems. I guess this is all normal in the long run, but it felt like a very bipolar set of games. Plenty of stuff to look at and fix before Albany.

The tourney itself was run nicely, the space was great, and the food in the area was tasty. And the company, as always, was fabulous. I overdosed on greasy goodness yesterday at Skooter's diner after games (burger with fried onions, fries, milkshake), and all I ate for dinner was trail mix.

Bingos... ( Read more... )

today: print scoresheets, pack, play live games with tim, groceries, dinner, gym?, travis, fret.
tomorrow: leave early, battle commuter traffic, arrive at Hilton, unpack a little, help terry, work out, fret, play games, order indian delivery food?, play more games.
saturday: food, coffee, scrabble, food, coffee, scrabble, food, dance party.
sunday: see above, minus dance party.

June - Hartford
July - Albany
September - Maine
October - Craft Fair in MD? and maybe Cape (or CA Open if i win the lottery or something)
November - work gets busy...
December - back to Chicago

So that'll be nine tournaments this year, to match the nine from last year. I think this is a decent pace. It'd be nice to travel to one new place each year. This year it was NC (and Hartfod I guess, but that still feels pretty local). Next year maybe Dallas Open (finally), or maybe Nationals or the NAST.

i finished reformatting all of the sevens so that i can put them into supermemo at some point (i have a clunky process that involves adding the definitions from zyzzyva). the end is in sight! it's far away, but it's in sight :)

like the famous ROAST MULES - find the tens:

MICRO CAMEL
LLAMA TYPOS
HORSE HAWED
MOUSE KARAT
GIANT LEMUR

i have a roommate and a ride. exciting! and i like this venue, with its easy access to starbucks :)

Okay - I'm up, but barely. he's threatening BYGONES or (GOONEYS, but it isn't playable). What do you do?

see it on xt: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=3871#18

maybe? it's one of those ones that i haven't been to before. and since i'm almost definitely not headed to dayton... who else from around here is going?

next step: relearn the threes for Hartford.

i had a pretty disheartening morning, drawing one blank, winning one game. but, the luck was bound to shift after a long string of lucky wins and squeaking by. my rating should skim somewhere near 1900, which is very surreal.

bingos for me (39) / bingos for them (37) ( Read more... )

gijoel = 13
kfc, idalski, bricap = 11 (not in that order - my spread is low)
rafi, other people = 10

34 bingos yay

rating maintained

very very tired

anyone heading to/from arden from the 2000-3000N area of Chicago? I wouldn't complain about finding a way to get there that isn't begging a family member to drive me...

i couldn't find my palm phone last night, so i made tim stand in for it and quiz me on anagrams that he read randomly from his book. here's what i got: AEINLURSV, CDFIIUARY, AIKNNPS, CEEGINORZ, AAEILNTT. ( answers under the cut )