T-H-A-N-K- Y-O-U

Before I get on to the rant of the day, I have two things to say.


Number One - I heard you all loud and clear on yesterday's post. And to pull out my oft-used When Harry Met Sally line


You're right. You're right. I know you're right.


So now I've revised my New Year's Resolutions to these:


Don't worry.

Be Happy.

Practice Reciprocal Commenting.

Find out what the hell a Show Pony is.


I don't promise that you'll all notice the difference overnight, but you will notice it. I love the give and take aspect of blogging, and I think that I'm ready to stop using my last year's upheaval as an excuse to not take part in both.


Oh, and also? Thank you. I appreciate the honesty, even when it was a little rough to read. I'm being absolutely truthful when I say that there are days lately where I feel like a big, huge, grumpy whiner. And I need to know that if I do it too often here, someone will slap me. I guess I can take it if people think I'm a comment whore. But I sure would hate to be boring.



And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...



I hesitate to start throwing the F-word around, but I'm going to have to. Facebook. There. I've done it. One of the (far too many) things I'm really enjoying about Facebook is the word games that you can play. I like the solo ones well enough, but the best games are the Scrabble games I play on-line with people. I love Scrabble, you see. And, if I do say so myself, I'm not a bad Scrabble player. At least I never have been before. I can't seem to beat my mother, but I hold my own with everyone else.



But something very strange has been happening. One of my co-workers challenged me to a game and then proceeded to hand me my shorts. I mean he destroyed me. At the same time, he and I were involved in a three person game with yet another co-worker. He killed both of us. (I finished second - I lost by a lot - but I beat out the person in the number three slot by a nice spread). At the same time still, this third person and I were involved in a two person game and I beat her quite handily. Still with me?


When all three games were over, we started rematches. And before I knew it, after just two moves, this damn guy had me down 100 points. In two moves. To add insult to injury, the third person all of a sudden had a dramatic improvement in her game and was beating me as well.


WTF?


Today at work I cattily asked him if he played the game with a dictionary on his lap. He said, "Here. I'm going to show you a little secret." Then he pulled up some website called something like wineverygame.com (or close. I blocked it out on principle). Well, you put in the letters you have tiles for and it makes words for you. IT MAKES THE WORDS FOR YOU. Then he tried to tell me that it was still a skill game because you still had to find a place to put the words. Evidently, the third player in our trio had been filled in on his little secret right before our rematch, which explained why she was all of a sudden stomping on me. And then he said


"I thought everybody played that way."


Not me, brother. I'm a purist. So then I challenged him to play me with no dictionary and no website - the old-fashioned way. Think of it as Missionary Scrabble, I suggested. And to prove he could beat me anyway, he took me up on it.


We'll just see about that.