Books, Cars, and Day Break

Well... There's a bit that happened this week.

First, I won't be able to go to the BAT this year. My car started to overheat on Monday, so I ended up going over to Triangle Auto, to get it repaired. That was fixed on Tuesday. But then, this morning, my car wouldn't start - I think it's my alternator belt - I'm PRAYING that my car will start tomorrow, and I hope that they can fix it cheap.

I did happen to manage to get up to Barnes & Noble before my car died. Managed to pick up 4 books, along with the Complete Wordbook, by Mike Baron - One of the best book on Scrabble to date.

AND - ABC has finally aired the rest of "Day Break" on line - so I'm glad to be able to finally watch the rest of the series.

Something new, Something used...

Thanks to my greatest bestest friend in the world, I have a 5.1 surround sound setup now. And I'll never go back to listening to a movie on a TV. Ever. It's only a 720 watt system, but that's PLENTY of power for my small apartment. It's a great system, and the movies sound incredible. As do TV shows as well.

And thanks to my landlord, I now have a second monitor hooked up to my system again. It's another 16 inch monitor, and it looks fantastic. It's nice having my Matrix setup going again.

A very late post....

Due to the fact that for the last 6 days, I've had the absolute WORST case of diarrhea I've ever had in my life. After last Saturday's Scrabble tournament (4W-3L... but more on that in a bit), I came home, and was feeling fine, but Sunday night - well... let's just say my ass exploded. Multiple times. And it did that for 5 DAYS! I'm on antibiotics now to help cure what ever is in my system, and yesterday I had my first NORMAL looking poo in a week. At least I'm getting better.

Onto the tournament!

I went in seeded 14th out of 20 and finished in 9th place. I'm rated at a 692, with 4 wins and 3 losses. I Bingoed in 5 out of 6 games and had my best game ever with a score of 448 points.

Here's a list of my bingos:

Game 1 - played PLANETS for 91 points on a TWS.
Game 2 - Two bingos! NAILERS for 66 and vAINEST for 77
Game 3 - Three bingos! (you see a pattern?) Phonied a bingo PELTIN(G)S for 69, FOCUsED for 83, and then I had my best play of the game - I bingoed out with ENSNAR(L)S on a TWS for77 points.
Game 4 - INcITI(N)G for 66
Game 5 - D(E)FICITs for 61
Game 7 - HuNTERS for 74

All in all an excellent tournament. The next one is on June 9th, and I'm planning on attending that one as well.

In other news, I finally - after years of waiting - bought a real MP3 player. It's a Creative Labs Zen Vision:M 30 GB mp3 player. But it also playes Movies, Music and photos as well. This little piece of equipment has a TON of features.

It has a built in radio, microphone to do dictation with, it can import contact info from Outlook, you can use your own images as wallpaper. It plays Movies (Divx, Xvid, MPG and AVI - and if the format isn't compatible, it'll convert it so it is), music (which I already have a bunch on there), and photo slide shows. 250 bucks at Walmart, and it's quite the little package. My only concern is that the touch pad you use to navigate with is very sensitive - make for selecting what you want to do a bit frustrating at times. But other than that - a great mp3 player.

Why do people do that?

I haven't figured this one out.

I chat with people on line (who doesn't), but I've run across this phenomenon.

I've actually received and IM from someone that said "Hi", I said "Hello" back to them, and then they tell me "Can't chat now, can we chat later?"

Now.... If you contact ME and say "Hi", I assume that you want to chat. If you can't chat, then why do you IM someone in the first place?

Like I said, I haven't figured it out yet.....

Ready! Aim! Fire!

Not a weapon, but a camera. A Digital Camera to be exact.

I bought a HP Photoshare digicam for 99 bucks up at Wally World last night. Along with a camera case, rechargeable batteries, and a 1GB memory stick, I spent about 140 bucks all together. I worked 10 hours of OT at work, so I could afford it. I also got my tripod back from Heather.

In Scrabble News – I registered for a 7 Game tournament next Saturday. Sharon and I are gonna carpool down to Dover NH, and I hope to do well against the novice group.

Holy Crap!

That’s all I have to say about the weather. Well, actually I have more to say about it, but that sounded good.

As of 4:15pm it is 64 degrees outside. Not 46 – 64. That’s a 6 and a 4 side by side. IN JANUARY!

Now I’m all for warm weather… but IT’S FREAKING JANUARY! There should be a foot or two of snow outside my window, but I can actually see grass growing. It’s still green in January.

And people say that global warming doesn’t exist…. To quote Bill Cosby… “Riiiiiiight”…

Coolest. Idea. Ever.

I got an awesome idea yesterday.

I’ve looking to purchase a round shoulder bag to carry my Scrabble board around. SamTimer.com sells round board carrier for $29.99+5.00 s&h. Looking at the pictures , I realized that the board carrier is basically a cymbal case. You know, like for a drum set.

So I strolled into “Music Maniac”, and look at the prices for cymbal cases. $19.99!

So basically, I bought a Scrabble bag for 20 bucks. I’m loving it.