After spending a few hours to clean up the banquet area, the Scrabble board came out and Chris Fosmire, Anthony Celona, and I dueled.  We played with what I call speed rules which stipulate no more than 2 minutes per move, no consulting a dictionary, but allowing the 2- and 3-letter word lists to be on the table.  While I recognize this is both slower than tournament Scrabble and more permissive its pace is break-neck compared to the geriatric version where one can consult one of three dictionaries and actively solicit advice from other players.  I had a few notable plays:

  • In my first attempt to use all 7 tiles to spell ELOPING I created the word GLOTS.  I bullshitted that this was a colloquial term for the area comprising the glottis and epiglottis.  Chris detected my bullshit and I lost my turn, and my chance at ELOPING.
  • Creating ZING to get a triple letter score on the Z led me to play ELOPER and created the word OPE.
    Chris: What does it mean?
    Me: I have no idea, it’s on the 3-letter word list.
    Anthony: Dictionary says it’s an alternate spelling of OPEN.
    Me: That’s a special type of lazy man’s elision if it’s from the South.
    Anthony: Nope, it’s apparently Middle English and was used as AWAKE is to AWAKEN.
    Me: I don’t know if I feel smarter or dumber now.
  • My attempt at scoring big.
    Me: If you leave that trailing I open, I’ll give you a dollar.
    Anthony: IRON.  Your turn.  What were you going to spell?
    Me: QUYTING, probably for the first time in recorded Scrabble history.

I’m not as angry now that I know that QUYTING is only allowed in International Scrabble competitions and not American ones.

Most of our administrators spend either the morning or afternoon MBWA (managing by walking around) and some of the newer administrators are lighter on the lingo.

Anthony: Well, I’m done office duty, I think I’m going to go manage the WNBA.

FAIL

Most of our administrators spend either the morning or afternoon MBWA (managing by walking around) and some of the newer administrators are lighter on the lingo.

Anthony: Well, I’m done office duty, I think I’m going to go manage the WNBA.

FAIL

Anthony Celona is Assistant Program Director for 2008 and he doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the administration. It’s not that he has a non-sequential learning curve or that he has a fro that Schindler could have used but he has no dunlop. If you’re not familiar, the dunlop is a growth that occurs when one has dunlop’s disease, where one’s gut dun lop over one’s belt.

Rob Scafidi had the genius idea of manufacturing a prosthetic dunlop to aid the dunlopically deficient. I look forward to Anthony getting fired “That’s it Cenola! You’ve fucked up for the last time. Turn in your keys, radio and dunlop and get the hell out of my office.”

Scrabble is a game I’ve always enjoyed and camp has been the most common place for play.  Being an arrogant sum-bitch my goal is always to either use obscure words in an attempt to get someone to challenge me or use just plain bigger words than other people.

The floor has leveled somewhat by people bringing Scrabble Dictionaries and other game aides but vastly lengthened the time required to complete a game.  I’ve fought back with speed Scrabble.  Each player has two minutes to make a move and once time is up you have five seconds to start moving tiles, skip your turn or refresh your rack.  The greatest change upon implementing these rules was that Anthony Celona’s score skyrocketed.

We tried more versions where we eventually got move times down to a little under a minute and each reduction in time gave Anthony another leap in points until he became devastating close to victory at 50 seconds a move.  Once again, the less thought involved, the more probably Anthony’s victory.  At 15 seconds a move he’d be a world champion.

Anthony’s Birthday shindig elicited two wonderful quotes:

Tom Leitz about Matan Shavit spending his first year in the Trading post as Rob Scafidi’s assistant: ‘Matan is not there to be your predecessor.’

Bill Schilling on his dog’s ability to eat: ‘My dog downs more wood than a Chicago prostitute’

Anthony turned 21 on Friday and wanted to celebrate. We met at Applebee’s and as I arrived first I ordered a round of drinks where Tom Leitz requested that Anthony not get a girly drink so I got him a Philadelphia Black and Tan in a 23 oz. glass. Everyone arrived and I was quite relieve that when Tom said “Bill was coming” that it was Schilling and not Mischke.

Anyway, Anthony’s glass’s fluid level slowly dropped but I’m certain that this was largely due to evaporation. I accosted him about this to which he responded “I had a number of daquiri’s on my birthday and I’m still recovering”. He didn’t finish his drink so I did what any reasonable person would, I made him steal it so he could finish it at camp. He declined, so I stole it (after paying for it which I suppose makes it not stealing) and I now a curvy iced tea glass.  On the plus side, it would have been hell to try to hold his hair back as he worshiped the porcelain god.

Jason Shavel played Anthony Celona in Jeopardy.  I started blurting out answers but Jason turned out to be far faster at dinging in so I started shifting up my tactic to even the playing field.  I interspersed false answers with faulty logic and convinced the two of the following

  • I Love Lucy debutted in the 1920s, almost 20 years before the television was invented
  • Ronald Reagan had both George W and George HW Bush as vice presidents
  • Ronald Reagan ran as vice president to the Bull-Moose progressive Teddy Roosavelt
  • The main product of cows used by farmers is semen
  • A one lens pair of glasses is called a unicle while a one wheeled bike is a monocycle
  • Scotch is a alcohol that begins with the letter ‘M’

Jason Shavel played Anthony Celona in Jeopardy.  I started blurting out answers but Jason turned out to be far faster at dinging in so I started shifting up my tactic to even the playing field.  I interspersed false answers with faulty logic and convinced the two of the following

  • I Love Lucy debutted in the 1920s, almost 20 years before the television was invented
  • Ronald Reagan had both George W and George HW Bush as vice presidents
  • Ronald Reagan ran as vice president to the Bull-Moose progressive Teddy Roosavelt
  • The main product of cows used by farmers is semen
  • A one lens pair of glasses is called a unicle while a one wheeled bike is a monocycle
  • Scotch is a alcohol that begins with the letter ‘M’