So, I have lots of things I could write about, but I'm too afraid to talk about them.
Do you ever feel like that?
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Dork Like Me
Inspired by Michael 5000's Dorkfest '07 http://michael5000.blogspot.com/, I shall now present to you, my three maybe four gentle readers, clear and present examples of my dorkiness.
Scrabble Stories
I have been known, on occasion, to play Speed Scrabble, which involves ditching that useless board altogether, drawing seven tiles from a mess of them in the middle of the table, then, at an agreed upon moment, assembling them as quickly as possible into words on your own private grid. Once someone has used all their letters they yell "draw two" or "draw one" if several dorks are playing. Play continues in this fashion until all the tiles are taken and played. If you're stuck you can destroy your words and start over if you think you have the time. The first person to use all their tiles wins. Uh...wins the thrill of victory as points aren't really kept, although they can be for those math dorks out there.
The best part, though, comes next. Scrabble Stories. Everyone gets ten minutes to free-write something creative and fun, creepy, silly, scary, whathaveyou as long as it contains all of the words created during Speed Scrabble. Then you go around and read your stories aloud and laugh and laugh. It's a good time. If you're a dork.
Here are two of my Scrabble Stories: (My Scrabble words appear in purple.)
1.
The writers gathered at the inn, this time during the hottest summer on record. If only the fan worked. Nevertheless, they wrote funny pieces and slapped their knees at their jokes. At lunch, the women on diets weighed their roe to the gram, not wanting to exceed their caloric limit. Ultimately, they deemed it too expensive and axed it from their menu.
2.
The guy didn’t care that he had HIV. He feared the smell of the hospital ward wafting from the patients who were sicker than he was. As sick as he would become. Last week, as he walked past the nurses’ station, he heard an Indian family chanting over their son. Meditation was an art form he’d never learned to appreciate. Now he wouldn’t have time to learn it. The elevator dinged, the doors opened and he stepped onto the AIDS ward for his second treatment.
Word Jumble
My mother and I used to do the Word Jumble in the Living Section of the newspaper every single day. When I got a place of my own, we did them over the phone and on weekends when I went over to do laundry. For Mother's Day one year I hand-made a Word Jumble Mother's Day card complete with drawing and riddle. And no, I wasn't 10. I was 25 when I made this. So great is dorkiness and my love for my Ma. She loved it. Oh, yeah. She was a dork, too.
Scrabble Stories
I have been known, on occasion, to play Speed Scrabble, which involves ditching that useless board altogether, drawing seven tiles from a mess of them in the middle of the table, then, at an agreed upon moment, assembling them as quickly as possible into words on your own private grid. Once someone has used all their letters they yell "draw two" or "draw one" if several dorks are playing. Play continues in this fashion until all the tiles are taken and played. If you're stuck you can destroy your words and start over if you think you have the time. The first person to use all their tiles wins. Uh...wins the thrill of victory as points aren't really kept, although they can be for those math dorks out there.
The best part, though, comes next. Scrabble Stories. Everyone gets ten minutes to free-write something creative and fun, creepy, silly, scary, whathaveyou as long as it contains all of the words created during Speed Scrabble. Then you go around and read your stories aloud and laugh and laugh. It's a good time. If you're a dork.
Here are two of my Scrabble Stories: (My Scrabble words appear in purple.)
1.
The writers gathered at the inn, this time during the hottest summer on record. If only the fan worked. Nevertheless, they wrote funny pieces and slapped their knees at their jokes. At lunch, the women on diets weighed their roe to the gram, not wanting to exceed their caloric limit. Ultimately, they deemed it too expensive and axed it from their menu.
2.
The guy didn’t care that he had HIV. He feared the smell of the hospital ward wafting from the patients who were sicker than he was. As sick as he would become. Last week, as he walked past the nurses’ station, he heard an Indian family chanting over their son. Meditation was an art form he’d never learned to appreciate. Now he wouldn’t have time to learn it. The elevator dinged, the doors opened and he stepped onto the AIDS ward for his second treatment.
Word Jumble
My mother and I used to do the Word Jumble in the Living Section of the newspaper every single day. When I got a place of my own, we did them over the phone and on weekends when I went over to do laundry. For Mother's Day one year I hand-made a Word Jumble Mother's Day card complete with drawing and riddle. And no, I wasn't 10. I was 25 when I made this. So great is dorkiness and my love for my Ma. She loved it. Oh, yeah. She was a dork, too.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Coke for Breakfast
'Tis the season to be coughing, aching, sneezing with a stuffy head so you can't rest and need to take NyQuil, I guess, gauging from the coughing and hacking I've been hearing at work lately.
This happens every year when kids go back to school. You don't even need to have kids or work with kids to suddenly be exposed to extra germs this time of year. Everyone else who has kids will take care of that for you.
So I'm noticing that several over-worked, over-tired coworkers have been fabulously sick lately. So sick that I don't recognize their voices when they answer their phones and I become convinced that all new people have been hired without my knowledge or I'm in some useless work dream. So sick that it makes me want to constantly use Purell hand sanitizer even though I think it's a ruse and even though the smell of it makes me think that pantyhosed and mightily coiffed women from my mother's church group from the 1970s have just descended upon me with a can of AquaNet hairspray.
I effortlessly overhear my coworkers rambling on and on to each other, between coughs and hacks, from the other side of the cube wall about how much it sucks to be sick and how everyone they know is sick and everyone they love is sick and everyone they live with is sick and how they should really just be home and in bed. And I'm thinking, "Uh, duh." I went to college for such advanced analyses of psycho-social situations.
And then I hear it. I hear the unmistakable metallic crack-whoosh of someone opening a Can of Coke. I think, "Oh, My God. What the Hell Time Is It? It's 10am and You're SICK. WTF!?" But just in case I'm wrong I invent a reason to swing by their cubicles to sneak a peek. Indeed, they, The Sick Ones, The Coughing Up a Lung Ones were drinking Cokes for Breakfast.
I don't get this. I really don't.
This happens every year when kids go back to school. You don't even need to have kids or work with kids to suddenly be exposed to extra germs this time of year. Everyone else who has kids will take care of that for you.
So I'm noticing that several over-worked, over-tired coworkers have been fabulously sick lately. So sick that I don't recognize their voices when they answer their phones and I become convinced that all new people have been hired without my knowledge or I'm in some useless work dream. So sick that it makes me want to constantly use Purell hand sanitizer even though I think it's a ruse and even though the smell of it makes me think that pantyhosed and mightily coiffed women from my mother's church group from the 1970s have just descended upon me with a can of AquaNet hairspray.
I effortlessly overhear my coworkers rambling on and on to each other, between coughs and hacks, from the other side of the cube wall about how much it sucks to be sick and how everyone they know is sick and everyone they love is sick and everyone they live with is sick and how they should really just be home and in bed. And I'm thinking, "Uh, duh." I went to college for such advanced analyses of psycho-social situations.
And then I hear it. I hear the unmistakable metallic crack-whoosh of someone opening a Can of Coke. I think, "Oh, My God. What the Hell Time Is It? It's 10am and You're SICK. WTF!?" But just in case I'm wrong I invent a reason to swing by their cubicles to sneak a peek. Indeed, they, The Sick Ones, The Coughing Up a Lung Ones were drinking Cokes for Breakfast.
I don't get this. I really don't.
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