Some things I forgot to mention re: Pontiac:

1. aruspex took his sub-par performance seriously, but it made him no less fun to be around. Maybe the mustache wasn't long enough, Kelly.

2. How about Christopher (THORIUM + CFGK??) Walleck? 19-1 performance and still humble as shit. Good kid.

3. I played Taxes Hold Me for the first time. Even won a couple hands. It's a fun game, though I have never played poker. So Stock and tailskid had to hold my hand most of the time. Not literally, though.

Anyway, here's my game vs. sneakyofverb from Pontiac. First round. First loss.

Play it

Tags: annotated game
Current Location: home
Current Music: Karen Dalton

For those who wanted an Albany update:

Yesterday was awesome. I didn't play in the early bird because I wanted to relax, especially after a delayed flight, a jog from one end of Philly's airport to the other, and a bumpy flight. I got in about the same time as Tom and Erica. Spent the day relaxing. Played a few games, played Anagrams and Racklash. In Anagrams, we all though the game was over with a pool of CFGK??, and then Kenji takes all those tiles, plus Randy Greenspan's THORIUM. Plug that into Zyzzyva and you'll find the greatest Anagrams play I've ever seen. It was a lot of fun. I even got to keep a word.

tatermunch won his div at the early bird, good for him. That was for money, and he'll be steadily picking up points for the next few days.

As for myself, I am ready, and hope to be a contender here.

Tags: tourney
Current Location: ALBDT

Met up with Pete tonight to play a couple of games. I thought I played pretty well, the way I want to play at Albany. Minimal fishing, making shitty racks work, finding words that wouldn't play. In the first game he got both blanks, bingoed once and won by 5. In the second one I got both blanks, bingoed 3 times to his 1 and won by one point. In Quackling the second game, I find that I lost a total of 79.6 equity points in 15 turns. 27.2 of those are from missing (B)IKINIeD when I held DIIIKN? and 14.1 are from a play in which I had to shut down an open E with a 3-point play to ensure a win. I made a dumb play in the end game because I was really low on time and ended up giving him a much better out than he had before. Like I said, it appeared that I had won by 1, but in a tournament situation we would have found that he shorted himself 3 points throughout the game and actually won by two. But then if he had counted correctly, I may have ended up making a different play somewhere along the line. Who knows? I might quackle the other game to find that I actually won.

Also, allow me to say that Kenji is the only 1800+ player with a halfway-interesting blog. For better or worse, it's the only expert blog that a 1500 can appreciate. Sorry, everyone else.

Current Location: bedroom

Met up with pbzeigler to play a couple of games last night. Both were good, we each won one, nothing out of the ordinary. In Quackling them, I found that I still have a long way to go. In the second game, I felt like my best play was always obvious. I think I had 17 minutes left on my clock at the end. And I did make my best play nearly half the time, but then the other half I was making Quackle's 6th and 8th and 10th choices... ah well.

Had a Scrabble nightmare last night. I was in a huge tournament, probably Nationals next year, and in round 1 I was paired against Joey Krafchick. He played super-fast like in real life, but I kept having to go to the bathroom when he made his plays, and when I came back he had played some ridiculous 11 and 12 letter phonies. I wish I could remember what some of them were. I knew I couldn't challenge them off because he had already drawn his tiles while I was in the bathroom (I guess in the dream I hadn't read the CGP discussion of the pissing while playing rule), but I couldn't stop peeing. Every time I came back, it was a different board with different words on it, and the tiles were smaller and smaller each time. It was awful.

I have a day off today but I have to go to the dentist and get a tooth pulled. The rest of the day should be really enjoyable.

Tags: scrabble

Burning River Blowout is going well. The site is good, we have about 35 people... not bad for the midwest. I'm 5-3 so far after a 1-3 start. I don't know how I know LABROID but I got it down to win a game against a formidable opponent. Challenged off some shitty bingos (PANELLER, REALINED) let some even shittier ones stay (REBRAID). I hope to do well tomorrow and cash.

Trivia Bowl was alright but I will not do it again. It was flawed. Also, I forgot that I hate being the center of attention, and being the center of attention makes me irritable. Some people got on my nerves and I wanted to be the opposite of the center of attention, so I am in my room now watching the Indians. I'll probably be asleep before the game is over.

Tags: scrabble, youtube
Current Location: ELROH
Current Music: Indians game

My grandfather worked for General Motors and once he worked every single day for 15 months except Christmas day.

This is my ninth work day in a row and I wonder how I'm going to make it through. This weekend was especially tedious. Two 11-7 shifts in the MARO (Marriott Area Revenue Office) with the same person. I like all of the agents we have working on MARO, but 16 hours of conversation (and silence, for that matter) with any one person is going to get a little old.

Went to club last night and had my first bye in months. Beat Terry Oblander, lost to Jim Smith and Walter Konicki. I took risks that I wouldn't take in a tournament, and they ended up costing me games. Ah well. I used the time to inhale a Whopper. Came home, got 5 hours of sleep, and here I am.

Farmington this weekend. It'll be nice to play a good 7 games when I don't have to worry about my rating slipping like it usually does at Farmingtons. I feel pretty confident in my field for Dayton, and I feel like that won't change if I somehow drop below 1300 again.

Tags: scrabble, work
Current Location: bed
Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: John Parr

( Behind the cut is a meme )

Tags: meme
Current Music: Okkervil River

Things have been pretty dece lately. With the exception of another good friend moving away (this time to greater Phoenix), the summer of George has been on the upswing. On the Scrabble side of things, Michigan Madness went well for the most part. On the fun side of things, it was awesome. My only complaint was that the doses I get of ericaareicceria and tatermunch are much too small.

Work is going really well too. Another promotion. I'll be brief here, because I realize that not everybody finds the hospitality industry as interesting as I do. I work for a company called Lodgian, Inc., that franchises hotels. They own 30 or so Intercontinental brand (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza) hotels and 12 Marriott brand (Courtyard, Fairfield Inn, Residence Inn, Spring Hill Suites, etc.) hotels. The office I work in is essentially a call center for all of the Intercontinental brands that Lodgian owns. When you call the Crowne Plaza in Albany to make a reservation because you don't want to call 1-800-2-CROWN and speak to someone in Bombay, you end up unknowingly speaking to someone in suburban Cleveland. Anyway, all of the Marriotts that my company owns were still being booked by Marriott's huge ridiculous (but American) call center. We've been shop-calling these Marriotts and grading the agents on the same rubric we use on our agents and submitting the results to the suits at Lodgian, essentially trying to convince them to let us take the calls. And really, their agents suck. So, these suits finally caved and we're going to be taking on 11 of their 12 Marriotts. We're going to be creating a new Area Revenue Office (ARO) within our existing office space for these Marriotts, and I'm going to be the project manager. I don't know what my pay will be like, but this is a big step up for me, and as always, I plan on moving up.

This also means that I'll get my employee discount at not only Intercontinental brand hotels, but also Marriott hotels.

On the study tip, things have been going very well also. I did the top 1000 8s last week and with a few exceptions (sixty or so bitches like EMANATOR, DIPTERAN, AGENTIAL/ALGINATE, etc.). Now I'm reviewing the top 1000 7s (after missing STRIATE in my game against Dave Leonard at MM). If I stay on pace, I should have a ~95% knowledge of the top 3000 of each set by Dayton. My goal is to finish in the top 20 of the division and be rated over 1400 at the end. It's not that lofty a goal, as I'm going to be seeded near the bottom of the pack. The goal I have that is lofty is to be rated 1530 by the end of October. When I got out of the Clinic last October 28th, my rating was 530. If I somehow hit 1530 at the Burning River Blowout, I will be ecstatic. It's the first divisional tourney in the Cleveland area in something like 8 years. Plus, there's going to be a trivia bowl.

Back to studying.

Tags: scrabble, work
Current Location: Seekers

Day 1 of Michigan Madness was pretty good. I was comforted to find that I am still "underrated." My expected wins against the field I played today was 2.3something and I went 5-3. If the ratings calculator is accurate, I've already picked up 70 rating points. Two of the losses were ones that I could do nothing about. I got double-blanked by people who don't need both blanks to beat me. I held it down though. Also played my first phony two in tournament history. It was an accident. I didn't grab the wrong tile, I just hit the clock before I realized PO* is not good. It's one of those (TE*, OT*, FI*, etc.) that I sometimes see as part of a word I wanted to play, then I usually pick it back up and say, "Oop, that won't work..." This time, I hit the clock before I caught it. It stayed. A 1441 player let PO* go. It just shows to go ya, nobody's rating should mean shit to me except my own.

Full report someday soon. There are 6 games tomorrow. My prediction is that I'll end up 8-6, but we'll see.

Tags: scrabble
Current Location: Holiday Inn, Warren, MI

I've got one of my songs done for karaoke on Saturday night. I'd like it to be a surprise, so I'm not going to post the lyrics here. But I am singing mine to the tune of "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" by Looking Glass. It's one of the staples of my repertoire in regular karaoke, so I figured it would yield the best results. I was going to write a second one ("Balance That Rack", to the tune of "Baby Got Back") but it's going to take more time than I currently have. Maybe next year.

I decided not to study tonight. I might hit the Strongsville Cafe and perhaps the Rib Burn-off, if I can round up a crew. I am pretty excited for the weekend. Work dragged today, of course.

I changed my mind about my predictions and I think I'm going to go undefeated this weekend. That's your heads-up, those who haven't yet picked a roto team.

Stoked to see/meet all the LJ Scrabblers this weekend... I owe you all a free high-five.

Tags: karaoke, scrabble
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: Looking Glass