Scribble Scrabble

I promised myself that I wouldn't play Scrabble tonight until I wrote a blog post. I really enjoy writing and I've certainly missed writing about whatever I wish to whenever I want to. But I'm freaking addicted to Scrabble and I play it any night that I find myself at home with nothing to do. (Even worse, I'm purposely finding reasons to stay home so that I can play.) I don't really have time to blog at work and I can't blog in the afternoon because I have two sets of eyes on either side of my computer seemingly watching my every move, so that leaves the evening to write my amazing prose. But evenings are when I play Scrabble! And I'm going to be the Scrabble champion of the WORLD one day!

So, I had a little chat with myself and it went something like this:

Um, Self, let's blog tonight, okay?

Yeah, yeah, sure. We'll blog as soon as we play some Scrabble. It's been like 18 hours since we last played. I'm starting to get the shakes!

But you know if we start playing Scrabble, we won't stop until our eyelids are drooping and we can't even make a word out of "BDEEIMT."

BEDTIME! BEDTIME! Give me another. C'mon. Let's anagram. I'm jonesing, man!

No, that wasn't the point! The point is that we're blogging first. Period.

Oh, alright. But only if we get to write about Scrabble.

Deal.

So, yeah, I've got issues. (Obviously my addiction to Scrabble isn't the only issue. The voices!) But! But! All the Scrabble playing is serving a purpose! It is!

(First, let me confess, I'm truly a nerd. There. I've admitted it.)

I want to join a Scrabble club. There are two in my hometown. One meets at a Denny's (yes, a Denny's) and the other meets at a health food store. From the locations alone you can tell us Scrabblers are a hip, happening bunch of people. I'm currently reading Word Freak (which I've been reading for about two months now while I wait in lines -- it's my car book) and I want to be one of those word freaks! (Oh my goodness! There's a DOCUMENTARY about Scrabble?! I think I just had an orgasm.)

The benefits of joining a Scrabble club are twofold.

One, you get to play with actual live people. This is important because, should you ever become addicted to Scrabble yourself, your friends will no longer play with you once you start playing words like "Sthenia" and "Xyst." No, I have no idea what either of those words mean, but I know they're legal. I have no desire to try and cram more crap into my head by looking up the definitions to obscure words. It's hard enough to remember the obscure words themselves.

Two, you become rated. While I'm rated online (and were I to start over with a new screen name I'd be rated much higher than I am since my Scrabble skills have vastly improved since that night last Spring when I made the egregious mistake of logging into the site), I'm not rated by the National Scrabble Association. If you're not rated by the National Scrabble Association, you can't play in tournaments. I want to play in tournaments.

Yep, I want to hunker down for days over a Scrabble board and play one game after another. It'll be fun. I'll meet some, um, interesting people. I could win a little money (or a lot!). They have tournaments pretty much every weekend all over the country. Sadly, I missed my hometown tournament. In fact, I looked up tournament information for the first time over Labor Day weekend and the tournament was here that weekend. Dismay. I felt dismayed. But hours and hours of Scrabble with the possibility of a payout in the end? And a trophy?! I've never won a trophy! It's just too much. I have to do it!

There's one in November in the city I call my second home. And I've decided I'm going to play in it. So, I'll be heading to Denny's or the health food store and getting my game on very soon.

I have to admit, I'm a little scared of the word freaks. But all I have to do is read the entry above and I'll realize that I'm a word freak, too.

Happy, Self?

You'd think this entry was a segue to tell that I purchased wordfreak.net, but that's not the case at all. I ended up getting changedprioritiesahead.com. I chose it for a reason in the first place. Cindy kindly pointed out that while, yes, it's long, it's still shorter than typing all three words PLUS "blogspot." I loved all of your ideas, though. I had a really hard time deciding between the one I chose and these two: "I Had Questions" and "I'm an Open Book." Thank you all so much. (It'll be months before it's online though as I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.)