New Highest Scrabble Score Ever! (With Apologies to May-B)

Beat my previous best score of 513 last week with a new high of 517! Woot!

As happy as I am for doing so well, I felt bad it had to happen when May-B was having such a rough game. Right after she had to swap her tiles, I played slumping for 100 points (my new highest single word score). She started a new game called "Thank God that is over".

Cowboy, Ninja, Bear: a variation on Rock, Paper, Scissors

It's the game that is sweeping the nation. I thought my brother invented but apparently not.
The Cowboy shoots the bear, the Ninja sneaks up on the Cowboy, but the Bear is too big for the Ninja so Bear beats Ninja.


An interesting point was brought up at the wedding reception yesterday, Chuck Norris has played a ninja and a cowboy. Of course the bear would not have a chance against Chuck Norrii* so really the game would be Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris. The world might end as we know it if Chuck Norris fought Chuck Norris so that game would be pointless.


*Obvious pluralization

When Games Go Bad

I got my feelings hurt a little bit this evening.

Some friends who just moved out of town invited some people over for supper and games. We visited for most of the evening but later decided to play Cranium. My teammate had never played before and was having a hard time getting any right answers. She was so nervous she was shaking. I really did not care if I won or not. I just wanted my teammate not to get so down on herself. The situation was not helped by a pair of boys (they certainly were lacking the mature for me to call them men) who got upset with us several times and was even at times very rude. We were not winning, we were not even ahead of them so I have no idea why we were the target of their spurn.

My encouragements seemed to help because she eventually relaxed a bit and started to do better. We came from behind and eventually won which made how we were treated even worse. Some people can be such jerks. Poor winners and poor losers. The purpose of the evening was to visit and have fun. Instead, for me, it ended on a bad note so that will be my memory of the evening. I tried not to start crying on the trip home. I admit I'd rather win than lose. Much rather than winning I would rather play with good sports. Considering how your words and actions will/ might effect others around you is a sign of real maturity.

Ho hum

I am so tired. I suppose I could go back to bed, eventually I will.

Today I have an appointment to get my car checked out. I was in a small accident a couple weeks ago. I was also a witness in a hit and run accident (my vehicle was not involved). It is a bit of a pain dealing with the cops and SGI this time of year (or any time of year).

Yesterday, we had a Christmas gathering with my mom's side of the family. It was a fun time and I ate lots. Highlights include:
* We continued our game of Sardines from Thanksgiving. It was my turn to hide and the younger cousins bugged me all through dinner when we were going to begin. I told them to keep an eye on me because when they realize that I am gone, the game had begun. I snuck off while they were playing. We had a good time.
* My 2 year old cousin started to get undressed in the middle of the living room when she opened a present of Dora the Explorer clothes. This will not be so cute when she is older.
* I got an indoor strawberry growing kit.
* Some of us went skating at a nearby lake. My jeans were long and got so wet walking there and back. I went to work straight from my Aunt's house and my jeans were still wet. At least I didn't fall on my butt.

Monopoly 70th Anniversary Edition

I wish I would have know about this earlier so I could have asked for it for Christmas. It is still not too late Mom (hint, hint).

To commemorate Monopoly's 70th anniversary Parker Brothers have created an art deco edition. What could be better? My favorite board game designed in my favorite style. I have seen editions with a wooden case on Ebay but I cannot find it anywhere else.

The concert went fairly well yesterday. Ky and I missed the first little bit of dress rehearsal because they started it about 10 minutes early. We were some of the few people that did not go on the bus for the day. Since it appeared everyone was there and ready to go they started early. We missed about 3 movements of our first piece. We were shocked in concert how much faster we were singing one of them we had missed. I kept on zoning out during the concert and I messed up in a couple places. I don't think they were noticeable.

The real downer about the concert was no one we knew could see us. The ladies from the Saskatoon choir were in the balcony because there was not enough room on stage. All of our family and friends were sitting below the balcony we were sitting in. It is so strange to have a concert in the afternoon. I had to have a nap after supper. I could not bare to be awake for any longer.

I slept until my brother came over. We visited with the grandparents and parents for awhile until we decide upon a game of Animal Memory. You have the match the baby animals to their mothers. I was joking when I suggested because he gets annoyed when I ask but he agreed. I do not know why I love that game so because I lose ever single time I play. At least this match was close.

After Mike left, I went over to visit with Ky and her family. I enjoyed witnessing the love-hate relationship with them and their puppies. One minutes it is "the puppies have so much love" the next minute it is "they peed and pooped all over the place but they still have so much love".

Summary of the weekend

* Helped a young man's coolness points go up by like 1000 points by visiting him at work. You know it's true!

* Almost crashed a wedding dressed as servers. If I had black pants with me I would have.

* Crashed a business conference. I have the name tag to prove it. I am Val Wolbert from Winnipeg. Nice to meet you.

* Stayed up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too late watching Veronica Mars

* Was on the verge of yelling at a mother for poor parenting choices. I should have. Grrr.

* bought an off-white shrug sweater. I wonder what the Manolo thinks of the shrug?

* Met a man too short for his voice.

* Did not pay for parking downtown, yet.

* Partook in a Photographic Scavenger Hunt. Good times ensued. I will try to include pictures from it at a later date.

* A relative told me (after church) a story about a woman who was too busy to clean her house because she was "too busy becoming with child". What? I hope he meant being with child.

* Tutored for 2 hours.

* Tried a lox bagel with cream cheese for the first time.

I need to get to bed. I sub out of town tomorrow morning.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I spent the last weekend at my grandparents' farm for Thanksgiving. My parents picked me up on Friday afternoon and brought me home this afternoon.

It was a pretty easy going weekend. Most of it was spent visiting friends and family. On Sunday after our big thanksgiving meal, me and some of my cousins went to P.A. National Park. Some of drove, some other rode horses there. We played poohsticks. On our way back, my cousin/roommate Ang got the van stuck in the mud. Thankfully some relatives were in a nearby field and saw us so we weren't there for too long.

We played Sardines (a variant of hide and go seek)this afternoon. Honourable mention to my cousin Jaclyn's dedication to the game: she hid in a dark, damp and possibly mouse infested cellar.

You too can play sardines with friends and family:
In the variant known as sardines, only one player hides while all the rest count. All the counting players then split up and each searches for the one player hiding. When a searcher find the hiding player, they join in hiding in the same hiding place. The game is over when the last player finds all the others. They are the loser of the game and generally the next one to hide (although sometimes this role is given to the first to have found the original hiding place). Often, "sardines" is played in the dark.
Hide and Seek from Wikipedia

My favourite sardine's memory is when my sister and cousin Corrine got stuck in a tree. If you knew either one of them, getting stuck in a tree would not be a surprise.

Tribond confusion

Yesterday there was some disagreement about an answer my team gave. The difference between a plastic surgeon and cosmetic surgeon is the amount of training the doctor has. To be called a plastic surgeon they must have 3 years experience as a general surgeon then followed by a plastic surgery fellowship. So in theory a plastic surgeon and a cosmetic surgeon can perform some of the same procedures. Plastic surgeons can do everything a cosmetic surgeon can do but more. Chemical peel is considered a cosmetic plastic surgery.

I did not go looking for the answers to this question. I just so happens in a weekly Q&A column I read on Eonline.com talked about it this week. I am just reassuring the other players my team won fair and square.

Try to keep up with me on this one...

Warning: There will be a lot of pop culture references in the blog. So amateurs try to keep up with me, you are going to get yourself an education.


My newest and greatest obsession is the TV show Veronica Mars. It is absolutely fabulous. It is clever, funny whodunit kind of show. Here is what you need to know.
1) Has been called "Twin Peaks for the teen set".
2) Great lines like "Go small blond one! Annoy like the wind". (Guess what my new favorite line for Angela will be?)
3) Surprising evidence that Harry Hamlin can act.
4) Great guest stars like Aaron Ashmore, Tina Majorino, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Joey Lauren Adams and Alyson Hannigan
5) Veronica and her father solve mysteries every week. Her father is a private detective. There are several big mysteries of the season. These will have you hooked.
6) It can current be seen on CTV on Monday nights at 8pm.

The entire season has already been shown on UPN but I don't have that channel anymore. I wish I did then I could watch Dance 360. It is so bad it is great. My only regret is I did not discover it sooner while I had the channel.

OK enough TV ranting, on with the stories of my life.

I am still sick. My throat is not as sore but now it is a head cold. I hope it goes away soon.

On Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church, I moved my Galileo's thermometer out of the sun. It must have slipped out of my hand because it hit the shelf it was on too hard. The bottom broke and the contents poured all over the shelf and the books on the shelf below. Of course I only keep my special books in my bedroom. A used to be perfect 76 year old copy of Homer's Odyssey now has water stains. Fortunately it only effect half the books on the shelf. It makes me sad. The thermometer was a present from my siblings. It was pretty cool. I had just moved it to my bedroom that week. Sigh.

I feel greatly misunderstood. We were playing the game True Colors. The last two times I have played that game I have done poorly. I really feel like everyone has this perception of me that is so far from the truth. Even people who think they know me can be like that. I think part of the problem is that I rarely hear the good things people think of me. It has been getting really hard to deal with lately.

I bought a scanner today. My friend Isaac lent me his scanner in September and I still had it. I offered to day to buy it since he just bought a printer/scanner combo.

My tutoring session for tonight was rescheduled for Sunday. Ang and I invited some friends over to play games. I rule at Quick Scrabble!

My throat hurts. I think Ang is a cold carrier. Lots of people at her work are sick but she is not. I really have only have been at home so I think she made me sick.

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me"

I have German songs stuck in my head. I had my concert tonight with the symphony. We also had a dress rehearsal this afternoon which equates to a lot of singing this past week.

After the concert, my friend Ky and I went to our church for a games night that was already in progress. The only played one game called Quiddler (a word scramble-type game). My roommate had a bit of tantrum at the beginning of the game when she found out she couldn't make a certain play. She freaked out on the owner of the game. She was being rather rude. I told her that she didn't need to get so upset and it was just a game. She looked away and made a motion with her hands like I was "yapping" too much and she was not listening. I very sternly told her never to do that to me again. She is older than me but she certainly was not acting like it. Later at least she admitted she threw a tantrum but apologized to no one. The ride home was very quiet. Normally she is rather talkative. The only time she is ever quiet is when she knows she is wrong or has done something she knows she shouldn't have.

My parents came up for my concert. Between the dress rehearsal and the concert, I met my parents for supper. After the concert they came to the games night as well.

Today is the first day of my "no possibility of work" week. The schools around here have the week off so teachers can attend convention.

Yesterday Ang and I invited people over for lunch. There were about 8 of us. We played games for most of the day including Tribond, Canasta and Trivial Pursuit. I continue my sucking streak in Trivial Pursuit. I don't know what happened to me. It seems like the last couple times I have played everyone else but me gets questions I know the answer to.

I leave for Regina tomorrow. Hopefully fun and good times will be had.

Chocolate was a bad idea.

Stephanie, Joel and I were the only ones that showed up for the afternoon shift for painting the mural. We stopped working around 5. We picked up subway for supper and played canasta until it was time for the young people's meeting.

Once everyone was there we got a lot of work done on the mural. We are nearly done now.

After days and days of beautiful weather, it is cold again. A lot of the streets were clear and today we got 10 cm of snow. I got stuck in my parking lot twice.

My cousins Bronwyn and Lyn came to the city for the weekend. They met me at a restaurant for supper then they came over to my place for part of the evening. Bron and I played scrabble. I was being dreadfully boring. I had horrible tiles so I was taking forever for each turn. I finally told Bronwyn that she could go into the living room and visit during my turns.

Tomorrow I am supposed to work on a mural at the church. Should take up most of the day.

The world traveller returns

I typed this big long blog after my trip and then Firefox froze and I lost everything. I have been procrastination since then to write it all over again.

My trip to Calgary was fun. On the way there the roads were not great for about the first 150km of the trip. We ended up taking an hour longer to get there because of the roads. We had supper at 10:30 our time then we went out to met up with our friends.

We got directions to the house where everyone was from the people we stayed with. When we arrived at the house we were unsure if it was the right place because all the lights were off. We walked up to the door and saw people we knew moving around inside. We knew it was the right place. There were some people playing sardines but no one was looking for them. I find that to be rather funny. They were in their hiding spot for a long time before they came out. After some visiting, we went to Denny's to eat.

The next day we went over to our friend John's house to help him fix up his kitchen. After much discussion John decided on yellow, red and caramel for the paint colours. During the day people came and went to see the progress of the kitchen, to visit but to offer little or no help. At 8pm, I stopped working because I was tired and had been working all day. Everyone else had breaks running errands. I left my car and went over to my cousin Stephanie's place. We mostly played games and visited. I was a little disappointed that I missed out on a monopoly game. I did get to play Cranium (Ky was on my team) and we won. The win was cheapened by the fact that we had many of the questions before. At least we won.

The next day at church, I was completely shocked when I was called up to hold the microphone while the children said their verses. My friend John was leading the meeting and when he called my name I was stunned. I figured I must of heard wrong. When no one else was going up I figured it must be me he called. I was so nervous all I could think was "Keep the microphone 2 inches from their mouth". Those years of vocal jazz training have done me well.

After church, people were going to eat at Wendy's. They were going to ministering at a nursing home in the afternoon and the Wendy's is near by. We were following people (boys) there and got lost. They didn't get lost, we got lost. They were racing each other. We were told were the Wendy's was and we thought we knew where to go but we turned the wrong way on a road. We had to call John to ask for directions. We were convinced everyone was going to be gone by the time we got there. Everyone did leave shortly after we arrived but quickly returned. The got a call from the nursing home saying that too many residents had the flu so they were going to cancel for that week. We had a good visit.

It was after 4 when we left Calgary on Sunday. We didn't get home until after midnight.

Monday evening on my way to choir I got stuck in the snow. I live in an area that is right on the edge of town. Last week, with all the snow and wind, we got lots of snows drifts in our area. It took 6 people to get me out. I arrived at choir over a half hour late.

Tuesday evening I tutored twice. My brain was so fried afterwords. For one of my tutees, this was our last time meeting. She had the final for her class on Wednesday.

I found out that the new boy I tutor is the son of a former professional hockey player. He retired from hockey in 1997 and now he is a resort developer. I found out his wife is a cousin to my uncle. It is a small world after all...

Dancin' like a black bean

I had a pretty good day.

Last night at the young people's meeting the college and career group were not able to meet to plan our activities for the next couple months. We were making thank you cards for the retreat that ended a week ago and things ran a little long. That is ok. The new plan was to meet after church and have lunch together.

The service this morning went really well. It was mostly lead by the new people. They usually have us share what we learned after have been to a camp. I think the best thing happened before service. The doctors think my great aunt had a small stroke in November and she has not seemed like herself the last couple times I had seen her. Today before church I spoke with her a bit and she seemed like her old self. I am so thankful she is doing better. It is a real answer to prayer.

After church we met at my friends Graison and Joel's place. We ordered pizza and then planned activities for until a little after Easter. When we were done, we got into a really good discussion about relationships. This is a continuation of separate girl/ boy discussion groups we had been in at the retreat. I invited anyone who wanted to come over for supper tonight to watch the season premiere of "Alias" (I had it on tape).

At around 6:30 people started showing up for supper (we had a late lunch). We watched an episode of "Firefly" I have on DVD while we were waiting for people to show up. We ended up having 12 for supper. I had already watched the episode of "Alias" but it was a lot more fun with a group of people. We had lots of fun. Before the majority of people left we had a huge group hug. A couple boys stayed after most left and we played Trivial Pursuit. It was a supremely frustrating game for me. I normally do quite well but I kept on forgetting things I know well and getting questions on obscure sport figures. Before we quit I was doing better but I will not admit defeat. I was only one pie piece behind the leader and we never finished. Anything could have happened.

Tomorrow I truly hope I can go out and visit a couple high schools in the city. I keep on saying I will but it doesn't happen.

Me need to sleep.