Living vicariously through myself

Ok, I'm migrating this over to Livejournal, because I like being able to easily access friends' new posts and such. Update your links to:

www.livejournal.com/users/clydeclod

Because it's occurred to me that there's little logical reason why I bring anything up in a conversation (because things tend to trigger random memories), this post may sound a little like it was written by James Joyce...

1. Nicole and I have started playing a LOT of Scrabble. It's been a number of weekends since we haven't played, and we're serious enough that I picked up the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary yesterday so that we had a reference guide to agree on. Last weekend, we played the best game I've ever personally been involved in. We each had our first bingo (the term for using all seven of your letters at once) and the final score was 333 to 322. I've scored 300 points a few times, but to have to score that many to win was a little nerve-wracking. We're even snobby enough about the game that we don't like playing the version that Yahoo! offers, which doesn't use the same scoring system and does not start each game with the same set of letters.

2. I'm pleased to see DUCKS is continuing. Seems like they've been able to weather another leadership transition (always hard on a QB team), and hopefully they'll have some success at tournaments this year. I plan to moderate for them if I get a free Saturday here and there.

3. I'm doing a lot of work these days for Infoble. I've started doing a weekly Podcast for Tracks Magazine and MP3 Sports Talk is undergoing a format change at the beginning of next month. It brings in some extra cash, which is always appreciated by broadcasters, who seldom get paid enough (yours truly included). I'd appreciate it very much if you subscribed to either or both of these channels.

4. Another fantasy football season is upon us and I'm trying to recover from a subpar draft. It already looks like I'm going to have one of those years where I score enough points each week to beat a number of teams but the guy I'm playing has the best week he's had all year and he beats me. It always seemed to be this same way when I was in a bowling league. Teams must mark me on their calendars for some inexplicable reason.

So it's Labor Day and I don't have to go into work until 1 p.m. It's not bad working 5 hours and getting paid for 8, but I found out that holidays like this one can be used as extra paid days off, if you play your cards right. So, since it won't count against my 14 days of vacation, I plan to take as many of these would-be half days off as possible, since I have far less vacation time than just about anyone else in the newsroom (You accrue vacation time based on the time you've worked there. Once you've been there 7 years, you get your full 4 weeks of vacation). Only three more years and I get another week of vacation tacked on.

The last two weeks have been good for getting back in touch with people. I played tennis with Haley Heathman two weeks ago, had lunch with my friend Erin Horan from high school last week and heard from Lydia Butler about her new teaching job in Virginia. Seems all are doing well, which is good.

In other news, Eric Berman and I seem to have a nasty knack for coming in second. We've played in this monthly pub trivia competition here in Indy for the last three months and have finished in second place by one, two and one points, respectively, for the three months. If you were going on cumulative score, I'll bet we're first. Sadly, it doesn't work that way. The worst part might be talking yourself out of the one or two right answers which would have won us the cash prize each week, or figuring out that we strategized poorly and lost. We play again on the 30th. Until then, we're practicing for competition at FOGHAT at Northwestern in October. Hopefully they'll mirror COTKU, as well.

Lastly, the car is finally fixed and relatively winter-proofed. On Friday of last week, the following things were done to it:

-- Oil Change (it was about 6 thousand miles overdue for one)
-- New tires put on (I needed 2 front ones, but forgot about the nail in one of the back ones, so I had them replace all 4 and give me the one good back tire. This went well, because they only had two of the mid-range tires I wanted, so they upgraded me to the next better tire for two of them.)
-- Transmission fluid change (apparently about 25,000 miles overdue)
-- New front brakes (I'd heard this metallic rubbing/screeching sound, which is what led me to take in the car in the first place)
-- New front rotors (These were found when the brakes were being replaced. Yes, I know that's where you ALWAYS find the rotors. It was not a surprise to the mechanic, like "Oh! What do we have here?")

Having your car fixed: $793
Being able to drive down SR 37 to Bloomington and being relatively sure you won't die: Priceless

Ok, this game is pretty cool, too:

http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/

The Premise is this: it gives you 20 images which can be returned by putting in a certain keyword into a Google search. Your goal: in 20 seconds, figure out that keyword. Kind of a neat diversion.

Next, a belated happy birthday to Flax, who celebrated his 23rd on Monday. Seems he had a better birthday this year than Andy Roddick did.

I again bought a game pass from Blockbuster, because I knew I'd have a little more free time on my hands with Nicole in Bloomington. The games I've rented have been okay:

-- Conker: Live and Reloaded was a disappointment, except for the missions mode, where you take one side of a battle against the computer. Even this only held the attention for a short time. The game itself I should have read more about. Seems it's basically an Xbox version of the Nintendo 64 game I loved. Not new enough for me.

-- Next was Destroy All Humans, which I'd been looking forward to after seeing all kinds of TV ads. It basically lived up to my expectations. An alien (who sounds a lot like Jack Nicholson) rampaging across the planet dealing with an FBI knockoff called "Majestic". It was neat, but got monotonous about a third of the way through. Still, fun to rent.

-- Currently, I have Medal of Honor: European Assault, which I'm liking. The previous two Medal of Honor games were really good (though the second one was awful short), so I expected good things of this one and it's delivered so far. I did learn a lesson, however. If you let your fellow soldiers die by taking all the medkits for yourself, they're not around to shoot people for you later. Who'd have thunk?