Made Up Word Scrabble

I love games! Which should come as no surprise to ya'll. That'd pretty much be blasphemous (I really wanted to use the word blasphemic but thanks to online dictionaries, alas it is not a real word.). Board games. Sports games. Word games. Pretty much the only games I don't like to play are mind games. And I don't stop at games other people have made up, marketed, and made a shite ton of money off of (or not; I don't know what board game makers are getting these days). Oh no! I make up my own games. Typically with the help of others. This began in my youth with my siblings, making our own board games. And while I don't do that as often now as I did back then, there are still moments such as when-with a little help from my friends-(or a lot of help since I can't actually remember where the idea originated)we created Made Up Word Scrabble. This resulted from the boredom of trying to play the standard version of Scrabble insanely late at night (or early in the morning depending on how you like to look at it), possibly with a few drinks (not of the fruit juice kind) consumed.

How you play:

- Begin like standard Scrabble with each person drawing 7 tiles and taking turns spelling words

Here's where it gets real crazy:

- Arrange your letters in any way that you see fit to make up your own made up words.
- Then, create a definition for that made up word. The more ridiculous the better.

And that's it. I'm not sure if we assigned point values or threw that out the window. But our "dictionary" of made up words is still in the box and added to each time we play the newest version of our old favorite. Yes, this is a game that has lived on beyond that night/morning (even when drinking only fruit juice). We've even had emphatic requests by other friends who weren't present for it to play.

Does this sound like something fun to you? Have you ever made up your own game? If so, what was it? I hope you have fun recreating our Made Up Word Scrabble or your own game in the very near future.

April Roundup

Aaahhh!!!! I've had such a busy April I haven't even had a spare moment to post here. Luckily that mostly means I've been having a whole lotta fun. There was the Coachella music festival, the 2nd 8th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational (Yep, you heard that right), and Easter. While I could easily have a post on each let me list my top three fun things about each event:

Coachella:

1. Warm (okay hot) weather. After feeling like I'll be spending the rest of my life in southern California's version of winter this was much needed.
2. Camping. I love to camp. Even if it's next to thousands of other people.
3. The music. Of course. I saw a number of phenomenal acts but my favs were Mumford & Sons, Arcade Fire, The Black Keys, Duran Duran, and Erykah Badu.

2nd 8th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational

1. Eating lots of grilled cheeses... duh! 'Course now I'm completely grilled cheesed out.
2. Doing something different.
3. Cooking some pretty fantastic sourdough bread, brie cheese, and mango and jalapeno marmalade with the bf as our entry. We didn't place but we're always winners in my book!

Easter

1. Delicious food items that weren't grilled cheeses.
2. Polish horse shoes (probably incredibly un-PC but I've never heard it called anything else... wait, just looked it up and it's actually called ladder golf.) with the bf's fam.
3. Leftover goodies to take home.

And of course, there were the requisite bday parties and other shenanigans involved. Here's hoping to a little less hectic month coming up so I can write a little more.


An amber view of Coachella

Wedding Update

Went to my 8 millionth wedding in the past year last night. Perhaps that's a slight exaggeration but the bulk of my social life this year has revolved around getting married-related events. While it's mostly been a tremendous amount of fun I am looking forward to the four month break I'm getting. But in honor of the streak I was on here are some of the more fun things about the weddings I've been to this past year:

- Outdoors: I love to do everything outdoors anyway so anyone who decides to say their nuptials amongst nature wins points with me.

- DIY(Do-it-yourself)ness: I'm a crafty kind of person so I really appreciate when the decor is hand-made with love rather than cheesily man-made manufactured ugliness.

- Many dance parties: Anyone who knows me knows I love to dance. And so does the bf. So at this point we're pretty much professional wedding dancers (We're thinking about going into business.).

- Cake: I've had some amazing cakes over the past 12 months and am contemplating pretending to be getting married for the rest of my life so I can continuously eat wedding cake samples. Big big ups to the most phenomenal vegan cake I've ever tasted.

- Food: Also have had some amazing food and variety. Big winner was the hors d'oeuvres cornucopia of fresh home grown, homemade food at one of my pal's weddings.

- Candy table: I'm starting to notice a theme here with my most fun items. This I'm hesitant to encourage because I really don't need any more candy ever again in my entire life but oh, it's so good!

- Kids: I know some people don't like them at weddings but I think they're hilarity in small packages, especially during the dance party.

What are some of the fun things about weddings you've gone to? Please share.

Spontaneity

As we become grownups (Oh no! Did I really just type that outloud?) sometimes spontaneity goes by the wayside. "I can't, I have to work," "I can't, I have the kids," "I can't, I have a mortgage," etc., etc., etc. Responsibility can be important. Certainly I'm not advocating running amok until you've lost your house, job, kids, cat, whatever's important to you. But it's also important that you aren't so responsible you can't remember the last time you truly enjoyed that cat. That's where spontaneity comes into play. That's where not washing your dishes until the next morning so you can play a game of Twister (with your cat) comes into play. Or taking off on an impromptu road trip without telling anyone where you're going and turning off all modes of communication comes into play. That's exactly what the bf and I did for a dayish this past weekend. While the level of responsibility the bf and I take could be debated, we are without a doubt dependable. If anyone needs anything or has any kind of celebration we're there. And while the celebration part is usually a great deal of fun it doesn't always promote proper spontaneity. It was so freeing to do something we wanted to do simply because we wanted to do it. Without any sense of obligation. And that my friends is what spontaneity can do for you. And what I will be incorporating much more into my life.

Fun Buster:

I'll recognize that there is some potential for fun in this. For instance if you didn't have to go into your office and could work from home in your pjs, knock it out in a matter of a couple hours and then head off to the beach for the rest of the day. I would consider that to be fun from time to time (or all the time). But unfortunately it seems to less that and more the gateway drug to Workaholics Anonymous (from here on out WHA). Now, unless you don't have a computer at home there is no excuse not to answer emails right away or work on projects that would otherwise never leave the office.

To be honest the first time I had Go To My PC on the job I was completely freaked out by it. I couldn't get over how I could literally turn my at home laptop into my at work desktop and there was no discernible difference (other than speed). It took me awhile to work up the courage to actually use it. And even then I did so rarely. As might be apparent by this blog I'm not a workaholic and am in staunch refusal to participate in such shenanigans. From my experience, workaholics stress themselves out to the point of future heart attacks while accomplishing less than their Type B counterparts (And here is one research study-amongst others-to back it up.). I did use it from time to time but was really turned off when I'd get into work the next day and find emails from co-workers the next morning sent off at 3 in the morning. No wonder they were crabby most of the time!

And so I am now against anything that encourages workaholics to compromise their physical health and mental and emotional sanity for the sake of subpar productivity, especially when they then try to force that crap down the rest of our throats. We won't even get into iphones.

A Man After My Own Heart

If I had made a video first I would have done it exactly like this:

Stacking Rocks

While on a bike ride on the bike path from Culver City, CA to Marina del Rey, CA I came across these:

Remembering (or simply making it up in my head and calling it remembering) something about rock stacking being a sacred practice I wanted to know more about it and so I turned to google. I found a few things that alluded to rock stacking as being a spiritual practice but little to no elaboration and so being way too boring to read any further, I gave up. Overall it seems to be a practice that some people do for fun, either as a spiritual practice or simply to challenge themselves. While it isn't my chosen way to have fun I'm glad others are doing what they enjoy most. And because of them I'll continue to enjoy random rock statues on my bike rides.