RL's Current Online Obsessions and Pastimes

1) Boggled.org: I love Boggle. J. will only play a few games with me at a time. My sister and I grew up playing Boggle with grown-ups, since there were no cousins of our generation for many months. J. hasn't learned to think the Boggle way yet, so he gets demoralized after a few games. I used to get my Boggle on by playing at WEBoggle. However, WEBoggle has a few drawbacks, particularly the fact that you have to wait for games to start (you play with others in real time) and that it can be VERY slow, sometimes so much so that dozens of words won't be registered. Then I found Boggled. I am much happier now. You still compete with others, just not in real time. It is always ready with a game for you. You can register and track your scores and records (for each game--highest score, most points for a single word, most words, and longest word). Instead of standard Boggle scoring, you are awarded points for each word according to its length AND rareness.

Yes, I know that my visceral reactions to incorrect grammar and spelling are bizarre... yet "unjuster" does not belong on the list of acceptable terms.

And you can see a pie graph that displays the relative proportion of each level of word difficulty. However, the thing I get frustrated about most is still there--the words that are included and excluded. For example, tose, which means "to tease or comb" in OBSOLETE English. Not Modern English. There are also SO many acceptable spellings of words and varied inflections of words that I get the creepy crawlies down my spine. (Yes, I know that my visceral reactions to incorrect grammar and spelling are bizarre... yet "unjuster" does not belong on the list of acceptable terms.)

2) Viva Caligula: I saw a strange promo sending me to the Adult Swim website. I soon got sucked in by the unabated violence--particularly the spurts of blood when on a rampage. I have 18 out of 26 weapons and a hand that really hurts. I think the reason why I like it most is because the game's shortcuts actually make sense to me: it's really easy to remember what key to push when your weapon's first letter is the key you hit to deploy it.

3) Google Calendar: As many of you might know, I am highly inept at keeping a calendar. Even when I have one, I forget to use it. And I have been known to double- and even triple-book myself. Now that I have to include J. in the schedule, things are a bit more complicated and require a better system. I really like that the calendar does the color-coding I need, J. and I can both edit and view events, and that I can have the Jewish calendar superimposed with no work on my part.

4) Surfing for My Teaching: I am SO happy about being back in the classroom. I love my new students, and I am really excited about preparing awesome lessons for them. I've got three different grades at two schools. I haven't even met the eighth graders yet.

Post-Honeymoon New Zealand Obsession

Upon returning from our amazing honeymoon (its perfection only slightly marred by J.'s salmonella adventure), I became obsessed with the history of New Zealand and spent an obscene amount of time researching the natural history of New Zealand, its flora, fauna, and people. In particular, I was blown away by the performance of Maori music and dance we saw at the Auckland Museum. (You can find video of the cultural experience performance at You Tube.) I was fascinated by the relationship between mundane Maori activities--fishing, boating, fighting--and the dance. The Haka is their signature dance. It was performed in battle to intimidate the enemy. Today, the national rugby team, the All Blacks, performs it in international meets. The last time it was used in battle was WWII.

I was also fascinated by the fact that New Zealand was the last landmass occupied by humans and is so distant that no mammals lived there until more recent times. Birds dominate the native fauna. Moa are now extinct, but they were enormous birds that were at the top of the food chain prior to the arrival of the Maori's Polynesian ancestors.

Lastly, I should give a few more general comments on our honeymoon. It must be said that the Kiwi people are the nicest I've ever met. It's like they all understand that being friendly and polite really is a better way to get along. The food is amazing. Our local favorites were Kapiti ice cream and Cin Cin, a wonderful restaurant at the marina. Auckland is a lovely city, and J. and I concur that we must go back to Auckland again as the starting place for future New Zealand adventures.

Fiji was also awesome, but we mostly saw the island resort we had booked through Luxury Link (an amazing resource for big discounts on luxury travel). Vomo resort occupies an entire small island off the west coast of the main island of Fiji. They waited on us hand and foot, and were particularly helpful in bringing us meals to our cabin (called a bure), where Joshua was resting up from his lumbar puncture. The room and amenities were first class; the beach was unforgettable. The fish were absolutely gorgeous; you could walk right into the reef and see them. The water is so clear that we could see straight down to the bottom from our helicopter ride back to the airport. I did my first snorkeling jump from a boat and spent large portions of each day in or beside the water. For some bizarre reason, I rose at dawn every day we were in Fiji. I would wander out and lay in a hammock by the water and watch the world wake up.

Recommended Resources:
Pacific migrations - From West to East Polynesia - Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Auckland Museum Maori Resources

Bedtime for BNB

I am writing this five minutes before my bedtime. I wanted to post something. Then I read a sweet e-mail from my mother-in-law, and got pinged by a friend. And finished folding some laundry (clean pillowcases and table linens). And wrote my co-teacher about a message I want to e-mail our students.

I have a hard time setting and keeping a bedtime. J. is urging me to get better at this. But it is hard when he is still hard at work in the office upstairs. He reminds me constantly that I need more sleep than he does. Which is true. And I have a bad cold, so he reminds me even more forcefully. But there are always more things to do....

Another Bride! (In which our Heroine ponders a pickle jar and a slew of bethrothals)

About a year and a half ago, my friend S. got married. This was notable for a few reasons. Chief among these was that almost no one in my close social circle had gotten married in years. After a period in my twenties of at least a wedding or two a year, there was a bit of a dry spell. And suddenly, S. met a lovely man (B.) and soon thereafter became engaged. They married. And then the floodgates opened.

S. says that she was a stubborn pickle--you know, the one that gets stuck in the neck of a jar, keeping the rest from being pulled out. Thus, the rest of us were the stuck pickles. Or something like that.

S. got married, and the rest of us followed. I got engaged about six months after that. Then, S.'s former roommate, another of my closest friends. Next, my roommate J. (the female J.) got engaged. But that could have been the result of her moving into my bedroom, which I had recently left. That room had previously been occupied by a series of people, male and female, most of whom have now been married or gotten pretty close.

Another friend in that circle of friends just announced her engagement.

And that doesn't even count husband J.'s brother who just got married, or the two or three other members of his family who are now engaged.

This glut of weddings may or may not be related to lucky bedrooms or the liberation of S. from the metaphoric pickle jar. But the winds are changing, and they smell like buttercream frosting and champagne.