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.