A bad night of Scrabble...

... doesn't really beat anything, actually; it jes' plain stinks! I knew I was in for a bad night at the club when I beat Sam Moch (little high school twerp who's quickly becoming one of the top amateur club players) in a warmup game, pulling both blanks and three of the four "s"s. I joked that I must've used up all of my good karma for the night in one game, and I was right... 0-4, with two of the losses being due to time penalties and poor endgame management. No bingos in my last two games after getting five in the first two, and getting a perfectly nice bingo challenged off 'cause the friggin' official word list doesn't know from SALINATE, fer cryin' out loud... (sheesh, even dictionary.com lists the word)... ah, well, that's what you get when you go a month without practicing or studying, I guess.

No more carols for another year, thank goodness. Christmas carols are one thing, but carols screeched out by contemporary pop "singers" are simply not cool. At least I avoided having to hear that "drummer boy" monstrosity this year... one of these days, someone's gonna go postal with a machine gun in a grocery, sreaming "rut-a-ta-tum THIS!" and I don't think there's a jury out there that would convict him.