Made in USA fail

We noticed something a little strange while playing Hearts tonight...

{click to enlarge}

My brother and I tried uploading the photo to failblog, but it ended up on their partner site cheezburger instead. Check it out here!

Nerd Alert

I just scored 53 points in one round of Boggle.

It was amazing.

My longest word was blistered. 11 points just for that one word, plus several other 5 or 6 letter words and their plurals. Insanity. Rob did pretty well that round too scoring 20 points, an impressive number for most rounds, but it just couldn't compete with my more than double score from the same round. We saw a completely different set of words. Mine just happened to be longer. It was ridiculous.

Now I think I have to retire and end my Boggle playing career on a high note, because there is no way I can ever top that.

a stone's throw

been watching a lot of this lately


If have no idea what is going on in that photo, then you are missing out on some high quality Olympic action! We're talking about CURLING folks. It's a crazy Olympic sport where teams of 4 take turns throwing (or pushing rather) large stones across the ice, while two teammates "sweep" out in front of the stone to help it "curl" in the direction they want, or to help it go straight. The point of the game is to get your stones into the target (aka "the house") at the other end of the ice, and to knock any of your opponent's stones out of the house. It may not seem as exciting as freestyle skiing or the luge, but it's one of our favorites. We like it because of the strategy and precision involved in play. And because, let's face it, it's kind of weird.

For some crazy reason, they don't seem to air it on regular NBC, only on CNBC or MSNBC, so if you don't have cable or satellite, you probably haven't seen any Olympic coverage of this fine pass-time. But don't you fret my friends. If you've got an itch to try out some curling for yourself, just hop on over to playcurling.com to give it a whirl! (You can play without having to create an account by clicking "Practice Mode"). We've enjoyed a few hours of online stone throwing fun ourselves, so now it's your turn! What are you waiting for?! Go on over and get your curl on! Your Olympic experience just won't be complete without it.

I like me some Scrabble

Some things never get old

In case you were wondering, Scatergories is still fun. I used to play this game a lot with my childhood best-friend. It was either this or Yahtzee, which we also played to death. Rob and I played Scatergories again with some friends the other day and let me tell ya, it just never gets old! The thing that really keeps this game alive is that amazing 26 sided die. You can play the same 12 category cards over and over, but they're different every time because you're playing with a new letter. Brilliant!

While playing Scatergories, we had the thought that perhaps this 26-sided alphabet die would come in handy in other games as well. We had an idea to use it while playing Settlers of Catan, because each number piece in Settlers also has a letter on it to help beginning players setup the board. We thought we could add some kind of bonus roll with the Scatergories die, and if you are built on a hex with the corresponding letter from the alphabet, you get to choose the resource card of your choice or something. Anyway, we haven't tried this yet, but we HAVE tried playing Catan with a standard 12-sided number die, and that totally changed the whole dynamic of the game. It basically voids the probability of rolling the dice and makes each number equal. Pretty interesting.

So, anyone feel like nerding it up and trying out this new Scatergories/Settlers method?