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revdorothyl at 04:40pm on 10/08/2009
revdorothyl at 04:40pm on 10/08/2009I have a former doctoral program classmate (now a professor at a seminary in Oklahoma) who comes back to town for a few days about twice a year, and always tries to make room for a Scrabble game sometime during her brief visit.
We used to play Scrabble one evening a week, until she moved away 4 or 5 years ago -- she'd play host at her apartment (because I seem incapable of keeping my living space hospitable to anyone but me), and I'd bring over supper for us both, since I love cooking almost as much as I loathe cleaning. It worked out beautifully for us both, since we agreed on the rules (dictionaries may be consulted without penalty while trying to decide what words to make -- because that's 'research', and research is good!) and had one evening a week to use a different part of our brains and break bread together. Also, we were pretty evenly matched, and so the numbers of wins and losses were fairly equal over time (usually the winner was only ahead by 20 points, or so, which isn't much when the average score per turn is 23 and the final scores are always way over 200).
Anyway, last night was our second game this year, and boy, did I need that break from the too-much-alone-time that's my normal pattern here at home! (I know, I know! I whine about people-overload while at the con the previous weekend, but then as soon as I get home I complain of not enough people to socialize with. I'm just an inveterate whiner, I guess!)
On these rare Scrabble evenings when she's back in town I always bring over at least the main course and a side or two for supper for the three of us -- my friend, the retired teacher with whom she always stays on these visits, and myself -- and usually I try to do something fairly impressive, so I can bask in their appreciation. But since I had to preach a long ways out of town yesterday morning and wasn't sure how much of the afternoon would be left when I got back home, I figured "the heck with it!" and told them I'd bring appetizers and a main course from my freezer, if the two of them would provide some crusty bread and something for dessert. So, instead of being harried and over-heated from doing a lot of cooking at the last minute, when 5:30 PM (our appointed getting together time) approached I simply had to grab two items out of the freezer, throw all the ripe garden tomatoes on my countertop into a bag, and take along a large covered frying pan, to make sure I'd have the tools I needed.
I'm now officially a big fan of using frozen foods when trying for a relaxing evening! The frozen mussels in wine and garlic sauce that I'd bought on sale some months ago made a lovely appetizer, especially with chunks of a nice baguette to soak up the extra sauce. And my friend and her hostess were just as pleased by the Bertolli shrimp scampi with linguine that I poured out of the freezer bag and heated up in my covered pan (only adding in fresh broccoli florets provided by my hostess, and then all those cherry tomatoes near the end of the 10-minute cooking time) as they had ever been by my home-made contributions, I think. With fresh fruit salad and homemade pumpkin bread for dessert, who could ask for anything more? No pesky leftovers to take home (it was plenty of food for the three of us, but not so much that we couldn't comfortably finish it off and have room for dessert), only two pans to wash up, and no fuss.
To top off the mellowing effect of the evening, I happened to get very lucky in my letter draws, and finished with a final score of 412, to my friend's 356 (she'd used all her letters on two double-word scores in her very first turn, but I'd been able to use all my letters in each of my next two turns, and then once again later in the game -- would've done so with my last 7 letters, as well, except there was literally no space for it anywhere on the board by that time, and you KNOW things are bad when you can't find a place for a word beginning with "S"!). We've been running over 300 points per game for the past couple of years, but that was an exceptionally good-scoring game, and even finished before 10 PM.
Plus, we watched two Bruce Campbell films from 1992 back-to-back on the free movies On Demand feature during our game -- "Mindwarp", which was as gory and cheesy as I'd expected, and my old favorite "Army of Darkness", which is gory, cheesy, and truly witty.
Truly, my cup runneth over with contentment after last night! Nerd Nirvana was nearly achieved, and no real cleaning required afterwards.
We used to play Scrabble one evening a week, until she moved away 4 or 5 years ago -- she'd play host at her apartment (because I seem incapable of keeping my living space hospitable to anyone but me), and I'd bring over supper for us both, since I love cooking almost as much as I loathe cleaning. It worked out beautifully for us both, since we agreed on the rules (dictionaries may be consulted without penalty while trying to decide what words to make -- because that's 'research', and research is good!) and had one evening a week to use a different part of our brains and break bread together. Also, we were pretty evenly matched, and so the numbers of wins and losses were fairly equal over time (usually the winner was only ahead by 20 points, or so, which isn't much when the average score per turn is 23 and the final scores are always way over 200).
Anyway, last night was our second game this year, and boy, did I need that break from the too-much-alone-time that's my normal pattern here at home! (I know, I know! I whine about people-overload while at the con the previous weekend, but then as soon as I get home I complain of not enough people to socialize with. I'm just an inveterate whiner, I guess!)
On these rare Scrabble evenings when she's back in town I always bring over at least the main course and a side or two for supper for the three of us -- my friend, the retired teacher with whom she always stays on these visits, and myself -- and usually I try to do something fairly impressive, so I can bask in their appreciation. But since I had to preach a long ways out of town yesterday morning and wasn't sure how much of the afternoon would be left when I got back home, I figured "the heck with it!" and told them I'd bring appetizers and a main course from my freezer, if the two of them would provide some crusty bread and something for dessert. So, instead of being harried and over-heated from doing a lot of cooking at the last minute, when 5:30 PM (our appointed getting together time) approached I simply had to grab two items out of the freezer, throw all the ripe garden tomatoes on my countertop into a bag, and take along a large covered frying pan, to make sure I'd have the tools I needed.
I'm now officially a big fan of using frozen foods when trying for a relaxing evening! The frozen mussels in wine and garlic sauce that I'd bought on sale some months ago made a lovely appetizer, especially with chunks of a nice baguette to soak up the extra sauce. And my friend and her hostess were just as pleased by the Bertolli shrimp scampi with linguine that I poured out of the freezer bag and heated up in my covered pan (only adding in fresh broccoli florets provided by my hostess, and then all those cherry tomatoes near the end of the 10-minute cooking time) as they had ever been by my home-made contributions, I think. With fresh fruit salad and homemade pumpkin bread for dessert, who could ask for anything more? No pesky leftovers to take home (it was plenty of food for the three of us, but not so much that we couldn't comfortably finish it off and have room for dessert), only two pans to wash up, and no fuss.
To top off the mellowing effect of the evening, I happened to get very lucky in my letter draws, and finished with a final score of 412, to my friend's 356 (she'd used all her letters on two double-word scores in her very first turn, but I'd been able to use all my letters in each of my next two turns, and then once again later in the game -- would've done so with my last 7 letters, as well, except there was literally no space for it anywhere on the board by that time, and you KNOW things are bad when you can't find a place for a word beginning with "S"!). We've been running over 300 points per game for the past couple of years, but that was an exceptionally good-scoring game, and even finished before 10 PM.
Plus, we watched two Bruce Campbell films from 1992 back-to-back on the free movies On Demand feature during our game -- "Mindwarp", which was as gory and cheesy as I'd expected, and my old favorite "Army of Darkness", which is gory, cheesy, and truly witty.
Truly, my cup runneth over with contentment after last night! Nerd Nirvana was nearly achieved, and no real cleaning required afterwards.