Dieting

I’ve have to put myself on a Scrabble diet. This is akin to the Solitaire diet. It requires one to delete the app which is sucking up all of your valuable time, time which could be spent mastering the art of Jijitsu or tap dancing.

The only problem with the diet is that sometimes it is quite lovely to have a distraction which does challenge the mind. Waiting in a doctor’s office, sitting on an airplane next to another human being who sniffles, watching NASCAR with your spouse, waiting for the light to change at an intersection. (Okay, that one is not a habit I have acquired.)

The true reason for the delete is that my app quit updating its dictionary. It’s okay though – the dictionary was a British English reference, not American English, so all of my great words had to be taken in the context of me living in England or Australia, or some other past colony of the empire. It wouldn’t let me do cool words like “noob,” or “evite,” both which have letters I hate getting. Those “B”s and “V”s are tough to use properly for points.

I had begun to think in terms of ae-spellings and weird words which never made sense. I would try combinations that looked awkward and unpronounceable. When I would win against my British app, I felt pretty smug.

So, as an act of humility and patriotism, I am no longer playing Scrabble.