Tag: Fun

Word Wednesday: I Grok That (finally)
Word Wednesday: I Grok That (finally)

After a bit of a respite from Word Wednesday, I’m back at it again. I didn’t think I would miss it but I did. I am an unabashed logophile (more on that another week) and truthfully, picking a favourite word each week isn’t a chore, it’s more of a labour of love. I’ve been working on the craft of writing more this year and have dedicated some time each week for professional development – for the first few months of the year that means reading about writing. Currently, I’m in the middle of Stephen King’s wonderful book On Writing. While I’ve never been a huge fan of King’s horror novels (I still have a mild case of coulrophobia thanks to It – but only those with Pennywise makeup. other clowns aren’t objects of abject terror but I once rode 2 stops past where I needed to get off on the TTC because there was a guy dressed as Pennywise on the platform I needed to use) I appreciate the thought and hard work he devotes to his craft.

King devotes a lot of energy to the notion that writers must be, above all, readers. He says that it really doesn’t matter if the books are classic or even good. Indeed, he argues that “One learns most clearly what not to do by reading bad prose – one novel like Asteroid Miners (or Valley of the Dolls, Flowers in the Attic, and The Bridges of Madison County to name just a few) is worth a semester at a good writing school, even with the superstar guest lecturers thrown in”. I’m inclined to agree, though there are some books I haven’t been able to force myself to finish because the grammatical errors were so egregious that they muddled the plot. At the end of On Writing, King offers up a list of books that he has enjoyed – he says he’s not Oprah and this isn’t a book club reading list but simply a list of books that he has enjoyed and that have helped him grow in his craft. This got me thinking and I’ve been trying to stretch my reading muscles in the weeks since. (Yes I read the “And Furthermore, Part II” section before finishing the book – I’m a rebel like that). One book that I picked up recently and started reading (I typically have at least 3 or 4 books on the go at any given time – I pick and choose which book to read depending on my mood) is the 1961 classic Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. It was here that I came across the word I want to write about today.

%{include image.html url=“/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/If-you-dont-have-time-to-read-you-dont-have-the-time-or-the-tools-to-write..png” alt=“A notebook with a pen across it and the text: If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. Stephen King” description=“Words to live by”}

There’s no etymology of this word since it is out of the mind of Heinlein. I have many awesome and geeky friends who use this word often enough that over the years, I’ve figured out the meaning by osmosis. I didn’t truly grok it until I read the definition given by Heinlein in the book:

Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.

So now when a friend comments that they grok something, I can smile knowing that I’m in the know. I grok what it means to grok.

%{include image.html url=“/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/coollogo_com-23492915.png” alt=“Stylized word Grok” description=“Grok”}

Grok (grok) verb
1. To understand thoroughly and intuitively.
February 3, 2016
#WordWednesday: The sequel

#WordWednesday: The sequel

Okay, So it’s looking like this may stick. At least for the next little while. Today’s word is one that I love using and as many of my friends will attest, I have been known to seek out occasions to use this word. Granted, sometimes I have had to shoehorn in in but it’s such a fun word, it’s totally worth the effort. You might say that playing with words is my thing. It’s my happy place, something I do for my own personal enjoyment.

In other words, playing around on the linguistic jungle gym is my bailiwick.

Today’s Word Wednesday is Bailiwick

There are plenty of synonyms I could use, wheelhouse, domain, even ‘thing’ – as in ‘it’s my thing’ but bailiwick just sounds so cool. It rolls off the tongue. I was surprised to learn that the word bailiwick isn’t as old as I thought it was – it’s late middle English so not exactly new but not a Latin based word either. It does have a secondary meaning (which used to be the primary meaning) which is the one that it literally translates to. The original meaning of bailiwick was “an area under the supervision of a bailiff (this could be a mayor, sheriff, or other official instead of the bailiff we think of today – though I still picture Bull from Night Court whenever I hear that word).” The origin of the word is partly French – the word bailie refers to the official who was ordered to supervise an area.

Not this kind of bailiff…

In France, this area was called a bailliage but the English never liked to steal a word outright, they always made a few changes. When they adopted the use of the word bailie, they added the word wik to the end. Wik in middle English meant village (it’s also the root word for a town name like Greenwich – literally ‘green village’) so bailiwick became the area or village that fell under the supervision of the bailie. Surprisingly, there are still a few official bailiwicks left in the United Kingdom today – the islands of Jersey and Guernsey are legally bailiwicks.

With only two bailiwicks of the traditional sense left, it is the new meaning that has me using this word whenever I can. The modern definition of bailiwick is a person’s “specific sphere of interest, or area of expertise”. So, really, writing, and more specifically, grammar is my bailiwick. What’s yours?

Bailiwick – (bai·li·wick ) Noun

i) A person’s specific sphere of interest or area of expertise.

ii) The area in which a bailiff has jurisdiction.

June 10, 2015
A great night out with Art Tonite

A great night out with Art Tonite

When I was invited to check out Art Tonite by my friend Hollie, I was excited but also somewhat trepidatious. I’m not an artist, not by a longshot. I prefer to do my painting with words. My grandmother, now she was an artist. We have some of her paintings hanging in the house and they’re stunning. People routinely ask who painted them, expecting a famous artist’s name and I love telling them that it was my grandmother who painted them. The artistic gene seems to have been passed down to one of my cousins, but it missed me completely. I had a miserable time in art classes in school. They usually required copying a drawing or technique which was all but impossible with my learning disability. The only way I copied anything was by memorizing it (it is still the only way for me to copy information reliably) and while I was very adept at memorizing words, and to a lesser extent numbers, but paintings? Not so much. I remember being in tears trying to follow a “Learn to draw Archie” page in a comic book when I was 10 or 11. I was trying my best, but it looked nothing like America’s favourite red-headed teen. I recruited a friend to come with me to the event, and she conveniently lived just down the street from the venue. I had a nice dinner with her and 2 of her kids before heading out to Art Tonite. We entered the venue and followed the signs downstairs to where the basement of Pappas Grill had been transformed. There were easels, paints, and blank canvasses on all of the available table space. There was also an exemplar on display. My heart sunk. There was no way I was going to be able to copy it.

This was what we were supposed to paint.

The event included food and drink, so I grabbed a glass of white wine to stop me from turning and running out. I said hello to some people I knew from different social media events (mostly BlissDom Canada), and got caught up and tried to convince myself it didn’t matter if my painting sucked. Except it did. After about 40 minutes of socializing, the announcement was made to make our way to a canvas and get ready to paint. I started to panic on the inside. I felt like I was about to commit a crime against art. Then the lead artist took the microphone. I was expecting everyone to paint the same thing at the same time, with the instructors helping as needed. I was half right. The first thing our lead artist did was introduce the team of artists who would be wandering between the tables helping us create our ‘masterpieces’ . There were more of them than I thought, which was good. Then we were told we could either re-create our own version of the painting on display or, if the muse struck us, paint something else. I was saved. Well, sort of . I knew I couldn’t copy the painting, but I also didn’t have a clue what I wanted to paint. I love nature scenes, and have taken some really nice photos up at our cottage in Haliburton, so I reached for my BlackBerry and started scanning through photos until I found one I wanted to base my painting off of. I know the landscape around the lake very well as I’ve been there for part of almost every summer since I was born. I figured if any location had ingrained itself in my memory, it would be a lake / cottage picture. Having chosen the image upon which I wanted to base my artwork, I sat and stared at the blank canvas for a good five minutes. It was *so* white, and blank, and ohmygoodness what if I made a mistake? Luckily one of the assistants came by and asked if she could help. I explained that I’d chosen a different route than what most of the room was doing, still not quite believing that this was kosher, and she was very enthusiastic about it. She helped me figure out where to start and assured me that there was very little that I could do that would completely ruin the canvas, or that couldn’t be corrected. I painted, nibbled, sipped, and chatted for the next hour and a half. There were a few points where I got stuck – like how to do the water properly and how to make the clouds look like clouds instead of white blobs – but one of the instructors or assistants were always quick to come over and offer advice or demonstrate a technique and help me out. I got frustrated a few times, but that was more with my own artistic limitations and the fact that I couldn’t get an aspect of my painting to look the way I wanted it to, but didn’t know how to describe it to the instructors for help. At the end of the night, this is what I ended up with.

My finished painting. It has a tree, like the exemplar, and some clouds, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Once I was done, I got up to move around and check out everyone else’s paintings. I was one of 5 or 6 people (most sitting in my row) who had gone against the grain and painted something completely different. Many people had their own take on the exemplar though, such as the ultra talented Christella whose lovely additions really brought the painting to life.

I love how Christella added flowers to the tree and swapped the colours around to make it feel softer. The motion in the swing makes me feel like a child has just jumped off and out of the picture.

Everyone had made the painting their own somehow. We’d all had a great night, had some drinks, some amazing food, and created something with our own hands. I wish my art classes in school had been more like Art Tonite; if they had been, I might have taken some art classes in high school. If you’re in the Toronto area and are looking for a fun night out with friends, go to their website and check out the dates (and art) for the next public event, or book a private event as a celebration.

May 24, 2015
Board Games I Love

Board Games I Love

I admit it, I’m a board game fanatic. Luckily I have a great group of friends who also love playing board games and we get together 1-2 nights a month to play. I own a lot of games myself, and though there is some duplication in collections (Many of us own Settlers of Catan for ourselves, along with Dominion and Carcassonne) I’d say that between all of us we have at least 500 unique games / add ons to games / variants of games. That’s a LOT of choices – though some get played very rarely (I’m looking at you Risk and Axis and Allies). Board games are my favourite choice for a night out with friends since it’s social without being in a loud restaurant or at a movie and I don’t have to have pre-read a book like at book club. I’m going to list my current 5 favourite games – though the list changes frequently as I discover new games or rediscover games I had forgotten about – with a bit of a description of the game and my thoughts on playability.

5) Tsuro

The rules are simple but winning is not

I was only introduced to this wonderful game recently, and while I don’t own it, it’s definitely on my list! The game is really quick (averaging 15-20 minutes) and a great “appetizer” in front of longer games or one to play while waiting on people to show up. The premise is simple -each player has a token and a tile in front of them. You create the board as you go along, with each person playing one tile per turn. Your token moves along the path you are creating. The goal of the game is to be the last one still on the board – tiles can move you off the board, at which point you are out. As the game progresses, your token may be affected by other players who want to knock your token off the board. The game is gorgeous to look at and elegant in its simplicity. It can have anywhere between 2-8 players and the recommended age is 8 years and up. I highly recommend it.

4) Ticket To Ride

There are many variants to this game

I was introduced to Ticket to Ride by friends soon after the European map came out in 2005. It was a lot of fun to play and I really liked that it was a strategy game that could be learned in about 15 minutes and played in 30-45 minutes. While several of my friends prefer the European map because it has stations that allow you to connect your trains through cities that would otherwise be inaccessible because others have played there, I love the North American map because it doesn’t have stations. You really need to plan your strategy. The object of the game is to collect and play matching train cards to claim railway routes between cities. Trains of differing lengths have different point values. You can also score points by finishing destination tickets (connecting 2 distant cities by trains), and there are bonus points for longest route. The game play is very simple with only 3 possible actions each turn (drawing train cards, playing a set of train cards to claim a route, or drawing more destination tickets) so the game pace is very quick. Ticket to Ride is for 2-5 players ages 8 and up. It’s lots of fun and is considered a “gateway” game to introduce people to tabletop gaming.

3) Qwirkle

I own both the large size and the travel size versions of this game

Qwirkle falls into the category of what I would describe as deceptively tricky games. The premise is really simple: match tiles either by colour or by shape. There are 108 tiles total – 3 sets of 6 different shapes in 6 different colours. The catch is that you must play your tiles in a line and that the lines cannot contain duplicates and must contain a tile that matches either the shape or colour of the line you are joining. You get a point for each tile in the line(s) that you play, and a bonus of 6 points for completing a set of 6. The tricky part comes in the strategy – do you play your tile knowing that your opponents may be able to finish the line of 6? Do you wait and hope you draw the needed tile? Will someone else block the space you need? It can be really hard to pre-plan moves because the board changes with each player’s turn. Qwirkle is for 2-4 players aged 6 and up. I’ve played it with both kids and adults and everyone enjoys this game – especially since it takes between 30-45 minutes for a game.

2) 7 Wonders

This game is definitely more complex but I love it

This game isn’t considered to be an introductory game, though there’s no real reason it couldn’t be. It’s fairly complex but once you’ve played it through, it has a high replay value. 7 Wonders is essentially a card development game – you build cards to either help you now or help you later. The game has 3 stages and each stage has different cards in it (and they tend to go up in cost as well as point value). The object is to have the most points and there are tons of different ways to gain points. You have a deck of cards to begin the stage and then choose one card to build immediately and pass the rest on to your neighbour (on left or right depending on the stage). You can also bury your card to build a part of your wonder (which usually gives points at the end of the game). That’s where the strategy comes in – which card do you build / bury knowing that all the rest are going to your opponent. (Cards move around after every turn and you display what you built immediately so you know approximately how you are doing in relation to the other players). It is very possible to overthink the game or try too many strategies and fail at all of them. It’s also possible to have no real strategy at the beginning and still win. I’ve done both. 7 Wonders takes between 10 and 15 minutes to set up and between 30-45 minutes to play depending on how long each person takes to decide what they are doing each turn. You can play with 2-7 players (I’ve never tried 2 player) and the recommended ages are 10 and up. If you take the time to learn to play, it’s a great game to pull out with friends.

1) Bananagrams

The bag is part of the appeal here

I’m a word geek. I loved scrabble but finding people to play against me was always hard. I also didn’t like having to have a board and the restrictions the board imposed on gameplay or having to wait for the other players to play before I could enter my next word. Enter Bananagrams. In Bananagrams, each player works independently to create a crossword grid of words using letters from their own pile. Everyone starts with the same number of letters, and when one person has used up all their letters, each player picks up an additional tile from the joint pool. When there are no tiles left to pick up, the person who uses all their tiles first is the winner. It seems easy but you only have your own words to build off of, and there are no letter values so being stuck with a Q and no U or a Z just makes it harder to play instead of giving you extra points. That said, it’s a fantastic mental challenge and lots of fun for 1-8 players to play at the same time. A game can last as short as 10 minutes depending on the speed at which players can use their letters. The game is best for ages 7 and up as you do need to be able to spell enough words to make use of the tiles. It’s a fun and very portable game that can be played pretty much anywhere.

So those are my 5 favourite games right now. Tell me in the comments what games your family enjoys!

March 30, 2015
The Good, the Bad, and the Argos

The Good, the Bad, and the Argos

I’m not going to play armchair GM at 2 am the morning after a loss. Especially after a home game where I didn’t see all of the game because I was playing in the band. Yes the Argos played badly, no I don’t have a magic fix to make the season all better. It wasn’t just one thing or one player that made the team lose, it was a number of factors working together. It’s really easy to lay the blame at the feet of a single player but football is a team sport. Part of the Argos’ trouble seems to be an inability to deal with unexpected changes such as a key player going down to injury. If left to their own game plan, the Argos seem to be a decent (Not spectacular) team; but when a monkey wrench is thrown into the works, such as Rob Murphy’s injury this week or Kevin Eiben’s injury a few weeks ago, the team collapses in on itself. I think it goes back to confidence and the Argos seem to be lacking in it. When everything is carefully scripted, they’re fine but going off script is disastrous because the players are worried that in doing so they’ll make a mistake. The most dangerous thing to be in football is cautious – it’s also the most boring! There’s nothing worse than a team playing to not lose. I can root for a losing team, but not a boring team. Other than some spectacular special teams plays by Chad Owens. the Argos were boring tonight There was a lot of potential to not be boring – there was a great string of 1st downs in the first quarter but then the drive ended with a rather anti-climatic field goal. Turnovers were not capitalized on, turning an exciting event into nothing. Again I’m not sure how to fix it but I’m hoping one of the coaches on the Argos does.

Even with the loss, the Argo game was fun tonight. That’s the best thing about being in Argonotes – even when the team on the field is less than entertaining, the band is always awesome. At halftime tonight, we did our usual show – 4 or 5 songs to a small but loyal crowd by gate 5. As we were playing our first song, I noticed 2 little girls dancing along to the band. I went over to our ~~director~~ Dictator’s big bag o’ musical toys and dug out a tambourine and gave it to the girls. The look on their face was of pure delight. They shook it together and were generally adorable. Their dad took some pictures and the girls were having a great time. For the next song, I asked the girls if they wanted to play WITH the band. Our fantastic bass drummer Tyler came in front of the band and let the younger girl “help” play the bass drum and the older girl got to play the tambourine in front of the band, wearing the Dictators furry blue hat. The looks of joy on their faces made my whole night. To make things even better, when I was walking around the Dome after our half-time show, I saw the family. The girls came up to me and thanked me and then the older one went to call her mum and was eagerly telling her about being IN the band. The grandmother told me that we had made their night extra special and that they’d remember it for a long time.Thinking about that makes me put the loss in perspective. The Argos may not have won, but this Argonote sure did.

September 3, 2011
Bye Week

Bye Week

So it’s the bye week for my team the Toronto Argos – I’m going through withdrawal even though there were 2 very good teams playing football this week. The Bye week means that we’re halfway through the CFL season – It feels like it just started yesterday. I’m not ready for the regular season to be over in 8 short weeks! the CFL season is so short compared to the off-season. Pretty soon it will be November and November means PLAYOFFS. I dearly hope that my Argos turn things around and make it into the playoffs! There’s nothing better than playoff football. And while I root for the Argos, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a good game no matter who is playing. This week was a prime example of why I love the CFL – Both games went down to the final two minutes, and both of my picks were right (but boy was I nervous!).

I was rooting for Winnipeg primarily because of the flak Tina LaPolice got for daring to express an opinion. I don’t believe that anything is different because she is the wife of the Head Coach of the Bombers. I think she has a right to cheer for the team and not take crap from certain loudmouthed players and fans on twitter. It even says in her twitter bio that her opinions are her own. I LOVE her twitter bio Football wife, mother of 2 gorgeous babes! Opinions are my own, not that of my husband! It’s not the 50’s..I say what I want! Still!! I think the whole situation got seriously blown out of proportion. When Dave Stala commented about wanting to take the swag out of swaggerville, she replied “We’ll see hacky sack boy!” – the Hacky sack boy comment refers to a touchdown celebration in which Stala plays hacky sack with the football (how this doesn’t run afoul of the non celebration rule still boggles my mind). That’s it. That was the comment that got everyone riled up. Seriously? Don’t you people have better things to do with your time? Tina is a strong woman who has strong beliefs – she was a Bomber’s cheerleader too so it’s natural for her to stick up for her team. I know I’m in the minority here, but I salute her and hope that she continues to show confidence in her team. They are one of the best stories of the 2011 CFL season to date – Yes Calvillo breaking the passing records is a great story but it was expected. I’m not sure that anyone expected the Bombers to be 7-1 at the midway point. Instead of making a twitter tempest in a teapot, let’s celebrate the great season the Bombers are having – and this despite the untimely death of their Assistant Head Coach Richard Harris earlier this season.

I will also add to the twitter follower who told me after I tweeted in support of @tinalapo … “Of course you’d defend her your (sic) a mouthy broad too”. Thanks. I will take that as a complement.

August 28, 2011