Do I know words?

Why stop at pink tires?

I had to take a picture before they got dirty. It’s not a colour I’d normally choose (although I have), only because my grimy profession has forced me into a wardrobe of darkness. More than ever, I need some light in my life. The past two weeks have been rough mentally.

I haven’t communicated with ICBC since the day I received their decision. I’m still undecided about whether to appeal it. With the discounts available to me as someone working in the bike industry and the fact that I built my own wheel, I’m out $600, which is small beans compared to my ongoing dental work My motivation is to see ICBC being held accountable for their lack of professionalism. Jill, whose partner was struck by a car while cycling a few months before me, is still dealing with ICBC’s constant ghosting.

The mega boss (not just the person I report to directly, but the owner) sent me an email offering his support. While typing out my explanation of the situation, Gmail kept suggesting translating my email into Polish. I found this distracting as it kept me wondering what I’d done to trigger Gmail’s algorithms. The one friend I have who has a Polish name, I haven’t heard from in months. I decided to fight fire with fire by googling the answer.

Yep.

It wasn’t a suggestion to translate my text into Polish. AI was asking me if I wanted help polishing it.

Boy, is my face red. But, no, I don’t want to squeeze the flavour out of my emails by running them through an AI generator. My turds don’t need polishing.

Last night, I dared to bring my Scrabble board to Alexa and Daniel’s for our games night. I also brought Super Mario Party for the Switch in case they weren’t in the mood for an evening of massaging their temples.

I last played Scrabble regularly when I lived in Vancouver, first with András, then with Marianne. Since then, I’ve struggled to find a willing opponent. The last person I tried playing against basically told me they didn’t “play it like that,” with “that” being the actual rules: no searching for playable words in the dictionary. The rules are a part of the thrill! For example, if a player dares to put down the letters BUXOMIER, any of the other opponents can challenge the word. Should BUXOMIER be absent from the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, the player loses their turn.

That was me: I lost my turn. BUXOM wasn’t my word: I was trying to leech some points off Daniel’s excellent play by turning the word into a superlative. I tried getting even with Daniel by challenging him for WAIL.

“Huh, so this guy doesn’t know how to spell whale?” -Me (But not out loud.)

I quickly rescinded my challenge when I realized he meant wail, as in “The wail of the Polish.”

I also lost a challenge when Daniel played COZ.

Based on what I’ve shared so far, it probably surprises you to learn that I ended up winning. I already had the edge as someone familiar with the game. It was Alexa’s first time playing, and Daniel couldn’t remember the last time he played, but he happened to know the name of the world’s best Scrabble player: Nigel Richards.

Despite my struggle to recognize letters as words, I had a secret advantage. Back when Marianne and I were playing Scrabble, because I was getting so frustrated by actually doing well and still losing, I studied all the playable two-letter words. I even made flashcards. It helped, but I made the mistake of telling Marianne what I’d done, so it wasn’t long before the win rate bounced back in her favour.

Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do…

The real win of the night was when my opponents, who lost (Badly! Hilariously! Buxomingly!), asked if we wanted to play another game. If either of them were to tell me they made flashcards, my heart would swell. We moved over to the couch and played Super Mario Party so Alexa could have a taste of what it’s like to win. Games night concluded with a round of Mario Kart, thus giving Daniel his comfortably earned victory.

We were all winners last night.