#365Gratitude Day 126: Being appreciated

Technically this happened last night.  But it's my blog, and my rules.  

Last night as we were going to bed, Missy kind of took my breath away.  I was telling her how much I love her, and how I really appreciate the things she does with and for me, and she said (I'm paraphrasing here) that sometimes she worries that it could never equal what I do for her.  

She said that she was amazed by the depth of the ways I take care of things for her, and her in general, and how I'm always there for her.  

I feel the same way about her.  She does so much for me.  She supports me in everything I do.  She's my biggest cheerleader.  Her smile is the one that means the most to me.

I think that part of being married is a sort of quiet, every day acknowledgement that you are your spouse's #1 fan.  It's lovely, but I'm glad that every so often we both go out of our way to tell each other how much we really mean to one another.

#365Gratitude Day 125: Seckslists

Okay, so that's not really a word.  What I'm talking about is sexual checklists.  Through some reddit-browsing I stumbled across Mojo Upgrade, a website where you can compare sexual interests with your partner.

I've seen things like this before, but this is particularly slick.  It's a pretty good tool.  I do think some things are missing - I'd love to see it delve even deeper into fetishes.  But it's a great place to start.  It's easy to do, and fun.

I'm glad sex-positive stuff like this is out there.

#365Gratitude Day 124: Getting over on down under

So I love Words with Friends, which is basically Scrabble.  (It's actually tons better than the official Scrabble app, which I no longer use.)  I have this friend, Jasethain, who is a podcast listener, who has become one of my scrabble-buddies.  We regularly have at least one game of it going all the time.

He's also from Australia.  I find this incredibly cool.  It feels weirdly magical and futuristic to me to have a regular scrabble pal on the other side of the world.

He's a pretty good player, and he's beat me several times.  He's tenacious.  We're very friendly to one another, and often chat in our games too.  Sometimes, I get a really good play against him.

Here's a great one I got Monday.

I know those 7-letter-high-score plays (called "bingos" by scrabble nerds like myself) are devastating.  

Even more elusive and demoralizing is the coveted triple-triple, where you play a bingo that, leveraging already played tiles, makes a word big enough to hit two triple-word scores at the same time.  (I've done it exactly once in my life.)  That gives you nine times whatever the natural score of the word is, plus the fifty point bonus.  But I digress.  

One of the things that makes Jasethain fun to play against is that he takes stuff like this in stride, and will often rally back after plays like this, sometimes with a bingo of his own.    

I'm excited to see how this game works out.

(Oh if you want to play too, my WwF name is "Mako Allen" - let's play!)

#365Gratitude Day 123: Still running

I haven't done any serious running in a long time.  But I'm getting back into it.

I went for a 45 minute interval run at the gym the other day.  It wasn't very fast, but you gotta start somewhere.  I'm glad I did.  Afterward I felt good.  Best part was I figured out that my gym had a treadmill that does intervals pretty well.  It's gonna work out well for me.

#365Gratitude Day 122: And your training begins...

I've written before about my lifelong love of Scrabble, and how my aunt taught me to play when I was very young.  She soundly trounced me for literally thousands of games over the course of about 15 years, before I got skilled enough to beat her.

It's a tradition I've continued, first with my own stepson, T., and now with my newest student, our girl Kate's little boy, Captain-Man.  Katiebug and the good captain were down for a visit this weekend.  

High on the Captain's agenda was us playing Scrabble Junior, which his mom was good enough to get for him.  

There's our first game, in progress.  (I'm the one with the bigger, hairier legs.)

I was pleasant surprised by just how much Cap already knows.  He's very clear on his consonants versus vowels, and he was able to read the words on the board without much help on my part.  Once I showed him the tactical advantage to looking for words he could complete, especially words of his own color (which give two points in Scrabble Junior), he was on the case.

And he won.

OK, I'll admit, I consciously avoided plays where I could have taken points from him.  I didn't outright throw the game, but I was very generous.  (C'mon, he's 5.  What am I, a monster?)

He loved it.  Later in the weekend, we played a four person game with Missy, and his mom.  He came in third that time, and lost gracefully, which also pleased me.  (And just for the record, I came in second, so put a sock in it.  Kate won.  She was great.)

I strongly suspect that our playing this game each visit, and ultimately graduating to the blank board version of it (on the other side of the board) is in our future, and that it won't even be long.  His eyes lit up when we played in a way I recognize.

I am looking forward to his becoming a formidable player.