A scintilla of what I've been up to

So, if you read Liz's blog recently, you will know that the B²ME club (Ben, Ben, Marae, and Elise) went to the Jensen's house to eat dinner and play games. One of the games we played was Boggle.

The object of the game is quite simple—each player searches for words that can be constructed from the letters of sequentially adjacent cubes, where "adjacent" cubes are those horizontally, vertically or diagonally neighboring. Words must be at least three letters long, may include singular and plural (or other derived forms) separately, but may not use the same letter cube more than once per word. Each player records all the words he or she finds by writing on a private sheet of paper. After three minutes have elapsed, all players must stop writing and the game enters the scoring phase.
In the scoring phase, each player reads off his or her list of discovered words. If two or more players wrote the same word, it is removed from all players' lists. For all words remaining after duplicates have been eliminated, points are awarded based on the length of the word. The winner is the player whose point total is highest.

Marae ended up winning the game, so I have decided to improve and increase my vocabulary. Not only should this help me in Boggle, but it has been shown that if you know a lot of words it makes you sound smarter. Or, as I always say, a capaciously commodious lexicon propagates a presupposition of perspicaciousness propitious to the confabulator.

To help me in this endeavor, I have decided to utilize Dictionary.com's "word of the day" feature. Each day a new word is featured along with its definition, origin, and usage examples. Today's word is "scintilla".

scintilla \sin-TIL-uh\, noun: A tiny or scarcely detectable amount; the slightest particle; a trace; a spark.

Since doing this, my Boggle skills have improved. With a cursory glance at the above Boggle grid I found:

crackers, accusers, suckers, sounder, resound, rackers, huskers, duckers, dackers, cracker, accuses, accuser, sunder, sucres, sucker, soucar, racker, onuses, nouses, husker, ducker, dacker, cracks, accuse, users, under, suers, sucre, sucks, sound, sonde, snuck, racks, nukes, nuder, noses, husks, hucks, dusks, dukes, ducks, cusks, crack, cared, cadre, arcus, acres, acred, uses, user, sues, suer, suck, rhus, rare, rack, onus, nuke, nude, nous, nose, husk, huns, hues, huck, herd, dusk, duos, duns, duke, dues, duck, dare, cusk, cues, care, card, cade, acre, use, sun, sue, sud, sou, son, ser, res, red, rad, oud, nus, nos, hun, hue, her, era, edh, duo, dun, due, cue, cud, car, cad, are, arc, and ade.

131 words worth 215 points, not too bad. Or, should I say, not even a scintilla of...badness.

On a completely different but not completely unrelated note, when we went out to Liz & Ryan's house I returned the bin of LEGOs I had borrowed from Davy and Danny. I had been using them to try out some stop motion animation—where you set up a scene, take a picture, change the scene slightly, take another picture, and continue that sequence until you have hundreds of pictures that, when viewed in rapid succession, create the illusion of movement. Here are a couple of brief examples:

Anyway, that's about it for now. Gratchiss for reading my blog. Be sure to answer the poll question.

(Results from "Favorite Craig Nickname" poll: C.R. C.R. da yoof uh da nayshin=50%, Fatboy=37%, Lover Boy=13%)

It looks like it's time to blog once again. Some people like to blog as often as they change their socks--pretty much everyday. Me, on the other hand, blog about as often as I change my oil--every three months or 3,000 miles. Actually, it's been about five months since I last wrote, and I've traveled about 1,000,000 miles, so I'm pushing the limits.

Last time I wrote, I was living with David and Jeanne and their family. I had gone there under the pretense of working for David's company but was really investigating a theory held by many of our closest family members.

For years, at reunions and get-togethers, we had watched in awe at how amazing Jeanne was and wondered "how did David get a wife like her?" "Surely", we speculated, "there must be some major character flaw that has remained cleverly disguised. Or, perhaps, this is all a facade."

After months of observation, I had not run across any incriminating evidence. However, I spent much of my time at work and could not devote enough time to solving this great mystery. So I recruited Marae and Elise to join me. They quit their lucrative careers on the East coast and moved to Washington to aid me in the effort.

Having two more siblings up there was great. They kept an eye on Jeanne during the day and then we partied in the evenings. Unfortunately, they gave up after a few months of sleuthing and went home. Apparently they thought their detailed observations were pointless. I, however, had a suspicion that a breakthrough was about to be made. You see, in October David's family moved across town. I knew from experience that if anything could send someone into a murderous rage, it was moving. October came and went. Then November came--nothing! Finally, I concluded that Jeanne was genuinely awesome and returned home.

Although my investigation did not end the way I had expected, I was still grateful for the time I got to spend with David and his family. David and Jeanne are great parents and their kids are very smart and are learning some valuable skills. Here is a video of a talent they picked up by observing their dad.

While I was in Washington I bought a car. I had a feeling my old one was on its last leg so I got a 4-Runner. In fact, the car I was driving broke down between Idaho Falls and Pocatello last week as Craig was coming home from the temple. My new rig is great for picking up girls. As you can see, I'm picking up a girl in this picture. She's being a little immodest, but when you've got abs like that you like to show them off.

It's too bad about Craig, though. After two years on a bike he finally gets a car and it breaks down.

Speaking of breakdowns, mom decided to move to Nevada. I decided to move away. I'm now in Provo applying to business school. I'm in Marae's ward and Elise in gonna try to join the party too. Hopefully it's more eventful than my last trip to Utah when Elise took this picture of me standing motionless next to a narrow crack. It was a moment I'll either remember for the rest of my life or forget easily--probably the latter.

I guess that's what you have to expect from a girl who told me to take a picture of some people standing on top of a cliff and say it's me rather than actually taking a picture of me standing on top of a cliff. And, on that note, here's a picture of me standing on top of a cliff.

It's me again

It seems it is time for my semi-annual blog update. Not a lot has happened since I last wrote, so it shouldn't take too long to bring you up to date. On May 31st, The David & Jeanne Lindsey family and I went on a hike on Whidbey Island (about 20 minutes from their home). This picture was taken on top of a mountain overlooking the water as Cooper and I were enjoying our sandwiches--his a peanut butter and jelly and mine a roast beef...with no jelly.

It was about the first time I had gotten out to "see the sights" since I had arrived. Prior to that, all time and effort had been allotted to one goal--getting the 2008-2009 Skagit and Islands Directory to the printer.

We all had spent many long hours trying to meet our print deadline. Some weeks I had as many overtime hours as regular hours. Some days we'd stay 'til 2:00, 3:00 or even 5:00 o'clock in the morning. Even when I was asleep, my dreams (or, more commonly, nightmares) were phone book related. Finally, at the end of June, all our files were sent to the printer to be turned into what has become the most used, most preferred, most referenced phone book in the area.

A few days later, I was on a plane to Reno, Nevada to visit Larisa and Nick and their family in Carson City. I did a little tile work and such at their house and hung out with the family for a couple of days before they went to a family camp and I went to visit Kirsten and Mussie and their girls.

I had originally only planned to be in California for a couple of days but, fortunately, I was able to stay longer. I hadn't been to the Berhan home in ages, so I'm glad I had the chance. When I first arrived, Mussie and his friend, Peter, were building a chicken coop for the chickens the Berhans are raising. I helped out a little on that, but they did the bulk of the work themselves because I was often out doing something else.

One of the first days I was there we went to the beach so I could try my hand at surfing. I got the paddling out part down pretty good but there were not many waves, so the standing up and riding the wave part (supposedly the key element of surfing) was never achieved. We spent several other days at the beach however, and I did successfully ride a boogie board.

Another interesting experience was my first excursion to an all-vegetarian restaurant. As many people know, I am a carnivorous person so this was uncharted territory for me. I ordered something that neither Kirsten nor anyone in her family had tried before. If I remember correctly, it was something covered in chili. I wont say if it was good or bad, but Kirsten and I both agreed that it tasted similar to a casserole that Mom would make up.

After about a week and a lot of fun, I flew back to Washington--just in time for distribution of the freshly-printed phone books. I began distributing to the businesses in Mount Vernon. It was nice to hear the responses of the people to the new book as they gently caressed the embossed cover and noticed the improved coverage area. To see their faces light up as they opened to the reverse directory. To hear their jubilant exclamations about the restaurant section or the maps or the coupons. To watch them hold back tears of glee as they declared that they had been waiting for this book for as long as they could remember. These were but some of the experiences I had in my days as a telephone directory delivery man. It is an experience I will not soon forget.

Towards the end of the distribution period, David, Cooper, myself, and a guy named Jim (from the office) took a ferry to the San Juan Islands to deliver books. We took two big trucks (David drove one and I drove the other) onto the islands and got books to as many people as we could. We spent the night on top of some moving blankets in the back of one of the trucks with a few pallets of books. Everyone at the office thought it was very intrepid of us to do such a thing, but I thought nothing of it. I guess when you grow up sleeping in the gutter of a Dodge van that carries the aroma of musty food cooler for a week you become somewhat desensitized to sleeping conditions.

The morning after we got home, Cooper's sister were happy to see him and were anxious to wake him up--as you can see in this picture.

They were, however, indifferent to the fact that I was home and would not let me join in on the enthralling conversations of their numerous

miniature dolls who all bear the same name--Polly Pocket. I guess my Polly was not as appealing as the others (but she did have a sweet spirit).

Since then things have slowed down a bit. We've gone fishing a couple of times. We went to a lake in Ferndale where David said Dad used to take us when we were younger. I caught a monster sized yellow perch but that was about all the action we saw that day. Cooper held it up for the picture. We've been salmon fishing a few times since and no one has caught anything except Cooper. He has caught close to ten little fish of various species with his new favorite bait--night crawlers.

We've also been to a few fairs. The Skagit County fair was fun. The kids wanted to see all the animals and ride the rides. Here's David and Eliza on the Merry-Go-Round. And here he is with Sophia and Alice at a musical performance. We also went to the Western Washington Fair so cooper could ride a sheep. I didn't see much of it because I was taking this picture but I heard he fell of and the sheep stepped on his head. Needless to say he is excited to go again.

To wrap things up, I thought I'd include a glimpse into the ingenuity of the Lindsey kids. Here they are attaching life jackets to the bottom of a sled so they could float in the pond. Cooper's maiden voyage left him with wet pants--but he was floating.

Well, that about does it for now. Check back in three to six months.

Eliza's Birthday

Yesterday was Eliza's Birthday. She's 3. She had a Dora the Explorer cake that Jeanne made--it was really cool.

Back in the land of my nativity

So, I'm living with David and his family in Washington, I share a room with Cooper. He sleeps right through the night if he has his pink poodle.