November 2006 – laurenlavoie.com

Travel Scrabble

Travel Scrabble This season, Hasbro is pushing their new Scrabble Game Folio, which is designed for travel: the gameboard sits inside a zip-up binder and the miniature tiles snap into place so that the game can easily support airplane turbulence and being packed up mid-game to be finished later. Kenny and I, having appreciated playing Scrabble at our B&B in Manarola after all of the tourist attractions closed, decided to pick one up for our trip to New Orleans.

While compact for a board game, it’s still a bit bulky, and I wouldn’t recommend it for international travel if you are trying to pack light. However, it was fabulous for the plane, and in general for a short domestic trip it seems to work great. We probably played 5 games of Scrabble during our various flights and layovers this week, and it certainly made the time go by faster. This was a godsend for me, since my laptop is out of commission awaiting a new motherboard.

I’m still not great at Scrabble, but definitely improving. I can usually get at least one “bingo” per game these days, and I’m working on memorizing all of the two-letter words (there are 5 new ones in the latest edition of the Scrabble dictionary. Kenny and I managed to use both “za” and “qi” in one game of Scrabble on Sunday :)). The short list of words that use Q but not U are also quite useful. I think we are getting to the point at which those who aren’t big geeks like us don’t enjoy playing with us anymore.

Kenny still beats me at Scrabble more that 50% of the time, but the scores are usually very close (they usually hover around 300 points each). If we continue to fly as much as we have in the past, we should both continue to improve over time. I’m just hoping that I can improve more than he does. ;)

3 Bad Movies, 1 Good One, and 1 Failed Attempt

I don’t watch very many movies. I think the last film I saw in the theatre was Thank You for Smoking (back in March or April, I believe), and Kenny and I don’t even rent enough films to warrant the smallest NetFlix package (fortunately, when we do get the urge to rent something, we can walk across the street to On 15th, usually armed with a 2-for-1 coupon from QFC).

Well, it seems that family visits often offer opportunities to catch up on movies, which we certainly did during our Thanksgiving week in Slidell. We watched 3 films that proved less than popular with their audiences (which changed with each film, but always included Kenny, his cousin David, and me):

The Italian Job (the 1969 original, not the Marky Mark remake, which I actually found somewhat enjoyable, if brainless)
Edmond
Reefer Madness (the 2005 Showtime remake. This one is one of Gary and Lynn’s faves, due to its campy songs, but I was simply not in the mood for the killing spree at the end, especially right after watching Edmond.)

And one that we enjoyed a good deal: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, starring Val Kilmer and Robert Downey, Jr.

We also attempted to see Stranger than Fiction at the local Slidell cinema, but we left early into the film because the picture was out of focus and shaking (we tried to stick it out, but we were all getting headaches). Incidentally, David saw Stranger than Fiction after arriving home in New York and he enjoyed it, so maybe we should try to head out and see it in theatres rather than waiting for it to arrive at On 15th. :)

Drago’s Seafood

I’m sure Kenny will write a full-fledged review, and I’m not going to try to replace that. All I’m going to say is that if you ever have a chance to visit Drago’s Seafood in Metairie, Louisiana, do it. And make sure you order the charbroiled oysters (they churn out thousands of these every day).

I didn’t even think I liked oysters, but these were amazing. Although, I think just about anything cooked in that amount of butter, garlic, and parmesan cheese would be pretty amazing.