My brain reverts to the juvenile when bored

I was just in a meeting that had very little impact on me, so it made it all the more distractingly amusing when this conversation occurred:

Female Manager: "What do you think about Dick?"

Female Lawyer: "I'm thinking no Dick."

FM: "But this looks like it's 90% Dick."

FL: "Yeah. This is a lot of Dick."

Male Accountant: "I thought we wanted Dick except for administrative."

FL: "I think we should do it again and pull the Dick out."

Seriously, it went on like this. Don't these people know what they are saying? Maybe they're just too sophisticated. The thing is, we all seem to be about the same age. It's not like I was the kid...I just think like one sometimes.

Flattering and Disappointing at the Same Time

"Claire's Departure" took first runner-up for best play at the Silver Spring One-Act Festival. It's nice to know the play was appreciated by the audience, but it's frustrating to have been not quite good enough.

Winning would have been a particularly nice ego boost as I wait to hear from a festival where this same play is a finalist. They were supposed to be tallying the votes on Monday, but I haven't heard anything. A bad sign or just a sign they haven't had the time to tally the votes and/or notify people? Who knows.

But I hate to wait.

Oh, as for that other overdue festival that I complained about in a previous post. They ended up making their announcement on the last day of August. And I was selected. I guess good things come to those who wait...no matter how impatiently!

The TV Report

I was raised on TV, and I haven't yet broken the habit. I comfortably sit in my living room letting my life get sucked away by talking box. And I like it.

It's a new season. Time for the return of old friends and exploration of new ones.

What I'm watching right now
Mad Men - aka the best show on TV
The Shield - The final season is going to be out of control
Project Runway - This season is pretty awful, but it's a habit.
America's Next Top Model - A REALLY bad habit. I am ashamed.
The Soup - The trasy clips I want without the shame of watching the shows. (Except ANTM. I can't help myself.)
Dexter (on DVD) - Cable costs too much to add another premium channel, but I love this show. I'm currently Netflixing my way through Season Two.

What I've been giving a try
True Blood - The first episode didn't wow me, but neither did the first episode of Big Love. The show did intrigue me, so I'll give it a few more weeks to make an impact.
Sons of Anarchy - Not as well written as, say, The Shield, but pulpy with some potential for dramatic plot lines. Plus, it's giving work to Katey Sagal and Mitch Pileggi who I haven't seen for a while. And it's nice when Ron Perlman gets to act without a bunch of crazy make-up on.

What I'm Waiting For
Heroes - Just a great show
CSI - Another guilty pleasure
Criminal Minds - More or less of a guilty pleasure than CSI? Depends on the episode.
Amazing Race - How sucked in I get depends on the teams
House - It started to lose me last season, but I'm willing to go back for more
Law & Order: SVU - Do you get that I'm a sucker for crime dramas?
Big Love - Is this even coming back?
Battlestar Gallactica - A long, long wait.

Wow, it's a wonder that I find time to do anything else at all.

Stereotypical Girls

The lesbian couple downstairs loves to blast Melissa Etheridge music on Saturday nights.

My Word Coach forgives me?

As follow up from yesterday's post, I should report that despite a lackluster series of exercises today I am back up to a 99% Expression Potential. What does that tell me about yesterday's lapse? Nothing. What does this mean for my quest for 100%? Who knows.

Could My Word Coach be taunting me? Is this like converting to Judaism or joining Project Mayhem, and I have to stand up to the rejection before I am taken seriously? Oh, My Word Coach, you are a cold bastard, but you have not broken me yet!

My Word Coach hates me

I’m a word nerd. I like words and I like word games.

In January or February I used a Best Buy certificate from Christmas to buy “My Word Coach” for the Nintendo DS. Since then, I’ve done the various word games on most of my commuting days as well as some others.

My word coach has different drills for spelling and vocabulary. These are meant to build your “Expression Potential,” which is stated in terms of a percentage. I forget where I started those many months back, but I had recently worked myself up to an expression potential of 99%.

It took a while to get to 99%. Each higher expression potential seemed to take longer to achieve. The move from 98 to 99 took months. But I’m a person who likes to finish things. I had to see if I could get to 100%.

Because it took so long to get from a 98 to a 99% expression potential, I knew it would likely take a while to get to 100%. A friend questioned whether it was even possible to get to 100%. “There will always be a time that you can’t think of the right word.” That made sense to me, but the game gave no indication that I was done. It told me that I was nearing a new Expression Potential. So, on the train, on the bus, I kept playing.

During the last week, the coach within my word coach has become increasingly negative. The artificial intelligence behind the games comments has never been as good as “Brain Age.” I would sometimes be lauded for a horrible round or derided for a pretty good one. But over the last few sessions it seemed that I got negative feedback for everything. My coach questioned whether this was important to me, whether I was taking his advice, whether we had a communication problem. Over and over he expressed his disappointment. Still, I assumed that this was just a coincidence. I played on.

But today something else happened. Something bad. After completing my daily word quota and being chided for each exercise, I was given my current expression potential. I’m so used to seeing 99% that I barely noticed that it said…98%! I had lost a point!

The game made no comment on my demotion. Granted today was not my best day in terms of performance, but I’ve certainly had worse. But never before has my potential gone down! Has my performance degraded so much that I no longer deserve a 99% expression potential? Or, did the game designers not anticipate someone trying to play to the “end” and I hit some sort of glitch?

As frustrated as I am to have lost progress, I sort of want to see what it will do next. So, yes, I will keep playing. At least for a while.