I am 9 kinds of sore from the "Everlast Shadow Box" class yesterday. I woke up making sad sounds and basically couldn't flip over in bed. Plus I had to suffer the indignity of watching myself punch the air in 360 degrees of floor to ceiling mirrors. I am no Rocky. Aneil says the soreness is good because that means "it's working" but whatevs. I am pathetic. I hurt and no one was even punching me back!
Also, we heard about the Austin Chronicle Adult Spelling Bee from our friend Logan, and decided to check it out. It's an annual event to raise money for the library. Turns out there are some hardcore spellers living in Austin! There was this one guy named Geoff, who was trying to intimidate people by wearing his National Scrabble Championship t-shirt. And apparently he's won the Spelling Bee 3 times before! It's fine. We were way out of our league.
There were about 300 people to begin with, and we had to take little spelling tests where we identified the misspelled words. Words like bellwether, pastime, liaison, etc. Along with 48 others, I made it to test 2! Then we got words like pulchritudinous, scleroderma, oeuvre, etc. And along with 21 others I made it to the stage and the actual spell-out-loud bee!
I was really nervous. And of course I messed up my very first word, MALFEASANCE. Not particularly difficult, but after "M-A-L" I pretty much blanked. Ha. Oh well, Aneil got an exceptionally blurry photo of my making my be debut.
Look how scared I was!
Yet, excited (the beer probably didn't help my chances)!
I feel like the blurriness here really represents my state of mind in the moment. Honest to God, I could not spell my name at that point.
It turns out I was way out of my league anyway. Before we started there was a debate amongst contestants about which established set off bee rules we should follow. And it turns out the Scrabble champion guy could deliver the goods, spelling ONOMATOPOEICALLY and some other weird word correctly for his 4th win. Dude was amazing.
Seriously, this guy was a spelling machine!
All in all, a strangely fun night with a quirky word-loving subset of the Austin population. Reminded me of the movie "Wordplay" which you should all check out if you can. It's about the national crossword championship and it features all sorts of celebs and crossword lovers talking about crosswords. Amazingly entertaining.
Anywho, peace out and enjoy the long weekend!
This week I love: word nerds, salads from Wendy's, and imminent friend reunion. This week I hate: VCRs, the SAT essay section, and the way I look punching the air.
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