Blogger Is Kind Of Like Boggle, Only With An R

Hello.

Guess what I did tonight. Well, got my hair cut, drank some wine, made up some homemade chicken salad, ate some of the previously mentioned (not hair, chicken salad), dried linens, paid bills, and indulged in my dirty little secret, "American Idol." In other words, I didn't think up an intelligent and insightedly pointed blog.

I have another dirty little secret, too. Well, possibly more than one, but one that's kind of stuck in my head lately. It mainly happens when I'm bored.

Remember the game Boggle? Sure you do. A plastic box with letter dice in it, you turn that box upside down and shake it like nobody's business, then turn it back over and try to make words with the letters on connected dice? Peggy Hill from "King of the Hill" was a Boggle champion. I'm not. But that still doesn't stop me from playing it.

Yes, I play Boggle, though I don't have the game. And I never get a new shake and new set of letters. Because I play Boggle - on my keyboard.

I'm not sure exactly when this little activity began to take up my time. Probably on a slow day at work, but for about the past year or so, when I'm computer-bound and not willing to pay attention to the task at hand, I start scanning the letters on my keyboard. And try to make words with the connecting letters.

This is quite difficult, because the man (or woman) who decided where each letter should go was apparently a complete idiot. This person put O, I, and U right together, side by side by side, then stuck an E way away from them, and an A even farther away. Practically in no man's land, that A is. And so if one is lucky enough to find a word or two among the letters, it's a short word. A short word indeed. I've not found one single word over four letters, and that's not going to win me a Boggle championship.

I'm sure convenience was the watchword when making up the keyboard, I mean, it makes sense that the Z and the Q are up and down in far corners, to be hit by pinkies because they're so rarely used. In fact, on the right side of the keyboard, the corresponding keys to the Q and Z are the [ and the /. And I'll bet that makes the Q and Z feel pretty bad. However, the U is right there in the thick of things, a key to be hit with the index finger. Qs and Us go hand in hand. Why isn't the U a pinky key?

I also don't like that the 3 is right above the E. This causes a lot of problems, for me, anyway, mainly because I think 3 and E look alike. They're mirror images, but mirror images of the same shape. This placement also causes me to mistype a great many words by including a "silent 3" in them. I guess I just like to reach.

And while we're at it, I'm not fond of the C and the X being side by side, because every time I type, "Back in a sec," it comes out, "Back in a sex" the first time, which is normally a lie anyway, plus I have to take a few extra secs (or sexes) to go back and correct it.

Now that we all (OK, so I'm sure there are some cool people out there still hammering away on typewriter keyboards) type at our computers, we have to be polite to the Enter key. Which I'm willing to do, but he's not in the most convenient of places, either. He's right there beside the ", or quotation mark, and I often find myself ending a quote not by closing it out with a quotation mark, but by immediately going to the next paragraph when I mistakenly hit "Enter."

Qs and Us are spread out all over creation, but the parentheses are right there side by side. Which causes me to mix them up, often typing something )like this( before I finally go back and (get it right). And I don't even want to get started on dashes, equals, and underscores. My pinky's feeling all over the damn place trying to pick the right keys on those, and scores about 30% )or is that 30$( (sorry) of the time.

Anyway, back to Keyboard Boggle. Here's a short list - get it? it's a list, and it's short! the short list is the only list! - of words I've found I can make from connecting keys on the keyboard.

Saw
Was
Awe
Awed
Sawed (holy shit, five letters!)
Red
Reds
Sew
Dew
Lop
Poi
Fred (if proper names are allowed)
Serf

And if I'm allowed to track back over letters

Swede
Deer
Reed
Reeds (five fantabulous letters!)
Loop
Pool
Loo
PooPoo

Anyway, it kills me that right there all together are P-O-L-K, and the damn A is over there in no man's land. And me in a German band.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. So, what else do you all use toothpaste for? Take it away, Mr M:
- This week's Honorable Mention goes to me, just because of who I am. (And because no one else played, grumble, grumble.)
- Runner-Up goes to Kellie (with an [grumble] ie), with her "Paul did lick, eventually barfed."
- And this week's [grumble] winner goes to LilyG, with her "Pepperminty denture/Lego-erected buildings."
- Thanks to those who played. No grumbling from me. And thanks, Mr M, for being acromaster.
* And while we're at it, how about the Picture Sunday answers.
1. A snippet of my vinyl collection. (Mike was correct, but also mentioned that this was my entire vinyl collection. You wish, Mike.)
2. A pair of sneakers, taken from the heel view.
3. A peek into my pots and pans cabinet, with my pasta strainer, metal mixing bowl, and a couple of Pyrex baking dishes.
4. The inside of my washing machine. (Though "iron" was a very good answer.)
* PooPoo (I just like saying "PooPoo")