Keith: "I tell you, I'm no good at this game," after scoring 15 to everyone else's 2 in the first round.

Me: "I want to be ..." gesture quotes with my hands "not good at this game, too."

Last night, Kris was off playing poker with the boys. He does this so rarely that I'm perfectly content to let him go without comment.

However, with him gone, I jumped at the suggestion Megan made to have in impromptu dinner at someone's house, maybe a pie and cookies thrown in there somewhere. I offered Krikitt Downs, but, well, when Katie offered Assguard, I couldn't help but think, "Evening. No dogs. Friends. No dogs. Cute babies. No dogs. Hmmmmmmm.... no dogs," and rescinded my house offer.

I arrived later than most everyone, with lots of cookie making ingredients in hand, but Katie and Megan managed to fix lots and lots of food, including several tasty desserts. No amazing Megan Chocolate Chip Coooooookies, nor any Shirley's Peanut Butter Coooooookies. Though, the lack of those cookies is a small price to pay for delicious food prepared by someone else.

After dinner, Megan pulled out the Boggle set, and survived the buffet of collective groans and whines from every male at the table. Mark and Keith were the loudest, with Keith claiming, "I'm no good at this game," which he repeated at least a dozen times. When Megan put the Boggle set down, I picked it up and asked why aren't we playing, how about a round, how bad could it be. Somehow, the men were appeased, and paper magically ended up under the pencils placed in their hands.

I remember my grandparents having a Boggle set. I thought I knew the basic gist of the game: shake a the box, look at the letters on the dice, make words from adjoining dice, score them at the end. Given my proclivity for finding words in any group of letterings, I figured I'd do fine.

What I wasn't counting on was the scoring rule that any word you have that someone else also has, is eliminated from both of your lists. So, here I was after round one with twenty, twenty-five words, and three whole points. Keith, on the other hand, had less than ten words, and fifteen points. "I'm no good at this game," he tried repeating. I certainly didn't believe him.

At one point, one of the Boggle boards was full of lots of vowels, and I couldn't write the words I was seeing down fast enough. As I commented about this, half the table exploded in "This is the worst board ever!" variations. I managed thirteen points in that round, with the bulk of them coming from SEAHAG. Not in the dictionary, but Mark and Vinny liked the word so much, I received the points.

Later rounds degenerated into "what three letter words can I find, even if they aren't really words." We ended up with mir (a real word refering to a Russian hut), sid, dis, aga (also a real word, refering to a Turkish/Ottaman lord or commander). Mark tried adding a rule where only words with four or more letters were allowed, to stymie the "That's a word! No it's not! Yes it is! What does it mean? Look it up! Tell me what it means, first!" discussions that developed in later rounds.

He was promptly shut down by the cacophany of women exclaiming, "No way! That's a dumb rule!" The undertone was, of course, "Boys are dumb. They're just dumb."

We lasted I think all of five rounds of Boggle, which is about four more than I was expecting. Words I remember include Mark's brilliant EQUALS, and Vinny's GISM, which apparently isn't a word that displays on the Merriam-Webster website. Mark also had that word, so Vinny received no points for it.

After Boggle, we played Carcassone, Hunters and Gatherers. It's the first time I've played one of these Settlers of Cataan, tile building, strategy games. I had half the points as everyone else at the end, with everyone else (Mark, Chookie, Keith and Martha) all being within 4 points of each other. I played my endgame very poorly. They knew to look at the remaining tiles, figure out how many rounds were left, and start finishing up forests and the like. I didn't make the realization, and ended up with unfinished forests and rivers, which were all unscored.

What I wish I had done that evening is take my camera and use it. I often feel like a dork when I take a picture of some small event like dinner with friends. Taking the picture seems intrusive somehow. Yet, not only do the pictures help these posts, they're a small reminder of the fun of the event. The images can evoke other memories, sometimes more than what the words can do.

Like Megan's laughter at my reaction to Keith's "I'm no good at this." It was spectacular, and totally awesome. Now that was a Kodak moment.

Yesterday, I took Kris' car in for an oil change and tune-up. Today, I took my car in. Tragically, I hadn't taken the car in for an oil change for over a year: I'd driven fewer than five thousand miles this past year, so the change-the-oil signals hadn't really gone off.

Doyle and I went to lunch in Mountain View, and while eating, I missed a call from the dealership, the voice on the message was a little panicked. I called back a little worried, as Doyle drove me to the dealership.

When I finally managed to talk to a service rep, he immediately let me know the car was okay, everything in the service went well. Then, in an excited voice, he mentioned the back window of the car.

Ah, the back window. Window here is a misnomer for my car, in that it's more of a door than a window: I haven't been able to see out the back window in three years, maybe longer. I've stopped using the rearview mirror, relying on the side mirrors and lots of leaning to see what's behind me. I'm far more cautious with lane changes and backing up, as a result.

Uh, oh, I wondered. Is the dealership going to insist I have the rear window replaced because it's in violation of some vehicle code, and for safety reasons, they are unable to release the car to me? Because, I mean, yeah, I understand this could be the case, but, man, that would suck being sans car for a week.

Instead, in a cheery voice, the sales rep, Dan "the Man," told me, "We're going to replace that window for you! And we'll pay for the replacement."

O.M.G. This is, like, so totally awesome!

I was really surprised, and asked "really?" probably six times before he finally insisted. The cost is expensive, their cost is around $700, so my cost would be around $1100 if I had initiated the repair. I kept racing over the various reasons why the dealership would make such a generous offer, throwing out that the car was still under warranty (it isn't), and settling on there was a safety recall on the window and the Honda Corporation was actually making the payment.

Regardless, I was really very excited about the fix.

After paying, I went out to pick up the car in the car pickup bay. I'm always entertained at how excited the service employees are to drive my car and chuckled when the woman who took my payment bounded out of the building to be the one to drive up my car. As she approached me, after pulling the car up, she seemed hestitant, and started to explain to me, did I know, well, it's about to rain, and I should fix...

Huh?

"There's a tear in your rear window. I didn't know if you knew about it. It's pretty big."

What?

We walked over to the car and it became very clear why the dealership was offering to pay to replace my rear window. There was a tear in the window about six inches long, and not in one line.

Oh.

The tear appeared to be along the fold line of the window, which folds when the top is put down. I later realized there were about 10 miles more on the car than when I brought it in. I speculate they put the top down and took the car for a drive "for testing," and the top tore at that point. I further speculate that, since lowering the top wasn't required in the oil change and tune-up, having put the top down, they felt responsible for its breaking.

Dan came out with a roll of tape to cover the tear until I bring the car back next week for the window replacement. I looked at the makeshift repair, and commented, "I look like a redneck now. The only thing I need now is duct tape on the fender."

"I can get you some, if you'd like," Dan answered.

So, I've had my car for six years now. In that time, we've had the front windshield replaced three times, the heater go out completely and later fixed, the front (crap, is it the quarter panel or fender? Dad, help me out here, and I promise to write it down here and remember it forever) and bumper replace, the rearview mirror fall off and put back on twice, the tires replaced four times (on not that many miles, mind you), and now the rearview window tear. When I think of how ridiculously easy my CRX was to maintain, and how inexpensive that car was to drive, I'm a little frustrated at just how much this car costs.

Good thing my daily commute is actually a walkable distance. I can just not drive at all.

Kris and I stopped by the Honda dealership this evening to pick up his car. I had taken it in this morning for an oil change, and realized it was time for a major tune-up. Instead of a two hour appointment, the car was in all day.

Since we arrived after the parts and service department had closed, we went over to the sales department to pick up the keys. The woman had to walk across the dealership to retrieve the keys, so we had to wait.

Instead of sitting to wait for her to return, I wandered around the showroom floor, looking at the cars. Since I'm thinking of purchasing a new car, and like Hondas, a short tour was a reasonable use of time.

In the showroom was an Accord and a bright shiny new red S2000, top down. Of course, try as I might to be engrossed in the two door, four seater Accord family car, I kept looking back at the bright shiny new red S2000. After a few minutes, I gave up and went to go look at the bright shiny new red S2000 up close.

Kris wandered over to me after a few minutes, and also started looking at the bright shiny new red S2000. He wasn't there in front of the bright shiny new red S2000 more than 10 seconds before a salesman spoke up from behind us.

"You know, that car is faster than you realise, just looking at it."

We pulled our eyes away from the bright shiny new red S2000, to see him seated at a desk.

"Yeah, those cars are fast. More power than you'd think."

I looked at Kris, suppressed a smirk, and looked back at the bright shiny new red S2000.

"They're fast!" the salesman continued. "I finally got to test drive one last week and that thing could move. You get you one of those and you can expect a lot of speeding tickets."

Kris' eyes locked with mine, and the two of us couldn't contain ourselves any longer, my contested speeding ticket fresh in our minds. We burst out laughing.

The salesman had no clue. He stood up and walked to the bright shiny new red S2000.

"But, I'm too big for this car. I don't fit. When I got in it, and I ripped my pants."

Kris had to walk away, unable not to laugh directly in the guy's face.

I looked back to the bright shiny new red S2000, then at the sales guy, and back to the bright shiny new red S2000.

He continued, "Yeah, I guess I'm just a truck guy."

"Yeah," I answered, "but I'm still a Honda girl."

I finished my first work proposal today.

I started working on it Tuesday afternoon, after talking to the client. I had two proposals Mike had written for previous projects as examples / outlines, but I definitely felt like I was fumbling around somewhat ignorant of what I needed to do.

Which isn't to say I can't figure it out. I'm good at making lists, at breaking down tasks into smaller and smaller pieces. My index cards can certainly attest to that ability.

What I'm not so good at, however, is estimating time. A friend once suggested I estimate a task, and multiply by three, because that seems to be how long a task will really take. Given how cynical and pessimistic I can be about life and the human condition, the optimism I have when estimating time is incongruous.

Of course, that inability to accurately estimate how long a task will take could easily explain why I'm frequently late.

This time, however, I had Mike to help me out. He reviewed my numbers, reviewed the task list, added items and such. I look at the total and think, wow, that total is a lot of money, but each step is justified.

Writing here, I can be satisfied with my words. I can edit and adjust and, when I hit the submit button, be done. With a proposal though, it's my writing going to someone else. I can't help but wonder, did I explain everything? Was I succinct? Was I clear? Did I estimate too high? Did I estimate too low? Is the guy going to think I'm an idiot with this quote?

After a few moments of nervousness, I gave up on the internal torture, the need to be perfect and the urge to make everyone else happy. I sent the proposal off with the realization that, yes, the process will take as long as I estimated, and, yes, my time is worth the money I quoted.

If the quote is too high, well, I have internal projects to work on, too.

Kris and I took Annie for an interview at a dog walking facility up on Belmont this morning. She did really well, considering she's a labrador in beagle fur, and was accepted on a trial basis into the program. Our hopes are that she'll come home completely exhausted.

Because we drove together, I dropped Kris off at his work and drove Annie home. That left Kris to take the train home. My evening plans were rescheduled, so I was able to pick him up from the train station.

I was about two miles from the train station when the stoplights stopped me at an intersection with a train crossing. As I watched, the express train that Kris was taking crossed the intersection. Once again, I was going to be late.

As Kris hopped into the car after I pulled up, I started to apologize, and laughed about where I met up with the express train.

He turned to me, without missing a beat.

"It must cause you physical pain to be on time."