Phil RedBeard

The Soul of an Octopus

Book Review: The Soul of an Octopus (2016), Sy Montgomery

Though ten years published at this point, this book is new-to-me. It was recommended either by Adam Savage or Wil Wheaton, I honestly can’t remember which (it might have been both, as both have a keen interest in octopuses). At any rate, I picked it up from Amazon, and it has been on my shelf for a while. A few weeks ago, I had opportunity to pick it up and read it.

I had a morning where I was going to be waiting for my Rav4 to get new brakes, and I decided to eschew my iPhone in favor of a book. Enter: The Soul of an Octopus. I have been fascinated by the octopus for a while, having known somewhat about them: their camouflaging ability, their eight limbs, their extraordinary intelligence, and so on. I wondered if they could be a species of stranded extraterrestrials caught in Earth’s oceans long ago, unable to leave again, instead of an evolved animal from home. I was excited to read Sy Montgomery’s book, which promises to look beyond the freakish exterior into the octopus’s inner being.

I was disappointed, not just in the florid prose, but in the subject matter. Maybe the gentle octopus is something more than they seem to be, but Montgomery’s characterization of them showed them to be little more than a great ape, or usually perceptive dog, or perhaps a corvid. Intelligent? no doubt. Strange? undoubtedly. Unique? certainly. Soul-having? I don’t know. Mostly the book, rather than a philosophical tome or deep exploration of psyche and psychology, was little more than Montgomery’s own narrative of visits to four particular octopuses at Boston’s New England Aquarium, as well as a recounting of her journey to become scuba certified in order to visit octopuses in their natural oceanic environment.

The story Sy Montgomery told was interesting enough to hold my attention, someone what more loosely than an octopus will hold hands with anyone brave enough to reach into their tank at the aquarium (apparently), but she failed to really delve into what it means to have a soul, or some affect more than the physical. She barely started to solve the puzzle of whether an octopus is en-souled or any more than just being a bizarre creature. At most she asked “is anyone in there?” while gazing into an octopus’s eyes, but beyond that surface she did not really delve.

I am impressed by an octopus’s ability to solve puzzles (but so can ravens), or to display (seeming) emotions (but so can dogs), or to use tools (but so can some apes), yet there was nothing more ethereal about them than that, at least from Montgomery’s descriptions. She certainly rhapsodized long on the individual octopuses she met, and gushed about them in a somewhat over-the-top lovingly way, but I couldn’t help but feel she was failing to communicate to me, her most recent reader, that there was anything more, well, special about an octopus than an admittedly extraordinary animal. I actually lost some wonder about the cephalopods, and no longer think of them as all that alien.

I really wanted to be dragged into the depths of intellectual debate with this book, but it didn’t happen. I was left bobbing on the surface of emotionality and meager description, rather than submerged into salient soul-pondering. The bonds we as humans form with fellow animals is appreciable, and I have no doubt that Montgomery formed bonds with the octopuses she visited. But did she have a soul connection with any of them? I remain skeptical. And that saddens me.

Does an octopus have a soul? I don’t know that I have a soul, really, though there seems to be something more than just physicality about me, but from this memoir, I am even more doubtful that an octopus has any more of a soul than does any creature. I wanted to believe, but her book didn’t create an environment to foster such belief. An octopus is a wondrous animal, but to really journey into who one is will take more than what Sy Montgomery’s Soul of an Octopus can provide me.

An Unexpected Song

I am working on an academic project at the moment: a paper which I hope to present at my school’s academic fora in the late Summer of 26.

Ever since I was 12, I have been fascinated by the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, and a quick perusal of this blog will bear that out with allusions and posts about his works and derivations thereof. I even have two tattoos that are Tolkien related. It should, therefore, come as little surprise that my academic paper is about Tolkien’s first major work, The Hobbit.

What may be surprising is the fact that I am writing this paper for no credit whatsoever. While I may pursue publication at a later date, for now this is my own personal exploration. I would take classes related to Tolkien for credit, but at the university for which I work, and where I will be presenting, there is a dearth of literature courses, and as far as I can find, there is a wider dearth of Tolkien studies in academia in the States. It is treated as one-off subject matter on the Inklings, the famous writer’s group that contained Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, among others, or for a curiosity. Serious scholarship on Tolkien I haven’t been able to find outside of one unaccredited college. I may have to dig deeper, and if you know of any degrees centered on Tolkien, please, let me know. I would love to study formally.

In the meantime, I am taking what research and writing skills I have at about what is equivalent to a beginning Master’s level education in the US, and apply it to my own reading of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

This first paper (yes, there are more planned!) will focus on the songs in The Hobbit. When I first read The Hobbit, my only exposure to songs in stories was through the few songs in Frank Herbert’s Dune, a specialty of character Gurney Halleck, or the songs in Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. Songs and music simply wasn’t a frequent thing in the literature I encountered. Therefore, it was somewhat surprising to me. Why would an author include music, or songs, in a medium that cannot convey sound? What do they add to the narrative? Why have so many of them? These are all questions I hope to answer in my research paper on The Hobbit.

So far, I haven’t actually written a word of my paper, though I am thinking quite a bit about it. I am also reading a wide variety of books, articles, and thought that I have found, little though there is, on songs and music in literature in general and Tolkien’s work specifically. I have quite a few ideas, and even a direction in which to go.

In all, I am excited to be on this unexpected journey with Bilbo Baggins, Tolkien, and to be exploring the world of music both inhabit. More to come, and I may even post excerpts (or the whole paper?) here as I go. Stay tuned!

Downgrade: Update

Last month I chose to downgrade my tech from an iPad Pro to an iPad mini. I am happy to report I am using my new mini prolifically. It is everything I wanted it to be. It is the perfect size for everyday browsing, shopping, social media, and checking in on my Cleveland Guardians. The battery on my mini stays charged for several days of regular usage, and charges quickly via USB-C.

I bought a matching Smart Cover for it, but given that the mini is not FaceID activated, I may switch that up for a different case. The only quibble with the mini is that I would really have preferred FaceID over the TouchID. TouchID works fine, and I like the fact that the setup software prompted me to set up different fingers for different orientations of holding the iPad. But I must say I like the speed of FaceID on my iPhone, and the fact that I don’t have to touch the iPhone twice to unlock it. I do have to touch twice with the mini: I end up touching the top button to activate it, and then again to unlock. It’s…clunky.

Despite that, I really can’t complain about the iPad mini. It is a wonderful little machine.

Part of the downgrade was using my MacBook Air more for more intensive tasks, and using it for creative endeavors. Towards that end, I have downloaded Apple Creator Studio and signed up for a subscription (fortunately, I am an educational professional, so I was able to qualify for the education pricing). I have yet to dive back into Final Cut Pro and video editing, but for my photos the Creator Studio is a definite upgrade.

I was using a combination of Photoshop Express and a variety of other apps on the iPad Pro to edit my photos. Now, I have a one-stop-shop in Pixelmator Pro. In fact, in reminds me a lot of a beefed up version of the old Apple Aperture photo editor. It uses the same library as the Photos app, but has much more in depth and specialized controls for performing edits to my pics. I really enjoy the editing process again because I can get to the finished version of the photo I want where before I was only able to get part of the way.

I can’t wait to get into the other apps included in Creator Studio, and the more advanced features of Pages and Keynote. It’s only been a month, and I have had other things going on lately, but I will explore the Studio fully in the future.

All in all, my downgrade has been widely successful so far; it’s just what I hoped for!

The Occasional Downgrade

I am an Apple user, and a long-time techie. I have rarely been able to afford cutting edge technology, but I remember a time when what I have now was still futuristic: a computer on your wrist, anyone? a million songs in your pocket? world-wide connectivity on your desk? whodathunkit??

These days I can generally afford the tech that I want, so it is less about making do and more about finding what works. My constant companions are my Apple Watch Series 8, and my iPhone 16 Pro. I’ve also been using a MacBook Air M4, and an iPad Pro 11″ 3rd generation with a Smart Keyboard. Each device has its slot in my life and workflow, but recently I realized I had an occasion to downgrade and keep the productivity that I desire.

Where I have redundancy I want to reduce, and if I don’t actually need it, I generally won’t have it. Therefore I was considering the iPad Pro and the MacBook Air. The M4 Air is a 13″ screen and the iPad is an 11″ screen. Both have keyboards (courtesy of my iPad Smart Keyboard). Both are fast enough and have the processing power I need for what I do. I was using my Air for work, and my iPad at home.

Lately though, I have been looking into doing more with my photos, more with video editing, and some other creative projects that will require more than the iPad can do. I also had a mental block against using my Air at home: I am using it for my work computer. And every time I thought about using my laptop, I thought about work. Boot it up? See my work email. Open my browser? See my work bookmarks. My laptop said work, not fun. And my iPad was slightly lacking, despite all it can do, but I don’t want to give up the portability.

Sometimes, there are tasks I don’t want to do on a small screen, a la my iPhone, and don’t want to take out my laptop for: reading (for one), light browsing for another, or just playing Scrabble. So what to do? I think I found a solution, and it involves downgrading. I am going to keep the Air (after all, I do use it for work), but I am going to replace the iPad Pro with an iPad mini.

To get around the work/play conflict, I realized a feature of MacOS that I wasn’t using could help me: user accounts. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before, but I realized I could keep my current user account for work (to avoid having to set up again all the Microsoft products my employer insists on using) and I could add a second user account for after work life. Or, as I like to call it: life. Then I could have wacky wallpaper, advanced features, and quirky setups. For work I need things a little more straightforward and less imaginative. Having set that up, I feel like I now have two computers, work and play, in one!

But, if I am using the MacBook Air for most things at home, not only is the iPad redundant, but it is extra. I don’t need a tablet and a keyboard, though I still want something for the aforementioned activities for which a tablet is well suited. Enter mini, stage right. I found a good deal on an iPad mini, current generation, and can trade in my iPad Pro (plus probably sell my Smart Keyboard). Thus the mini has a minimal cost, and I still get the functionality I need from a small tablet. For everything else: the MacBook Air. For walking around I have my iPhone in my pocket and my Apple Watch at hand. Everything with a place and a use.

The only piece of Apple tech I would love to own would be a Vision Pro. Being able to watch movies, or baseball, or other media on that thing would be awesome. It would be absolutely killer on an airplane. But, it is way too expensive to find a home in my tech life. I either need a huge upgrade in work, or an affordable version of the Vision in Apple’s ecosystem. But that is small complaint, really. I have what I need, or will once the iPad mini shows up tomorrow. I love new tech, but even more, I love having just the right tool for the job.

The Way It Should Be

I’m settling in to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the Cincinnati Reds for Opening Day baseball (so far, no score). I am tuning in to the Boston video feed, and watching in 4K. This is how baseball should be.

This is possible through the magic that is MLB.TV. The streaming service costs $150 for all but T-Mobile customers (who if they sign up in time will get it for free). For that cost, MLB.TV subscribers have the opportunity to watch any* game, any feed, live or on demand after the game is over. Subscribers also get radio feeds, home or away, for every game.

For someone who loves the game of baseball, this is fantastic. My favorite team is the Cleveland Guardians, and I can watch them wherever* they roam across the country, and occasionally into Canada. I also like to watch the Red Sox, the Phillies, the Giants, and a bunch of other teams. While watching, I can choose who I want to listen to call the game, either the home team (usually) or the away team (if I am watching Cleveland as I just don’t like their TV announcers). I could also, if I choose, watch a feed and listen to the radio at the same time, synced up with the action. The choice is all mine.

Basically what this means is that during the MLB regular season, I can watch anyone* at anytime, East coast, West coast, or any city in between. I love the wealth of choice and the embarrassment of riches.

*What I don’t get is local teams. They are blacked out. For me, this means the entirety of the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros games are unavailable live. I can watch them 90 minutes after the game is over, if I wished, but live I will miss at least 12 games against Cleveland, as the Guardians will visit each city once during the season, and the Astros and Rangers will visit Cleveland once during the season, usually for a 3-game series each time. This is indeed frustrating, and is more so for my mom, who would prefer to watch the hometown Rangers. My dad is a Red Sox fan, so he doesn’t mind as much.

*I also can’t watch the Sunday evening game (ESPN), the early game on Sunday (Peacock), or a few other games (Netflix/various). I can watch the occasional Friday night game as they are on AppleTV, but that is only because I also subscribe to AppleTV. Baseball has badly fractured the viewing schedule in recent years, as everyone wants a piece of the MLB broadcast money.

But this is what watching baseball needs to be. Free, open, and choice. If MLB really wants to grow the game, they should give fans the choice of who to watch whenever they want, but with no blackouts. I understand (though don’t endorse) capitalism, so charge for the service if they must, but let us watch baseball. Let us be fans of the game, whoever we cheer for, wherever we live. Celebrate every out, every home run, every strike, every double, every double play. For me: there is nothing better.

Caveats aside, this post is about celebrating what is available to baseball fans out-of-market: the ability to follow a team and watch (almost) all 162 games of the regular season for a single team (more, if you follow more teams). When I was growing up, broadcast TV aired the All·Star Game, the World Series, and the Saturday Baseball Game of the Week, with the odd game during the week (such as Cal Ripken Jr.’s record breaking game and other historic milestones). It was torture waiting for Saturday to arrive! (And that was only if I had my chores done by 1:30pm, when the game aired!)

I celebrate what I have now, while wishing for what could be, for the love of the game. Play ball!

Hitting the Paywall

The 2026 Major League Baseball season starts tonight, with a classic matchup between the New York Yankees and the San Fransisco Giants. In yesteryear, this would have been a cross-town battle between the boroughs of the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. Today it is a transcontinental meeting.

Regardless, I won’t be watching, though I would love to take in the game. I have woken up at 3am to watch past Opening Days from Tokyo, Japan and Sydney, Australia, but here when the game is in my home country? I can’t watch. That is because the game is on Netflix and I don’t happen to have a Netflix subscription.

Baseball, according to the official line, wants to expand the sport and make it appeal to a global audience. Why, then, for the love of baseball, do they fracture the viewing experience? Why are games on Peacock, AppleTV, Netflix, traditional cable channels, or on a plethora of local affiliates, all of which cost a separate subscription fee to watch?

I know that American capitalism needs to make their dirty money, but that is diametrically opposed to this “global audience” and “wide appeal” message that corporate baseball is talking so much about. I doubt anyone can afford all these separate subscriptions these days just to watch baseball. And don’t get me started on that fact that the local team is also behind a paywall on their own little network. What happened to over-the-air and free?

Everyone wants their share of the pie, and I know this is so much screaming into the void, but c’mon, please, Major League Baseball, stop making it so hard to watch Major League Baseball! Really, the only way I am able to watch much baseball at all is through MLB.TV, which itself is over $100 per season for all out-of-market watching, but I have a hard time justifying that. I have MLB.TV because my mobile carrier, T-Mobile, is a huge sponsor of the sport and comps the subscription for its members. Thus, I get it through my existing mobile service, but if I didn’t, it is a high cost to pay. I would justify it, because I love baseball, but it is still a lot of money, especially if I were to add it to the over $100 to watch the local Texas Rangers. As it is, I miss about twelve games a season when watching my favorite Cleveland Guardians because even the Houston Astros are blacked out on MLB.TV in my area, despite the fact that Houston is four hours away from Dallas. (Cleveland plays both the Rangers and the Astros for at least six games each during the regular season.)

This is worse when you consider the Baltimore-Washington area which contends with several teams, or other metros that have more than one team (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles to name a few others) and all the “local” teams are blacked out. Then MLB.TV becomes even less of a bargain, and all the money to afford the local affiliates is even more cost prohibitive. It is just a lot, especially for a sport that used to be the great American pastime. Even to go down to the stadium in Arlington for me and my parents to take in a game costs an exorbitant amount of money once you add the cost of tickets, fees, parking, and ballpark food. We easily spend over $150 (collectively) for a game (on average about $60-75 per person, depending on how hungry we are).

Baseball ought to be something that isn’t available only to the wealthy or those that don’t mind juggling upwards of seven logins or eight subscriptions. It should be free and accessible to all. As I said, this may be so much a cry falling on deaf ears at this point. I just can’t help calling out in the hopes that someone will eventually listen.

The baseball season starts tonight, but how many will actually tune in, I wonder?

Scrabble: Luck of the Draw

Last month, I wrote about my love of the board game Scrabble. You can click this link to read all about it. I believe Scrabble to be a fun, challenging, and mentally rewarding game to play. I am endeavoring to share tips that I have learned along a 30+ year career of playing Scrabble. If you don’t play that often, I would encourage you to play, even against an AI, to keep your brain engaged, which is always a good thing.

The game of Scrabble begins with blind-drawing seven letters, usually from a bag, though some people like to lay them out face down in the box lid and choose from there. However you draw, you shouldn’t see the letters, and should draw as randomly as possible. If playing an AI, the game will draw for you. Ideally, there is nothing you should be able to do to influence the letters that you draw at the beginning or throughout the game. For me, this is part of the excitement (simultaneously also the frustration) of playing. I never know what I am going to get, and that both gives and takes away.

What makes a good set of 7 letters or a bad one? Usually a bad draw includes low point value letters, repeated letters, or letters that are difficult to utilize (“C” and “V” and “I” come to mind right away, even though “C” and “V” are worth 3 and 4 points, respectively, they don’t form two letter words and thus are slightly harder to play. More on that later). A good draw has more frequently used vowels (“A” and “E”) and a good mix of other letters, and hopefully a few higher point letters.

Fortunately, a game mechanism exists for replacing a terrible draw: the exchange. Players can, on any turn, choose letters they have previously drawn (up to the entire 7) and exchange them with blind letters from the pool of undrawn letter tiles. This allows you to, potentially, improve a hand (though plenty of times I have drawn differently yet equally frustrating letters). I have a few rules of thumb for when to exchange letters. First, I do it rarely as it costs a turn to do so; the player who exchanges letters does not get to actually play a word when they exchange. Depending on how advanced your opponents or the AI, this could result in a deficit of points that will need to be surmounted throughout the rest of the game.

Second, I usually do not exchange an “E” or an “S” tile, as these are very versatile and useful letters, but I am ruthless about the rest of the letters I exchange. Even if I have a 3-point or higher letter, if I haven’t or can’t make a word with it, it needs to go. Generally I find that the more letters I exchange at a go, the better chance I have of drawing a few useful letters that I can play on my next turn. I usually always will exchange a blank tile, even though that can be any letter, because it also doesn’t gain any points. Again, it goes back to the number of tiles I am exchanging, and as there are only two blanks, my chances of acquiring a letter tile with a point value is high. By the way, if I have multiple “E” tiles, I will only keep one, and exchange the rest.

I usually only wait through one turn of suffering with a less than ideal 7 letters before exchanging. The longer I go trying to make shorter words for (usually) less points in hopes of drawing one or two good letters, the more damaging it is to exchange letters. It compounds the problem: with terrible letters, one cannot make good, high-point words, and losing a turn to exchange letters after a few turns of no good words played usually ends in a point deficit that could have been avoided by losing a turn right away and coming back strong with better letters.

Beyond that, sometimes the best you can do is play the letters you have. They may not be what you want, or be the coveted high point letters, but if you can make words and keep the points accumulating, do so. Don’t exchange just hoping to find the “J”, “Q”, or “Z”, in other words. Play words as often as you have them to play, and let the luck of the draw of new letters come to you as you play through. I have found that Scrabble is a game of ups and downs, and that playing with serviceable, though perhaps less than ideal, letters is better than constantly trying to draw the perfect letters.

In summary, exchange letters rarely, and when you do, exchange as many letters as possible, keeping only a single “E” or “S” if already acquired. I’ve found that this yields the best possible replacement set of letters for getting right back into the criss-crosswords action of Scrabble.

A Tale of Two Cities

Baseball season is soon to be starting, and once again I will be cheering for my Cleveland Guardians to do the seemingly impossible: win the World Series. It may be impossible again this year, though, because Cleveland has signed no free agents or added no significant pieces to their team. In fact, they are reported to be near the bottom in payroll going into this season.

But not everyone is going begging. The Los Angeles Dodgers again have one of the top payrolls in baseball, and they added more than a few free agents during the offseason. Spending large amounts of money seems to be their stock-in-trade these days, especially since spending all that they did to lure Shohei Ohtani from their cross-town rival the Angels a few years ago. In fact, the Dodgers have won the World Series three times in the last six years, and twice in a row in 2024 and 2025, due in no small part to their huge payroll.

What is the problem here? Are the Dodgers becoming the new New York Yankees, in that they are willing to spend money and allegedly “buy” championships? One of the reasons why the Yankees have been unpopular outside of the Bronx is this perception that the organization buys, rather than earns, championships simply by affording all the best players. While it remains true that good players tend to win more than mediocre players, it isn’t a “home run” that getting the best on paper will lead to actual on field winning performances. However, the recent Dodgers’ success and the historic Yankees success would seem to counter my argument, in the broad strokes anyway (keep reading for more on that idea).

What comes of so-called “small market” teams like Cleveland or Tampa Bay or others that can’t afford to outbid the likes of Los Angeles or New York? Are they doomed to lose out on the fall classic year after year? Perhaps. The best thing Cleveland has going for them currently is that they spent enough money to lock up star Jose Ramirez for as long as he wants to continue playing (officially through 2032).

Of course, it isn’t as clear cut as all that. Cleveland could, after all, spend more money. An article from TheScore.com suggests that Cleveland is only spending about 48% of their revenue. Los Angeles, in contrast, is spending 67% of their payroll. This doesn’t tell the entire story though, as the New York Mets are spending 102% of their revenue, and haven’t won the World Series since 1986. What this does seem to indicate, however, is that teams like Cleveland could be spending more to attract better players.

Of course, other things factor into the mix as well. For instance, playing time seems to be a factor in whether these star players sign with a team like Los Angeles versus Cleveland. This article suggests that Cleveland matched the dollar offer of some “big market” teams, but that the players chose to sign elsewhere in order to secure more playing time. After all, what star player wouldn’t want to play a majority of the games a majority of the season? Cleveland management is currently focusing on more of a “platoon” approach to the playing field, and this has allegedly turned away some potential signings.

Obviously, too, more than two factors work into where any given player signs as a free agent, which is why all this talk about salary caps in baseball intrigues me somewhat. The chatter is that when baseball’s player agreement comes due for re-negotiating next year, there will be a strike over the matter. Players, go the talk, won’t want a maximum set on how much they can earn. Owners probably will, to avoid paying out ever larger sums of cash over ever longer contracts. (See: Bobby Bonilla, the OG in deferred contracts.)

In theory, I am in favor of a salary cap, but not for any devaluation of a player’s talent. I object on social justice grounds: nobody needs that much money. Period. (And especially not for playing a kid’s game.) However, salaries won’t go backwards I am sure. Therefore, capping salaries seems a good way to try to reign in the insanity of massive contracts and obscene amounts of money. We will see how such implementation actually goes. But: also institute a league-wide minimum as well. Force these teams that have money to spend it. If there is to be an upper limit, establish a lower limit as well. Truly level the playing field. Make team culture, coaching staffs, and playing opportunity matter just as much as the money. Make fan base and location important. Give all teams the incentive to be competitive with more than the wallet.

Honestly I don’t know why Cleveland insists on a platoon strategy so much so that it made it impossible to sign some free agents this offseason. Maybe they set it up to avoid spending money and to avoid looking like they were avoiding spending money. Plausible deniability, as it were. It wouldn’t surprise me. For whatever reason, they were non-competitive this off-season; Cleveland’s culture seemingly also did not attract, at least, not this year. But maybe, with a league minimum and maximum in place (theoretically) and other small market teams becoming just as competitive as the big guys, maybe Cleveland would be forced to evaluate their playing strategies to become competitive; you know, actually play the game rather than just exist. For now, it seems like they are too conservative in terms of pocket book and playing style to hope to have a shot at the World Series.

But, you never know, and that’s why whether you are highly paid or making small potatoes, you still have to field a team and play all 162 games of the season. At some point players gotta play, and as part of team. Shohei can’t play every position simultaneously, after all.

Anyway: Go Guardians! 2026 is our year!

Scrabble

I’ve been playing Scrabble, the crossword board game, since I was old enough to spell. I’ve been watching my family play Scrabble ever since I was able to sit in a high chair. Safe to say, it has been a part of my life for a long time, and I’ve been playing only a little bit less than that.

I can remember watching my maternal grandmother and my father play epic games that would take hours as they hunted for the right word to play, and planned an intricate strategy to keep each other from hitting the bonuses and racking up the higher score. I remember many a game between my mother and father. When I was finally old enough, I started playing as well. Sometimes against a brother, and sometimes against my parents. Well, in those early days, not so much against as with them. I couldn’t be said to offer real competition until my teenage years, and even then I lost pretty regularly.

Now, as an adult, my dad and I are fairly evenly matched at the game. Our strategies are similar, no small wonder me having learned from him, and our vocabularies are each fairly extensive. It usually comes down to the luck of the letters, or some lucky play that determines the outcome of our games, one way or the other.

And, when I am not playing my parents in Scrabble, I often spend time online playing against an AI player. Playing online keeps my skills sharp, and helps me to continually refine my strategy and increase my vocabulary. When I play a slightly more advanced AI, I learn words I didn’t know before, and I also have to be cleverer to beat it.

I wonder if there are any other casual Scrabble players out there? I am sure there must be, after all, it is a fairly popular game. Scrabble was invented, in more or less the same format, in the 1930’s. It was refined through the decades, and sold a few times, until it reached the more or less standard form we know today: a 15×15 grid of squares, 98 letter tiles (and two blanks) of various point values, and various squares marked with available bonuses. Playing a crossword-type game, 2-4 opponents play words and accumulate scores thereby. It seems simple, but there is a surprising amount of intricacy to the game. Scrabble also exists in more than English, being extant in at least 10 other languages (according to Wikipedia, I didn’t do extensive research for this post, I’ll admit).

I thought about sharing my accumulated Scrabble skills and strategies in a series of posts here on my blog, for any other recreational players that may be out there. I don’t claim to be an expert, or some sort of Scrabble savant, only good enough to challenge my dad and mom regularly. But I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two along the way, and I don’t mind sharing what I do know. After all, I don’t like gatekeeping, and I don’t like hoarding knowledge. The worst that could happen is that someone finds a way to beat me at my own game, and all that really means is that I would need to find more avenues to strengthen my Scrabble playing abilities. So share, and share alike. If you like, on any of these upcoming posts, feel free to comment your tips and thoughts and tricks that you use while playing. Let us all learn from each other!

I am still compiling a list of topics, and may combine a few topics into a single post depending on length, but watch this space for Scrabble talk in the near future.

One last thing, since Scrabble is a word game after all, why is it called Scrabble? The word itself means, variously, according to the Cambridge English Dictionary, “to use your fingers to quickly find something that you cannot see” or “to try to get something quickly that is not easily available”. I always thought it meant “to claw or tear at” which may be in some other dictionary somewhere. International versions of Scrabble, at least the Swedish version for a time, was called “Alfobet” which seems a much more likely name for a game based on letters and words. However, I can see where the other definitions work as well, as a Scrabble player must quickly come up with words that aren’t readily available with the letters that they have before them, both on rack and on board. In any case, we would have to ask the game’s purchaser, James Brunot, who purchased the game from its inventor American architect Alfred Mosher Butts in 1948 and changed the name from “Criss-crosswords” to “Scrabble”. Only he knows why he chose the more pithy name.

Shake up some letters, pull out your Scrabble board, and let’s get wording!

Not Like This

I made up my mind to talk to my boss about needing extra time off in my schedule to prioritize my mental health. The conversation did not go as I planned.

Before I get into that, a brief aside: it may seem as if I am ignoring the wider societal situation in our increasingly hell-hole of a country, but I am not. I simply cannot engage in that discourse without it devolving into a rage-filled rant, and that is simply not good for anyone, my mental health included. I would love to have simply not mentioned that darkness at all, but I feel I have to say that what the current administration is doing is pure and simple evil. I only want to discuss my life and the normal amount of trouble that it is, and I am privileged to do so because, so far, I am not living in territory being occupied wrongfully by my own government’s evil police.

Where was I? Oh, yes: my boss’s office. I feel a bit of a fool because I went in there for a staff evaluation, and had made up my mind to bravely talk to him during that evaluation about being close to burnout and needing some regular time off to handle it. I talked to my boss, made my pitch for protecting my mental health, and after calmly listening, he informed me that the university for which I work was cutting my hours from 20-per-week to 15-per-week. I am losing a week’s worth of pay over the span of the month.

To recap: I will get the time off, but it will now be unpaid where before I was hoping to have the same time off, but to cover it with sick time so that I could focus on improving my mental health and not lose income. (I should mention here that in the before times this same institution laid me off two or so years ago from working in the Human Resources department, and it took all summer to pick up the job(s) I hold now with the same university.) I had that talk with my boss a few weeks ago, and I am still recovering from the news he gave me.

Not only will I be losing pay, but the family budget was already operating on a narrow margin, and now that margin is practically gone, or will be soon. To my boss’s credit, he fought with the Powers That Be to keep my hours, but they would not be moved. In fact, the PTB wanted to cut my hours a few months ago, and my boss wouldn’t let them. They wanted to cut my hours effective January 1, 2026, but my boss argued that coming off a forced two-week (unpaid) holiday for the holidays was unfair and cruel. He managed to get them to agree to give me the entire month of January at full hours. My reduction, therefore, will be effective in six days on the 1st of February.

The “stated” reason for all this? Budget cuts. I put that word in quote marks because the university is spending money in other spaces, just not for administrative assistants such as myself. In fact, a colleague of mine was put on a student scholarship and moved off of hourly pay for the same “budgetary” reasons. She is not happy about it, nor about my reduction. I, in turn, believe the Powers That Be have done her a disservice as well. The university’s direction, quite simply, makes no sense. At the very least, it is not how I would run an organization. I would prioritize my people first, and that doesn’t seem to be what they are doing.

The new schedule I have drawn up will be that I will work a normal Mon-Wed, reduced Thursday, and be off completely on Friday. I get my day off, but again, unpaid, and not quite as I had hoped. For the immediate future, I am unable to relax and focus on mental health, because I am already becoming stressed about how my family will make ends meet. I feel I am forced to begin looking for another job while working a job that, at least partly, doesn’t want me as much as it used to. It is a defeated position to be in.

The situation feels like a student’s senior-itis, forced to remain in classes when graduation is nigh. It has damped all motivation and desire to apply myself and greatly reduced my ability to remain focused on my responsibilities. I was close to burn out already, but the Powers That Be just blew out what dwindling flame I had left.

I trudge on because I must. I wish I had a happier ending, but thought I would at least follow up on one aspect of my last thoughts of 2025 with an update with what 2026 is bringing my way. I wanted time off, but not like this. Is there a word for when you get what you want, but the circumstances of receiving are so twisted that it isn’t what you wanted at all? Yeah, that.