Scrabble, Still the Best Game

There are two types of Scrabble players out there: game night family fun Scrabble players, and tournament players. Think you're smart? Obsessive compulsive? Anal retentive? Like words? Well, you might be ready for tournament Scrabble, but let's differentiate between the two types.

FAMILY SCRABBLE PLAYERS: If you can say true to all these questions, you are a family Scrabble player and have quite a bit of work to do:

1. I have never memorized the spelling of any the two letter or three letter words without thought of their definitions, and I have no desire to.

2. I like to take my time on my turns. Most games I play last one hour to two hours.

3. I believe Scrabble is all about what tiles you get. It's a game of luck.

4. Scrabble is a social game; I like to carry on a friendly conversation while I'm thinking about my turn.

5. I have never read the rules inside of the box.

6. I prefer to play with a group (more than two players).

There is nothing wrong with being a family Scrabble player. It doesn't mean you're stupid. Or lazy. But don't expect to be able to consistently beat a tournament player unless it is a beginner/unrated player. If you were willing to put in a little time toward memorizing the list of two letter and three letter words, you could hold up your head at the Scrabble clubs around the metroplex. You can also improve your game by playing on the computer with a Scrabble CD.

But it doesn't take much to improve to the point that your family will not play with you anymore. Your friends will probably think you are cheating. I started my own little Scrabble club (a singles group) in Lewisville, and it was a total flop. Real junkies are not focused on anything but the game. The people who showed up to meet some pretty person over a quick Scrabble game got nowhere (who wants to date someone who doesn't know proper nouns are ineligible?? Good grief! All they wanted to do was flirt!) Believe me, when little miss Smarty Smarty challenges your every word or demands you "Hit the clock!" you don't come back.

TOURNAMENT SCRABBLE:

Tournament Scrabble bares little resemblance to what you play with your siblings at Christmas. The clubs and tournaments I went to had people of all ages and one obsession. Here's the rules the differences:

1. Club or tournament scrabble is played with a chess clock. Each player gets 25 minutes to make all his/her plays, so each game lasts approximately 50 minutes. This dramatically changes the nature of the game. I had a running buddy in my heyday and to make things even more interesting we would reduce our time to 15 minutes each. Once you have finished your turn you hit the clock and the time starts for your opponent. If you want to stop for a challenge (looking up a word) you can stop both timers. Once you go chess clock, you never go back.

2. I was single and looking in my heyday, and I thought Scrabble clubs and tournaments would offer some rather smart men who liked to play a bit of Scrabble. And I can work with the socially handicapped, the never-been-involved, and the mildly obese. But I certainly didn't expect to be completely ignored by these types. And I don't think it was my inability to memorize the complete list of three and four letter words they found so revolting. I just don't think they saw that I was in the room at all, their focus was so entirely on the board. As I used to say, "These men look datable, but they're not." If I tried to strike up a conversation with a true junkie, it was as though I were talking to a wall. And I almost never won at the club level. I just couldn't fit the four or five hours a week of club play into my schedule.

3. Scrabble tournaments are cut throat like any other tournament. I've seen nasty little tricks to trip up an opponent. The worst was conducting business on the cell phone while playing in a tournament. Some people get downright hostile over the other person's plays or challenges. There is etiquette to be followed and going to clubs will give you some experience with that. One thing that are perfectly acceptable is playing a "phony" and hoping that the opponent doesn't challenge it. You can even make up a definition and try to sell him on it. If he falls for it and doesn't challenge on it, oh well. You don't get points for your correct words, you get points for what you get away with. And if you can talk someone into challenging a correct word, they lose their next turn! So you might act like you're throwing out a wild ass guess to get them to challenge (knowing it's in the bag.)

4. I memorized same as I memorize everything: flash cards. I carried them around to the doctor's office, stuck them up on my cubicle wall, and flipped through them every chance I got. I learned how to construct words by starting with the prefix or suffix and then trying to build a root over what was left.

5. To practice, I played by myself. This is what you see me doing in the picture (with a respectable score of 243 on my second game!) If you're convined at this point that I'm a hopeless nerd (it's possible) just remember, you do crosswords by yourself. You read books by yourself. There's nothing about Scrabble that screams social activity. Things might have changed dramatically since I last played online, but when I was playing there was no chess clock and people sat there with a dictionary looking up the words they were going to play (how would you know??) It would literally take all day to play a game. I'm sure things are improved time-wise, but there's nothing that prevents them from looking up words (which is a no no when you're playing for real.) The drawback of a CD is that the computer has instant answers for its own turn and, oh yeah, it almost never loses. This will get you better fast, but it will not give you any club-like Scrabble experience with a chess clock in order to get used to it. Therefore, play by yourself for practice when you can't get to a club. Clocks are cheap. About $30.

This afternoon I played for two hours and had a ball. By the second game, I was scoring well and readdicted. If you want to play a game with me, I will happily bring my board and clock and even my list of two and three letter words which you can use!

QUICK UPDATE ON WATERCOLOR: I entered a contest at the Dallas Public Library, Oaklawn Branch. I came in second with the Ship at Sea which you can find on the watercolor post.

Teaching Yoga and Keeping it Fun

Yoga is an enjoyable workout because it relieves tension, stretches you out, and strengthens you. I was a yogi for about seven years before I became a teacher. I taught for five years and was making about $1,200 per month on the side. Here's how I built up my business:

1. I became licensed. Getting licensed in yoga is wide open to interpretation. I've seen great teachers who were "licensed" over a weekend. This can be done through lots of organizations. I went to a four week course in California at the Ananda Center. The fact is, there is no standard yoga license that is approved by a state. The word license means that some organization gave you some kind of training and a piece of paper. This piece of paper is required for getting a teaching slot at a fitness center or a yoga studio. If you were to ask a manager at a fitness center or even a yoga studio to be specific about what kind of license they require, they probably couldn't tell you. Many studio owners have no such license, they've just been in the business a long time. Basically, it's a made up concept, but required to get your foot in the door so your fitness center can cover its butt legally.

2. I asked my yoga teacher to put me down as a substitute. I started getting gigs immediately through her. Once I subbed at a few fitness centers, the fitness centers themselves put me on the sub list. I remember the first class I ever taught. I just kept telling myself, "These people have no idea that you are totally inexperienced at this, and they WON'T know unless you tell them." I was scared out of my mind, but once I got into it, my instructions started rolling off my tongue as though I been doing it all my life. Basically, I just did what my teacher did. I then asked the manager of my fitness center, where I had been a member for five years, to let me teach at her club. She was a huge help and gave me a couple of classes a week for the whole time I taught.



3. This whole teaching thing was good for my personal growth on a lot of levels. I had to get out of my comfort zone to in order to ask people to let me teach at their clubs. I frequently taught students who were new to yoga. Some liked what was going on in class, some didn't. I had to be on time, learn different stereo set ups, drive around town, and eat irregularly. If my muscles were sore from overworking, the show still had to go on. I remember one time I taught for two months with a cold I couldn't shake because it never quit raining. But here's the thing, when I was in front of a class, I was totally alive. I was flooded with adrenaline, so I didn't feel the hunger or joint pain or exhaustion during class. There were some corporate fitness classes of mine, like Texas Instruments, Abbott Labs, and the Millennium Center where I truly felt loved as a teacher.

4. There's a bit of a difference between yoga at a fitness center and yoga at a yoga studio. Yoga at a fitness center is full of professional people and office workers who come from all different backgrounds and religions. If a teacher tries to get too froo froo or spiritual, it can backfire in a corporate setting. The students want to be entertained to some extent. Coming from an office environment myself, I could keep it light and funny and speak the lingo. People talking and laughing was cool with me. As I saw it, we were there to work out and have fun. Even at yoga studios, my classes laughed a lot.



5. Dessert: Guided Meditation. I heard a really good form of guided meditation from one of my classmates at yoga teacher training. It was actually the best part of my class. Basically it would either put people to sleep or into a light hypnotic state. Men were especially susceptible to my guided meditation voice. I had one or two people ask me for a tape of my guided medication so they could sleep at night. It starts with "Imagine yourself breathing in through your toes. Relax your toes (breath), relax you feet (breath), relax your ankles (breath), and on your next exhalation, relax even more." Each body part is covered up the legs, torso, arms, neck and head, and each time you say another body part, it is in time with the breath. Then once we get past the scalp, I would offer some sort to visualization like the beach and ocean. Many students would be out cold before we got to the torso. I use this on myself (in my head) for purposes of falling asleep.

If you are just starting out, there are several ways to get into yoga. Classes are great and teachers give you feedback so that you know if you are doing it right. But if you don't have access to a class you can buy some good DVD's to play at home. I recommend going to the library and checking a few out. Different people have different styles, personalities and levels of difficulty. Many are overly challenging for beginners, especially if you are out of shape or stiff as a board. Don't waste your money on something you'll only watch once. Try a few from the library and whichever fits your taste, go out and buy it. I like Kathy Smith Yoga and White Lotus Yoga. Keep in mind, you WANT it to be a little bit beyond your current capabilities. You will grow into it and work up to most positions over time if you keep at it a couple of times a week. When I first started out, I thought it was the greatest experience you could have. I hope it gives to you all it gave me.

Flesh was the reason oil paint was invented. (Willem de Kooning)

Painting portraits in watercolor is very difficult because the medium is so unforgiving. Once you put it down, you have to live with the result. Oils make a great medium for portraits and flesh in general because it has the effect of being smooth and changes tone so gradually. Plus, you can scrape it off and start over if you don't like it. It takes days to dry!

The only oil painting class I ever took was for painting desertscapes with pallet knives in the mid 1980's.

My first experience with the medium was a bunch of paint by numbers around the age of ten. I would get them at the dime store and play around with them. You might notice that some of my work still looks a little "paint by numbery". I graduated to original paintings of people around high school. My bedroom was my studio with a work table, paints, linseed oil, and turpentine. No telling how many brain cells I killed off sleeping in my room. I did have good clean up habits where paint was concerned and always cleaned my brushes. I also painted in college. The painting of "Legs" was during this period and wound up in an art show. I was a huge fan of M.C. Escher and took a class in how to make tessellations (teselarse: Latin for "to tile") which are repeated patterns. Here's a website if you'd like to learn to make your own. When I was doing these, it was low tech as we didn't have computers. http://www.tessellations.org/index.htm

After college, I didn't paint until I got married in 1988. Painting can be an excellent escape if you are looking for that. Not in the linseed oil and turpentine kind of way, but in that you will usually get so engrossed in your work that you will lose track of time. I could paint for six hours and it would feel like one or two. Most of my paintings took three days. The first one was the painting of the grandmother and child done from a photograph from the book Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane. I was so moved by the book and I fell in love with the pictures in the middle of the biography. One of the things that lent this particular one to portraiture is that the shadows were so stark. As a "paint by numberist", I needed areas that were clearly delineated from one another. As one of my fellow artists likes to say, color gets all the credit, but values do all the work. I was also in my monochromatic phase, maybe because the photo was a black and white and I didn't want to take any risks.

Two years later I did another monochromatic of two boys working on a model airplane that I found in an old encyclopedia. I made it more dramatic by putting a dark background on it. I was well into my emotionally messy divorce at this time and needed a great escape. If you're in need on an escape, you might as well seek out something that won't kill you over time and will, in fact, add to your life. Any kind of art falls into that category.

The last one was in 1997 when Mother died. We had taken some pictures of her in her final months on the back patio. I finally decided to step outside the box and use color. The version above is actually the second of this painting. The first one was muted and depressing. This one has a lot of vivid colors, just like the photograph, and I added a colorful background. The cool thing about painting is that you are not married to the photograph. You can use all the artistic license you want. Look at any Picasso! After this one I did a self portrait of me fishing in Alaska on vacation. I got the feedback that it looked nothing like me. It's all in the eyes of the beholder. What we find in my watercolor class is that the whole class can do the same subject and they will each bear the style of the painter who did it. My other response, "If you want an exact reproduction, stick with the photograph."

I've had a few requests for paintings over the years and here's what I tell them: I don't want to paint a photograph that is going to continue hanging on the wall or something done in a portrait studio. The idea is to have an original work of art, not an exact copy of a beloved photo that you can compare to see if the painter "got it right" while they are hanging side by side. The ideal would be a clear spontaneous photograph with deep shadows, preferably a photo that will be thrown in the bottom of the photo drawer after being painted. $500 minimum per face.

Any kind of hobby is for the practitioner's own fulfillment and enjoyment. Whether it is for escape, relaxation, cash on the side, or self development, it has to be fun. If you try something and it turns out to be just an exercise in frustration, just move on to the next hobby. You will find something that gets your fired up and, for a few hours, over your blues.

Stained Glass: Fascinating Color and Light

Stained glass is much easier than it looks. I first want to dispel some of the misconceptions:

1. The artist does not make or color the glass.

2. There is no "firing in a kiln". The glass is bought in premade 12" x 12" sheets of colored glass. You select the texture and color you want.

3. You can cut you fingers, but it's not frequent if you handle the glass correctly.

4. Glass is not glued together; it is soldered.

5. Glass can be cheap or it can be kind of pricey.

This is not hard to get good at, but it is one of those things that you have to probably learn in a class to get immediate feedback. The best places to go are either a community college or a private studio with a shop. My teacher is David Riffkind at Kittrell Riffkind in Dallas, http://www.kittrellriffkind.com/ I learned not only how to make cool stuff but how to do it as easily as possible. I also learned how to fix things, because glass isn't always user friendly and you don't want to waste it. Let's go through the process:

SELECT YOUR DESIGN:
A design is basically a jigsaw puzzle of colored pieces of glass that YOU cut out to fit together! So you have to find a design you like, and if you are a beginner, you want to pick a design with less than twenty pieces. I would also suggest no feathers or grapes. Big pieces without excessive curves are good. You could make your own design, but until you know what shapes are doable, I'd go with one already created. Here's a good website for that: http://chantalstainedglass.50megs.com/ I can spend hours or days just trying to narrow down the item I want to make.

SELECT YOUR GLASS:

You can get glass at Hobby Lobby, the internet, and a studio you take lessons from. I like Hobby Lobby's selection and it's reasonable; $5.00 - $10.00 per sheet. If you are just starting out, you will find that certain types of glass are harder to cut (score) than others. Thick is bad. It will likely break away from your cut and you'll wind up having to redo it, throwing away the first piece that wound up cut wrong. I've wound up recutting TONS of pieces that were either thick or heavily textured. Secondly, if you fall in love with an opaque piece and want to use it in your artwork, make all the other pieces you are using opaque. If you want a transparent piece to be your main one, make them all transparent. When there is a light shining through it, the opaque pieces will come across as very dark compared to the transparent pieces.

CUT YOUR PIECES:

You will learn this technique in a class, but basically you have a scorer which is a little tool with a wheel on the end that cuts a line however you guide it, and then you use running pliers to break the glass apart along your cut. After one or two projects, this will be a cinch. You will not cut your fingers as long as you handle the edges with the flat of your finger and watch for slivers. To get rid of the slivers and to shape your pieces a little more exactly so that they fit well, you will use a grinder. This is actually the only thing that costs a little bit of money, maybe $100 at Hobby Lobby. Here's a website for tools: http://store.allstainedglass.com/index.html If you go to a class, the teacher will give you a list of tools to pick up.

FOIL THE PIECES:

Each of your "puzzle pieces" have an edge. What you do at this point to put 3/8" strips of foil tape right on the edge and slightly over the edge onto each side of the piece. Imagine wrapping Scotch tape around the outside edge of a CD case and 1/8 of an inch over the sides. This is just what you do with foil tape and your glass pieces.

SOLDER THE GLASS:

After placing the pieces together as closely as they will fit into the design, you'll wipe flux on the foiled edge that is face up, and then use a soldering iron and solder to attach the pieces to each other. Then you'll flip the project over (it will hold together) and solder the other side. Soldering can be a little bit dangerous, but after the first few projects you will learn to do the following:

(1) Protect your table by using a flat thin piece of plywood to do your work.

(2) Wear jeans when soldering. One blob of dropped solder will burn like heck and you want it to hit your jeans, not your leg.

(3) I've forgotten what I was holding before and tried to guide the soldering iron with my left hand, touching the tip of the iron. Holy Moly. Here's the thing to grab if you get burned (from the People's Pharmacy): soy sauce. I don't know why it works, but by the next day your pain will be minimized.

I hope this gets you excited about trying something new. If you don't see yourself as artistically gifted, it doesn't matter! This falls more into the category of a craft, and within one easy project, you will have enough experience to start beautifying your windows and eventually making cool lamp shades. Glass work takes many hours, especially in the beginning. Your first project might take a couple of weekends. Like I say, pick out something under twenty parts so you can finish it and get some success under your belt.

Carefree Landlady, Not a Slumlord

Owning and renting out properties isn't really a hobby per se, but when you take the work out of it, it's a lot more fun. I have found the formula for making good on the investment and finding good buys.

MAKING GOOD ON THE INVESTMENT

Once we step out of the Dallas metroplex, the numbers change, but I think the principles stay the same. All three of my houses are in Carrollton, a suburb of Dallas. I bought them when the interest rates were extremely low: 4.65, 5.25 and 6.25. I wanted houses in a range where the ongoing expenses were covered by the rent. For example my monthly income and expenses are as follows:

Monthly rent $ 1,100.00
Mortgage payment incl. property taxes and fees $ (950.00)
Property mgmt fee (10% of rent) $ (100.00)
Total monthly outgo $ (1,050.00)
NET INCOME (if you're lucky) $ 50.00

What we have to keep in mind is that rent rates are (1) competitive and (2) rarely increase. $1,100 - $1,200 is average for a three bedroom house and has been for YEARS in my neighborhoods. You have to buy a house with a mortgage payment plus the property manager fee coming out equal to or less than the mortgage payment. Well heck, that doesn't leave you any cash flow! Here's the catch. All of your maintenance expenses, paint, carpet, new AC unit, etc. have to come out of your pocket! You will have to put your own money (not rent money) into the house unless you own the house outright. If you lose a tenant and can't replace him immediately, that housepayment comes out of your pocket. Where you make it back is on the federal taxes at the end of the year. When I get my W-2's and fly to the store to buy Turbotax, I leap to the computer singing, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!" Here's the average scenario:

Rental Income minus property mgmt fee & mortgage ZERO!
Expenses for all three houses $ 6,000.00 (what the f....??)
Tax refund (for interest, insurance, depreciation, mgmt fee, maintenance, prop taxes) $ 7,000.00
ANNUAL NET INFLOW (if you're REALLY REALLY REALLY lucky) $ 1,000.00

I've had bad years where I spent more than $6,000 on keeping things up and making the house payments without a renter. My renters almost NEVER stay more than a year. I pay the housepayment when I have no tenant, and the property manager also gets the first month's rent when he finds a new tenant. (This is standard.) I would assume that you will pretty much break-even on the cash-flow. The way to look at it is that this is an investment that somebody else buys for you (for the most part). Where you make your money is when you sell the house. In Carrollton and Dallas in general, we have a lot of for sale signs and foreclosures. However, it's not as bad as the rest of the country. My houses each cost $100,000 to $130,000. They are all basically of equal value now, so let's assume I could sell them all for $140,000 each. I still owe $190,000. Let's do the math.

Current worth $420,000

Original closing costs ($15,000)

Outstanding Loans ($190,000)

Principals pmts by me ($ 120,000) (I accelerate my payments

TOTAL RETURN ON INVESTMENT $95,000

NOT BAD FOR SEVEN YEARS! I might well be overstating the current sales value of the houses, but this isn't off for a non-recession year. If it is a recession year, here's the rule: Don't sell the silly thing! There's no rush!

HOW TO FIND GOOD BUYS:

My property manager Karl Kennerly of Kennerly Properties is also my realtor and taught me everything I know. His wife Jean does the day to day property management and works with my tenants. I've never had a late payment or a destructive tenant. When buying a house, Karl and I drive around looking at houses that fit into the following box:

1. Buy houses under 15 years old. After that things start to need replacement, (e.g. AC).

2. Make sure the price is low enough that the payments (with taxes, insurance, and property mgmt) do NOT exceed the rent. Renters are not rich people. Their net income is usually around $40,000. Don't buy a fancy house for a rental or you will pay out of pocket every month to cover the housepayment.

3. Buy something you wouldn't mind living in. You may have to one day. All my houses would be very comfortable for my own home. And because of that (a) I easily get tenants and (2) I take a lot of pride in my properties.

4. All the houses I found had cosmetic flaws, mostly around paint and carpet. Paint and carpet are cheap, but the savings are huge. One house we looked at had trim painted aqua (which doesn't blend in ANY neighborhood.) The brick fireplace was painted white with mortar painted black. It looked like a giant spider web and it was hideous. The asking price was $145,000. Karl called the listing realtor and said, "Call me when the price comes down to $120,000." After he hung up, I said, "Karl! I would have paid more than $120,000 for this house!" He said, "She'll call back." I think they hadn't had an offer in 4-5 months. She did call back, we went back and forth, I got it for $127,500. I think I paid $3,500 to have the inside, outside painted, the fireplace stripped, and carpet where needed. It went from dog to creampuff in about two weeks and I've never had problems renting it out. Unlike other realtors we've dealt with, Karl isn't afraid of ticking off the listing agent. He handles the deal like a master. The listing agent was just happy to make the sale!

The first house I ever bought had similar problems; mostly dog stains and smells. They had no offers, no prospects, and this unloved house was a casualty of divorce. The owner wanted to unload it as quickly as possible so he could move on to wife number two. After I bought it, I had carpet people take out the carpet and pad, cover the floor with Kilz, painted the interior, and had the new carpet installed. It went from doghouse to dollhouse, and I lived in it from 1999 to 2003. This house cost me $99,000 with another $3,000 for the facelift. I've never had a problem getting a tenant in this one either.

My last house was a creampuff from day one. Karl and I were driving around looking at listed houses. We drove up on a house that we found by luck (listed for about thirty minutes. They had just put the sign out.) I made an offer that DAY and closed two weeks later. It was underpriced by about $10,000. So much of the house buying game is about timing.

OTHER TIPS AND TRICKS

1. When choosing a tenant, go strictly by the credit score and the payment history with the prior landlord. If you do so, you will never get a dead beat or a vandal.

2. Don't rent to people who receive government subsidies. As Karl put it, you don't want a $250 a month tenant in a $1,200 a month property.

3. If someone says they will smoke outside, don't believe them. It will cost you $3,000 to get the smell out. Only 15% of your prospects smoke, so no need to cater to them.

4. I told Karl the first time we rented that if it took three months to find a good tenant, I would wait. My priority was to protect the property, and I could carry the payments when necessary. Thanks to him, I've never gone more than a month, and usually the tenants are back to back.

5. I asked him long ago why someone with a good credit score would rent rather than buy. Obviously they could afford the payments! He said, " There are lots of people out there that will never come up with a downpayment." Even when mortages were being offered with no down, we never had a problem getting tenants, and never had to bend on the credit score requirement.

6. Why get a property manager?? The answer is, I can be a people person to the extent required by my day job, but in the evening and on weekends, I want to play with my hobbies. Karl and Jean manage 100 properties. They have all the tools at hand and the experience to do it smoothly and inexpensively. I live 22 miles away from my closest house. I don't want to have to get in the car and try to fix a sink, or show a house, or collect rent. I don't want a tenant to know who I am, where I live, or have my phone number. Because I am so dependent on Jean and Karl, it has to be a relationship/friendship built on trust. I know I can leave the country for six months and the houses will be completely safe and the payments will magically appear in my checking account on time, every month. Everyone I know who thinks owning property is a nightmare manage it themselves. I don't know that I couldn't do it, but I do know I'd never want to do it. Karl and Jean make it look easy. The picture above are my friends, Jean and Karl Kennerly.