Crestmas

Up in a pocket in the mountains
A place where no one's "just passing by"
The town of Crested Butte lies waiting
For ski-bums and villagers getting high.













Fred and I came here to spend a week,
Shedding the pressures of daily lives
Flying on skis under cobalt sky,
Cheered when the youthful pair arrives.

Up the pass then, Heinz and I,
Exploring a nearby trek, we trailed
And found the powder, soft and deep
Up Gunsight Pass - till sense prevailed.

Cooking up feasts in another's kitchen,
Game hens and steak, cookies and pie,
Champagne breakfast and gorp for the trail,
Yes, you could say we're getting by.











Laughter and Scrabble and movies we like,
A record collection to explore
Canoe on the ceiling in this rental home,
Myriad joys - we'll be back for more!

Scrabble Time!

OK, now it's summer and the Fun & Games promised have not made an appearance.
But July, at least for me, has been the month when I turn to the fresh calendar page and see not a deluge of busyness but inviting pools - visits from friends, a picnic, a long weekend fishing.
So, on with today's game:

The letters were coming my way, and I put down JESTINGS (good for 92) to get things going with a bang.



















Two turns later I put down FUNKIER, for 97.
Fred made ZAP, ZA, AG and PE for 49.
I made COX, OF and XU for 47 plus an aesthetic point for landing the X on the double word square.
At some point my letter luck was annoying Fred, so in the corner he ODd multiple times, his way of asking for an end to it. I gave him a sad point for that.
At the end I had tray-dump potential but could never pull out the word.
Letters: AINUSD & blank. The only place to put it was across the N on the right edge.
Even with the blank I couldn't get a word out of it, which would have propelled me beyond 500, in the rarefied air where I have not yet climbed.
Had to settle for 465, and Fred was happy to have 313.
So if you see the word I couldn't find for that final flourish, add your comment!

Stealth Scrabble

Now Scrabble is on Facebook, so Ernesto challenged me to play.
But unlike our previous online games, this time he only makes a play when he's online, then logs out.
So when I check in, he's made a play - but he's not there.
The result is Scrabble in slow motion - After I make my play, it may be 12 hours before he's made his - or it may take me 12 hours to find out.

This reminds me of the early years of Fred & Marigold, when Fred played postal chess.
A game could take several YEARS as postcards traveled back & forth. The message would be a repeat of the previous moves of both players, as a reference point, then the opponent's most recent move, followed by Fred's new move, then his sign-off.
He had a small binder with a set of chess-boards in it with half-pockets to sit the pieces in to maintain each game's board position, opposite a large pocket he could store its postcards in. He had six matches going "simultaneously", if one can use that term about something so extended in time.

Having a long time to weigh your next move is not necessarily an advantage - there's a dynamic missing, along with the question of whether one can fully trust the "randomness" of app-generated letter draws to match one's personal randomness of hand in the bag (in which the vowels school like fish).

This new game setup is characteristic of Ernesto, who has always had the capacity to vanish. When he was little he was nerve-wracking - he'd be sitting quietly doing something, and I'd look over and there he was, again & again. Then I'd glance over, and he wasn't there. No sound of departure, no trace of where he went - just gone. He's still like that - which I daresay he enjoys. In our stealth games, I'll log in only to find that he logged out 7 minutes ago - what will happen if I actually catch him? This adds an element of suspense to the game...

Ernesto in the Rockies

Once the offspring are out of your house, you can look forward to visits. Ernesto traveled West last week to pay a call on us in our e-partment, and to see his brother Heinz. Ernesto's girlfriend Ruby came too, her first trip to Colorado.

Ernesto, Ruby and I went hiking in the Rockies.
Above timberline it was windy but a fine day for hiking. When we stopped for lunch in the shelter of some rocks we tried to attract the curious pikas with tortilla chips - but they were too skittish.


Though our trail ran mostly through National
Forest Land, we did cross briefly into Rocky
Mountain National Park - whether by design or
chance, that short portion of our hike offered the best views of the high peaks. Here you can see the south side of Long's Peak - not Colorado's highest peak by any means, but one of the most spectacular - Long's has the large flat summit.

Its false summit Mt. Meeker stands to its right (southeast). From this vantage we're right at timberline where the vegetation changes from limber and bristlecone pines to alpine tundra and lots of rocks.



On our hike down, we paused by a stream to
admire the wildflowers, including Indian paintbrush - in this picture the eight-inch-high flowers dwarf a baby blue spruce tree.

We also saw tiny birds, a hunting hawk and a great many other wildflowers - it's been a wet late spring (snow through the end of May in the mountains) which has kept the high country green unusually late into the summer. We saw a couple of snowbanks but most have melted by now, feeding the small streams.

No Ernesto visit would be complete without Scrabble -

here's our aesthetic point for the post:

Ernesto played his final tray with DROLLER, making 3 additional words in the process and coming from behind to win.

He didn't like my triple word score bingo REARGUES so I suppose his word was revenge.

In which we Launch

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For a long time, Fred and I have awarded one another an extra point for an outstanding play in Cribbage or Scrabble.

This Aesthetic Point showcases the game's finest possibilities.

In Cribbage, a good hand which is also just plain gorgeous (a straight that's also a flush, for example), earns one more point – an "aesthetic point" – along with the count determined by the rules.

In Scrabble, a particularly fine word fitting perfectly amid the ranks and files of letters already placed, deserves an aesthetic point.

It's the opponent's decision to award one, not based on scoring but because the play reveals the game at its best.

Aesthetic points occur in daily life too – when the fish are biting, the editor likes your story, the pun just floats to the tongue...

At my nephew's recent outdoor wedding the forecast was for mid-nineties, but clouds and a breeze softened the afternoon. After guests had migrated to the open-air pavilion for the reception, sun and shade alternated until rain fell. The rainbow that followed was an aesthetic point – a finishing touch courtesy of the cosmos.

Fred and I have reached an aesthetic point in our union – after raising Heinz and Ernesto and sending them on their way, we emptied the big house and moved to Denver to a one-bedroom e-partment where life is simplified.