Scrabble, Wine, and a Unicorn

I may have mentioned that I’m a somewhat avid and competitive Scrabble player. Ok, I do have a few of my own rules that don’t coincide with the traditional ones, but that’s the way I play and so do some of my friends.

I didn’t realize how competitive I was until the day I threw the board against the wall. My opponent was already 50 points ahead, which was getting under my skin, and then he played all seven of his letters for a word with a lot of points plus the extra 50 points one gets for using all seven letters. I couldn’t handle it. So, if you play with me in person, beware!!

I play at least twice a week, sometimes more. On Saturdays I play with some ladies from the expat group. If the Indian woman isn’t there, I win. If she’s there, I sometimes win. She’s very good! I play online with a friend another time during the week. There’s a website (maybe more than one) called Internet Scrabble Club where you can play against a friend when you both log in and choose to match one another, or you can play against a stranger, which I’ve never done, yet anyway. We’re pretty evenly matched so it’s a good challenge.

My neighbor was curious about all the Scrabble I was playing so I bought a Spanish board from Amazon. The Spanish game has some different letters like double “l” and double “r,” the “ch,” and “ñ”. There is no “k” or “w” because these only occur in foreign words and therefore are prohibited. There is a different letter distribution, and some have different values, for instance, the “q” is only worth 8 points versus 10 points in the English version. Probably no one reading this is interested, but I stumbled across a weird Wikipedia page that describes the letter distribution of the game in all the languages in which it is available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabble_letter_distributions

Because my neighbor had never played Scrabble before, I won handily. The next time we played though, he’d gotten the hang of it, and I didn’t have a chance. Then, my Catalan tutor discovered a Catalan version online, so we played and the same thing happened. Because she’d never played Scrabble before, I won. Mind you, I won using some two and three letter words like “me,” “de,” and “per.” But a win is a win and in another language, I think it should count twice.

The expat organization here has a new Wine Appreciation Group and we had a private tasting led by one of the sommeliers at the giant wine store near me. I may have mentioned in previous blogs that about 10 minutes from Begur is a ginormous wine store. I’m not sure why it’s here in the middle of nowhere, but we’re lucky to have it! It’s a family-run business and the store and warehouse operate as a distribution center for wines throughout my province of Girona, and all of Catalunya and Spain. One of my favorite places! and the people are so nice.

A couple of years ago, when the store was packed with customers, some thieves entered the exclusive area where the super expensive stuff is kept, broke into the secure glass vault, and stole nine bottles of some of the world’s most expensive wines worth a total of about 120,000€. Some staff members discovered what was going on and chased them through the store. There is store video showing one of the three robbers vaulting Tom Cruise-style across the counter of one of the store’s checkouts to escape. Store personnel actually ran after them through the parking lot and across the street to where the three thieves hopped into a getaway car. It’s thought that the robbery was commissioned. It was definitely one of the most exciting things to happen around here in a while! And needless to say, no guns were involved.

Besides noticing all of the comings and goings at the Russian’s house, the other day, I saw a man on the balcony of the house two doors down from the Russian, wearing a giant unicorn head. Yes! And I always thought I lived on a quiet cul-de-sac!

It looked sort of like this! It creeped me out. The only explanation I could think of was children’s birthday party, but there are no kids there.