Precious Moments Chapel

Recently, we had a chance to go to Branson, MO. On the way, we kept seeing signs for the Precious Moments chapel in Carthage, MO and decided to check it out. I'm glad we did. I'm not sure what to call it... a chapel, park, wedding hall, art museum, or store. The place really was beautiful. This picture shows just a few of the paintings in the chapel. I really think this place is Sam Butcher's Sistine chapel.



Of course, one of the things that made this place a neat place to stop was the guys lounge... complete with "No Girlz Allowed" sign:

Valid Scrabble Words?

I recently received the following comment via email about my previous scrabble victory post:

Joe, the photo is breathtaking…I wish I was there.

Uhm… scrabble. Do you guys use the rules??

Git?
Nu?
RE?
ED?

These aren’t scrabble qualifying words last time I checked.

Well, in truth my dear friend a quick check of the official online scrabble dictionary indicates that these are indeed valid words:

GIT
git gits \ n pl. -S a foolish person

NU
nu nus \ n pl. -S a Greek letter

RE
re res \ n pl. -S the second tone of the diatonic musical scale

ED
ed \ n pl. ED education


By the way, starting January 1st, Qi will be recognized as a valid word. I have no idea what it means, but it's worth a ton of points.

Great Picture!

This is perhaps the best picture I've ever taken. It was taken at the West Poplar river campsite on the Superior Hiking Trail in northern Minnesota. The photo was taken on a backpacking trip with my friend Pete on 8/27/05 at 5:57 AM.

I Finally Won!

After countless defeats, I've finally beaten Anna at Scrabble. It took six years, but I finally earned a real honest to goodness win. You have to understand that this woman plays scrabble online all the time. She routinely breaks the 400 point barrier and likes to crush her opponents with the occasional 95 point 7 letter word. So... I took pictures so that you guys would actually believe me. Here's the board:



And here is the score sheet:

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