I Am Not A Walking Pictionary

So I'm going to talk about something kind of removed from what I usually talk about. According to all blogging advice websites, I am really bad at blogging. They say you're supposed to have a focused topic, and I do not. I mean, unless you count "writing, reading, and life" as a focused topic...


So, I'm going to take the most open-ended of those three: life. One of my favourite group game to play in life (wow that was a horrible transition...) is called Talking Pictionary. Oh, and if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not really a normal teenager. I mean, normal teenagers do not spend time with their friends playing awesome verbal word games. :D


Now, if you're bored with board games/group games, you can peruse my tumblr here instead, and come back for my next post, whenever that may be.


Anyway. Talking pictionary. You probably don't know what that is. When I looked it up on Google, the results were just articles or blog posts where people used improper expressions like "People say I'm a walking pictionary." (DICTIONARY, people, DICTIONARY).

Talking Pictionary is actually a game that I learned from my grandparents. It's an awesome group game and can also be a Theory-of-Knowledge, philosophy-esque game because it gives you insight into how people think. Also, funny quotes. I wanted to teach you how to play because a) it's an awesome game, b) WORDS. You guys like words, right? I mean, assuming most of you are reader/writer types, and c) not many people seem to know about it outside of my family and friends.

All you need to play is a timer and a pack of pictionary cards.


HOW TO PLAY


So you split up your group into two teams. Then each person on each team takes turns trying to get their teammates to guess the words on the card by describing them verbally. Hence, talking pictionary. Once the timer runs out, you count how many words you got your teammates to guess correctly and add it to your team's point total. Whatever team has the most points when you decide to stop playing wins. 


RULES

• You cannot use actions. (Do not follow the example of my grandpa. Grandpa: What's this? *drops pen* Us: Grandpa!! You're not supposed to use actions!!!)
• You cannot say any part of the word on the card. (Ex: If the word is snowblower, and you say "snow" or "blower", you don't get a point).
• You cannot say "it rhymes with" or "it starts with the letter" because c'mon, that's just cheap.
• Oh, and you can't just say it another language either.
• If you get your teammates to guess all the words on a card and you still have time left, you can move on to another card. HOWEVER, if you messed up a word (saying "snow" when the word was "snowblower") then you can't continue onto a new card.

QUOTES


...from playing pictionary with my family members. :) People say funny things under pressure when they are trying to describe a word with limited vocabulary.


Grandpa, describing rain: "Melted frozen snow that's wet!"


Cousin: What do you get when you throw a pile of glue on the floor?
Answer (apparently...): A blob


Friend: "You know when you say I love you in sign language, he's a superhero and he does that."


Emily: Uh.. I think it's something you either spit or pee into.
Answer: Urn
Everyone else: NO!! Haha. :)


Grandpa: Peaches!
Uncle Harold: Apricots!
(and Uncle Harold got this right... they have strange minds)


So. I hope next time you're looking for a group game to play, you end up playing Talking Pictionary and I hope you are amused by what people come up with to describe things!


What's your favourite group game? Do you like learning about how people think?

Thoughts On: Being "Anonymous"

So, I've been thinking about "being anonymous" lately, and I do what all normal people do when they think about stuff... browse Google. So I was searching "blogging anonymously" and whatever, and I have realized that in most people's minds I'm not really anonymous because...


1. I am myself on my blog. I'm not pretending to be someone else (as apparently people do) - I really am an 18-year-old girl from Canada who likes to write and read and discuss stuff. I guess it might be fun (?) to pretend to be someone else, but that was not for me.


2. I'm very transparent about a lot of things - for example, the back of my head (granted the picture shown in the sidebar is from grade 7 and I have since gotten my hair cut to above my shoulders), as well as where I live and a whole lot of other supposedly "identifying" stuff. (I've even made the fact that I'm not using my real name fairly transparent...) If someone were to care so much to do in-depth research, they could find out my real name - although it doesn't matter because the person you'd find is the exact same person as me, they just go by a different name!


3. I'm not paranoid about letting too many people in real life know my blog address. A bunch of the sites I found talked about not telling too many people about your blog, otherwise your identity could be revealed!!! :O Anyway... my entire family reads my blog as well as a few other people I know. It's not something that I try and spread around or anything, though. Why not? Well...


My reasons for being so-called anonymous:


1. The "internet safety" thing we all learn in elementary school.
2. Um, this reason is dumb. But I was (am) like, "Well, what if someone looked up my name and found this?"


Yup. That's basically it. And you probably knew this was coming but I've changed my mind, methinks.


My reasons for deciding not to be "anonymous" anymore:


1. My main reason for being anonymous is stupid.
2. I like my real name.
3. This post by Nicole at WORD for Teens (which is an awesome site).
4. It's just easier, being real. Haha. :)


So, hi! My name, my real name is Alyssa Sherlock. And yes, that's Sherlock as in, well... Sherlock.

And this is me:

Photo Credit: Emily

...and now I start the process of changing my name everywhere. Fun! :)

Mid-Nano (And November) Motivation: Cake!

November 15th! Halfway through NaNo (who's doing it? how are you doing?), and halfway through just plain old November. And for all you people bustling through writing a 50,000 MS in 30 days, and because you're HALFWAY THROUGH!, here is something I think you need at this point....

CAKE!

OK, so all you non-Nanoers like me can have some too. It's a busy time, mid-November and I'm sure you are most likely trying to work instead of reading blog posts etc. But who doesn't have time to eat cake (except for my dad. he is not allowed to eat cake. Or his gross peanut butter icing sugar mix that he makes for a midnight snack.)

Anyway, enjoy!

Yes, of course eat the icing last... it's the only way! :)

Happy Nanoing!!

How To Feel Good About Your Baking Skills Even When You Make Mistakes

The title says it all, my friends.

Um. I might have been baking today.  Some yellow slug banana muffins. MAYBE.

You cracked an egg imperfectly and now there's an eggshell in there and YOU CAN'T GET IT OUT.

No worries, you say. Eggshells have got nutrients, like calcium. It's all good.

While digging for eggshells in slimy egg guts, you realize you forgot to wash your hands.

OH WELL, you think. Your family needs to build up their immune systems anyway.

While squishing frozen bananas out of their brown hides into your mixer, you notice how much they look like yellow slugs.

And then a friend shows you this link and you never want to eat banana muffins again. Oh, wait. That's not relevent.

You burn the muffins.*

IT'S STILL ALL GOOD. (You don't pay attention to any COMPLETELY NONEXISTENT tears of frustration). Birds like burnt muffins, RIGHT!? And you forgot to fill the bird feeder last week. ALL. GOOD.

You accidentally inject some sort of bizarre chemical into your muffin mix and everything explodes when you turn the oven on and it triggers THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT aka dragonflies take over the Earth.

I mean, you're dead. But at least there's no mosquitoes, RIGHT??

See how easy it is to keep a positive attitude while baking? Good luck, everyone!

*Disclaimer: I did not actually burn my muffins today. :D They're quite yummy, actually.

---

In other news... I have received the awesometastic Liebster award from Jenny AND Brittany (teenage host of the teen writers summer blogfest I participated in for July). I will dole that out later.

Speaking of the Teen Writers Summer Blogfest... on the last day we did this "Ask the Teens" thing... and I think I want to do that again. So start thinking of things you want to know about teens & their reading habits! I will have a post with details on that later.

(Synonyms for Random Go Here) Post

Last night, instead of doing anything sensible or productive like sleeping, I decided to read through archives of funny blogs like this one and this one. (I came to the conclusion that computers should have the ability to have their screen rotated so I can lie in bed with my head on pillow to read blogs, instead of twisting my neck awkwardly all the time).

I was reading one particularly funny post and I suddenly could not stop laughing out loud. (Usually I do not laugh out loud at things. Instead I’ll just go “Haha that’s funny!” but not actually physically laugh). Anyway, my laughter at 10:30 PM last night caused my sister to wake up and go “TURN THE SCREEN DOWN”, even though the brightness (of the computer screen) was already at its minimum (which I reminded her of, and she promptly fell back asleep.)

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that all these funny posts made me want to tell a random story, so I decided I’d talk about last year in French class when my French teacher made the class believe that there was a subway system in our school.

It started with a janitor driving by the classroom in a... I don’t know the name of it, but it is a thing that the janitors drive around, and it cleans the floor. Anyway, this thing makes loud rumbling noises when it goes down the hallway, and it also beeps.

One of the more gullible students in my class asked what the sound was, and my French teacher decided she was going to have some fun and told the student that it was the school’s subway.

My French teacher went on to piece the puzzle together, saying that the nametag IDs that all the teachers have to wear on a lanyard around their neck were actually subway passes so the teachers could use the subway, because the subway actually goes to all other schools in the division.

There is also a main staircase in my school that has stairs going down the basement that nobody uses (unless you are going down to store musical props) because there aren’t any classes in the basement, and my French teacher said that those stairs actually lead down to the subway platform.

So I’m just sitting there, laughing along with my French teacher (and some other guy in my class who decided to get in on the joke and backed up everything Madame said) while she tried to trick this one gullible student (and actually ended up tricking more than one).

Then all of a sudden my imagination is, well, imagining this subway that connects all the schools in the division, and I can see teachers using it, and I’m like whoa that’s so cool why didn’t I know about this before that’s so cool!!

Of course, in the back of my head (the part that wasn’t asleep from being in school all day) was going THIS MAKES NO SENSE. For one thing, there is a teacher’s parking lot, and I see all the teacher’s cars there, like, every day when I walk through the parking lot to get into the building. I also knew that the rumbling/beeping was coming from the janitor tractor-mop thing, because I’d seen it before, and I also knew that schools being cheap as they are would never put in money for a subway system.

Also, my city doesn’t even have a subway system, so WHY WOULD MY SCHOOL???

Yeah. We still joke about it. *rumbling of janitor’s tractor-mop* “Oh! There goes the subway!”

In other news, I have received my first blog award from this guy and I am now apparently supposed to dole it out to some other people which I think I will figure out later because I would rather you be dwelling on the ridiculousness of having a subway in a school (and me believing it) than my accomplishments.

Thank you!