333!

Pathetic though it is to boast about it, I'm going to have to point out that I just scored 333 in a game of Scrabble, trouncing my wife's respectable 250-something. I refrained from dancing round the room going "Hah! How you like me now!" and throwing scrabble tiles at her while barking like a pig.

After starting off with "quails" for 48 points, I had a horrible feeling that I was going to spend the rest of the game putting 2-letter words on the board while my wife racked up massive triple letter scores, but sadly for her, it was not to be. Even with a few big scores of her own, she was wilting under a barrage of Zs and Js and Ks and triples that I kept putting down. This was much better than the last game we played, where my negative play kept either of us from going over 200 points. It's all about the 2-letter words, people.

That wasn't the only thing we had to celebrate: today the lift was restored to life. I was very excited, especially after yesterday when I went home, climbed 12 flights of stairs, descended twelve flights of stairs to take the laundry out, and then almost collapsed in the street before climbing back up 12 flights of stairs.

That's a lot of flights of stairs.

That's a lot of use of the phrase "flights of stairs".

The new lift is much shinier than the old one, but feels slower. Or maybe it always took 45 seconds to ascend twelve floors. The certificate from the government lift inspector says it was checked in May 2011, which is a bit odd. Maybe that means the lift worked quite safely in a different building. Which is exciting, if you enjoy extreme terror in elevators.

Lastly, we went on vimeo to look at nice videos, rather than the horrid stinking pit of filth and rage that is Youtube. (We went on Youtube first so I could watch the trailer for Iron Sky, a ludicrous Nazis on the moon film that's coming along next year.) I'm not sure how Vimeo does it, but whereas every other Youtube video seems to have hateful comments from every racist, bully and idiot on the internet, Vimeo seems like an oasis of calm and beauty.

We watched a video by Jeff Harris ( http://vimeo.com/34525164 ) which starts off as just a person taking a self-portrait every day, and doesn't promise to be anything else, but when his life changes half way through and he faces his pain and upset with equanimity and apparent calm. I won't say what it is, because it would take away some of the impact, but it's definitely something incredible to watch (a little gory at times) and inspiring.

Or you could just watch high school basketball players being fouled in slow motion. Your choice.