Of Scrabble, that is. Or at least I was, briefly. My sister-in-law is visiting from Minneapolis this weekend, so she, Marcia and I played Scrabble tonight over a delicious plate of antipasto and several bottles of wine, and in the first game, I actually played the word “QUETZAL,” which the official Scrabble Players Dictionary notes is a Mexican bird (and which is also, coincidentally, the name of my sister’s appalling rat dog), on a double word/triple letter combo platter that gave me mad points, so that I crushed the competition, and won the right to boast (as I do here) about my Scrabbling prowess for using the Q and the Z in a word other than “QUIZ.” Of course, the two of them demanded a re-play/re-match afterwards, in which I finished a distant third, which is my normal position if three of us are playing such games.

Marcia (and her siblings) are terrifically competitive, whereas I’m kinda sorta not, when it comes to games, so the ideal scenario in Chateau Smith is for me to lead throughout a hard-fought game until the last play, when Marcia leaps ahead of me and wins by a single point, so that I’m happy because we had a engaging battle, and she is happy, because she won. Hence . . . my gloating over winning with “QUETZAL,” because in several hundred Scrabble games that Marcia and I have played together over the years, the number that I have won is quite small, especially with such an impressive word having been deployed on the road to victory. Shall I type it again, just out of pride? I shall. “QUETZAL.” Read it and weep, Scrabble nerds.

And speaking of (space) nerds . . . check out the Cassini-Huygens link to the right to get the latest scoop on Titan and Iapetus. Mind-blowing. Skull-exploding. Consciousness-expanding. I love love love me some Cassini-Huygens. Love, I say! LOVE! (And QUETZAL!)