Games, stinkbombs and fake languages.

Being Christmas and all, it's a given that I get to spend some time with some of my favorite people to be around. No, not the cast of Family Guy -- they're animated, silly -- I'm talking about my friends from afar (afar being 3-4 hours away.) Actually, two of them are Scott's friends from high school, and the other two are said friends' girlfriend and wife. So we're kind of like friends-in-law. But whatever, they are wonderfully geeky and smart scientists on one hand (an endodontics resident, a dental student, Almost-Dr. Scott the chemist, two engineers, and a microbiologist in a pear tree.) On the other hand, they're also wonderfully normal and down-to-earth -- the guys all compare their deer kills, and we laugh at The Blue Collar Comedy Tour until we cry. On the other hand (oops, I already used both hands, didn't I?) On one foot, they're all Christians and non-drinkers and non-profane, which isn't a requirement before I'll spend time with someone, not at all, but it does make for a more pleasant experience. And on the other foot, they like board games, as do I, and so we have a lot of fun. For example.

Tonight we were playing Balderdash, the bluffing game in which you have a clue in one of five categories: a stupid law that you get the first part of and then you have to finish it, an acronym that you have to identify what the letters stand for, a word that you have to define, a person whose accolades you have to list, or a movie title that is plot-less and so you give it one. The person reading the clue writes down the real answer on the super-special "Balderdash" paper, and everyone else writes something that sounds plausible. Then the person who knows the answer reads all of the slips of paper, and everybody guesses the real answer. If you guess the real answer, you advance two spaces, and if someone guesses the one you wrote, you advance one space.

All righty. So it turns out that I suck at this game, because I use words like "effigy" and "masquerading" and "budding yeast" and then everybody knows it is the answer I wrote and not the real answer. I don't think I have a vocabulary that's any better than the next person, but whatever. Being known among my friends as the one with the good vocabulary and the good speller makes me feel like Dorothy of The Golden Girls, and that makes me sad because I don't wanna be a man in a cowl-necked sweater.

One of the engineers couldn't think of a plausible-sounding expanded form of R.A.B.T., but he came up with a solution. And before he handed me his slip of paper, he said, "I may have misspelled something." I told him never fear, I can sound it out. Here was his guess: Ravoo Aboo Boohoo Toohoo. Okay, bwah. I laughed for about five minutes which totally gave it away. Oh well. The good news is that he spelled them all correctly, because no one except him speaks Ooglish, so he gets to define the way everything is spelled. Except boohoo, which was in fact correct.

After Balderdash, our newly-formed musical group (Ravoo Aboo and the Boohoo Toohoos) decided to move along to Pictionary. It's always fun when both teams are supposed to draw (an all-play) and each arteeste looks at a different side of the card. Whoops. When that happens, you have a triumphant shout of "Crown ... fingers ... three ... triple crown!" followed by "Yay!" and then someone on the other team goes, "Huh. I was drawing a stinkbomb." It's kind of sad, especially when they're staring dejectedly at the beginnings of a very promising rendition of a nose.

We also play Taboo (no relation to Ravoo Aboo) which is always fun. Especially for scientists, because when your word is something like "muscle", then you can give a clue like, "Actin and myosin!" which is both allowed and an instant giveaway. Mwahahaha. We were playing once over the summer, and the guys had "poker", I think. So the clue-giver quoted those old T-shirts, "Liquor in the front ..." and the other guy, so sadly sure of himself, proclaims, "Stick 'er in the hind end!!" Ack. Not exactly how innuendo works. So the clue-giver keeps repeating, "Listen! LIQuor in the FRONT ..." only to hear "I AM listening! STICK 'er in the HIND END!" Bwah. Because my beloved camera is soldered to my hand, I had to have a picture of this. Poor Mr. Stick 'Er is the one in the white shirt, making the hilarious "What??" gesture.

The only part that I don't like about spending time with these friends is the fact that I think that if, God forbid, Scott would replace me, the rest of the group wouldn't either notice or care. The girls may wonder why they're starting to have problems with Cranium's Word Worm category, but that's about it. And it's nothing that they've said or done, it's just my own self-esteem problem.

And now I'm finally sleepy. Just in the nick of time, too -- that friendly, grandfatherish-looking David Oreck almost sold me his air purifier again.