Wherever you go, there's Scrabble

I took Lent off from blogging...but definitely not from playing! I'm not sure where to start...well, I guess I am officially a mediocre intermediate player an improvement over beginner, to be sure, but nothing to write home about...unless you've run out of everything else to say...in which case an "oh, I almost won...again" note mightbe called for.
I've mostly been focussing on threes to make fours and my six letter bingo stems (though I have managed to cram in a handful of seven letter stems). This is what makes me an intermediate player - I bingo much more frequently cause I see way more openings on the board (and bingoes on my rack or through letters). However, that I barely look at anything else and so challenge words like foin or xenon is what makes me mediocre. After Saratoga, I was really quite burned out on Scrabble and pretty much just dropped out of the scene. That lasted...oh, thirteen days! But I definitely enjoy playing much more than studying. I actually managed to rack up a two week champion streak against Phil...I found the word tutelage through a tee for a triple word scoring bingo in one game and in another challenged off notarise ("hmmm...I know that rack, Phil, and that aint one of the words in it! Challenge!") But he destroyed me last week in horrifying 3D monster fashion. Ugh.
My friend got married last month in Arizona...I was going to be in Tempe for a few days, so, of course I googled Arizona Scrabble. I actually found a $3 buy-in tournament happening at the Tempe club! So my friends drove me out there (just to make sure the club really existed) and after one or two wrong turns we founf the community center. The tournament was scheduled to start at 1:15 , but at 1 the center doors were still locked. So my friends and I did donughts in the parking lot until they opened up. Heh. My first game went super poorly. In classic Dawn fashion I jumped out to a big lead and then...gag, gasp, CHOKE! I ended up losing by 112. I crushed my next two opponents (getting a challenge on isatine, which emboldened me to play anything I wanted after that oh and did I play some doozies! Hahaha...Actually this weekend I played in the Bayside tournament (I think I placed fourth, but the prize I won was for best phony: tealiest. I also played alinear, spinned and acenose...but only got away with the first two!) Then I had the game from hellopia! I think in the end, he bingoed five times, hit every triple word square and killed me by 300 or so points...and that's a conservative estimate. Groan. In the end, I came in sixth place and won a dollar, which I donated back to the Tempe club. Everyone was so nice and if you're ever out in Tempe, you should check it out.