More randomness...

Lately, my mind has felt like Boggle. Every few minutes someone shakes my head, turns over the little egg timer, and I'm left trying to make words from random letters until the last grain of sand finally falls.

I think that If I were a boggle game, these would be my latest words:

• TEAM (1 point): I hate the word team. I hate it because people use it all the time at work. A group of software developers doesn't constitute a team; it's just a group of poorly dressed nerds with questionable social skills. If I'm on a "team", then I demand a lucrative endorsement contract, an offseason, and the ability to break the law without repercussion. Team is one of the original business buzzwords, way before things like "synergy" and "paradigm shift", and people like to use it to promote camaraderie and give everyone warm fuzzies about working together . For me, though, the word team makes me think of Initech and impending TPS reports.
• MAYBE (2 points): Let's face it people, Jack Johnson was right: "maybe" pretty much always means no. It particular, it means, "No, but I'm not brave enough to say no, so I'm going to be disingenuous and suggest that I might do something when I really have no intention to do it at all." I'm guilty of it too. Beware the maybe. If you really do mean maybe, then find a different way to say it.
  
• LEAF (1 point): My yard is covered with them; beautiful yellow, orange, and amber maple leaves larger than your hand ... which have now been rained on, so they adhere themselves to everything in the yard with the force of some invisible industrial adhesive. They also smell like wet dog. Blech.
  
• DOG (1 point): My neighbor has the coolest dogs ever. One looks like a wolf, and the other, well, might actually be a small bear. They never ever bark. A few weeks ago, we were watching these little tiny Yorkies, and every time we'd left them out back to do their doggy business, they'd tear up to the fence at full speed and start barking furiously. Wolf and Bear would then trot over to inspect the ferocious Ewoks. They were pretty unimpressed, despite the fervor of the barking. Then, on Saturday, I went outside with the leaf blower to try and pry the leaves off the lawn. Wolf and Bear came over to see my new Toro leaf blower with cast aluminum impeller. I got pretty much the same reaction as the Yorkies. I'm pretty sure the neighbor dogs think I'm some sort of Labrador that uses power tools.
• WEIRD (2 points) - Jodi just declared that I am weird. This shouldn't be news to anyone. I only come in one flavor: weird.

And ... time just ran out. Shoot. I'll bet everyone got those same words, too. Oh well, seven points isn't bad.