This is overwhelmingly beautiful, eth.

Oh, one tie breaker is unusual underwear in the last week. If you never wear a thong or boxer briefs, that's unusual. Strapless bra, corset, swimwear, sports bra, jock, cup, etc. 1 point for each and Mormon underwear is 100 bonus points.

Alternative tie breaker: purposefully ending something in the last week. Walking away from the computer, shutting of the tv, walking away from a conversation, stopping eating because you had had enough-- I hope you get the idea, you have had enough and are choosing to remove yourself from a situation. 1 point each.

Yet another alternative tie breaker if the other two can't be applied: going out of your way for another person. It only counts if you wouldn't have done it anyway. 1 point each.

Thank you, box. I was hoping it would pass muster.

2 points for looking something up or doing research just because you wanted to know, not because you had to or had a specific goal in mind. You can score up to 10 points.

I have been getting super into perfumes for the past week, and have been seeking out blogs and reviews and online sample stores all week and trying to get a handle on top notes and base notes and aldehydes and all the rest. I also decided to start looking into phone phobia because I'm interested to see how common it is and what might cause it. So: 4 points

2 points for becoming so absorbed in something you lost track of time or "woke up" once it was over. You can score up to 10 points.

I read constantly and this is how I read. I remember it happening at least three times this week at various coffeehouses, so I'll say: 6 points

2 points for every project started from scratch, such as a recipe with no pre-made ingredients or a project that didn't come from a kit, growing something from a seed or starting a paper or writing with no guide or started research. Up to 10 points.

I cook dinner almost every night from scratch -- that is, if we're eating at home, I've cooked dinner from scratch. (I was actually just reminding myself to remind myself that that's a real accomplishment and should not be taken lightly.) Sunday we had grilled steaks, corn on the cob, and a green veggie I can't remember; Monday was cornish game hens in a homemade marinade, green beans with garlic and parmesan, and homemade black bean and mango salad; Tuesday was seared Ahi with baby bok choi and rice; Wednesday was pasta with tuna; Thursday was chicken marinated in balsamic vinegar and herbes de Provence and then grilled and topped with blue cheese, served with an arugula salad and green beans fresh from the garden; last night was a (unfortunately bad) Jamie Oliver recipe for salmon with lemon and dill and vegetables that I will not make again. So: 10 points

2 points for reading a textbook, manual or scholarly article. Up to 10 points.
Nothing there. Press releases about upcoming scholarly articles, but no actual articles. 0 points

2 points for achieving an altered state of consciousness. Up to 10 points. And extra 5 points for gaining something from the experience, such as knowledge, wisdom, a true moment of contentment, etc.

Does jasmine count? I've been sitting outside in the mornings getting totally high on the heady smell from the jasmine that is completely covering our fence. And Monday morning I realized how truly wonderfully grateful I was to be living in such a beautiful place. So: 15 points?

2 points for every working animal or communal animal you encountered, such as a bookstore cat or a firehouse dog, barn or temple cat, even a very hungry bat will do. Up to 10 points.

One coffeehouse dog, a totally adorable pit bull. 2 points

2 points for doing things you don't usually never do, such as making your bed when you never make your bed or going for a walk when you never walk anywhere, cooking when you always eat out, etc. Up to 10 points.

Got my teeth whitened, which I thought I would never do, partly because I worry it's vain and partly because I was worried it'd hurt (it did). Can't think of anything else. 2 points

10 points for doing something for the first time.

Can I double-count the teeth whitening? If so: 10 points

1 point for every foreign meal you've had. It must be foreign to you. Up to 10 points.

Lunch at a Mexican restaurant. 1 point

1 point for every time you wore an item of white clothing. Up to 10 points.

White bras three times. White underwear once. 4 points

5 points if you've drawn anything by hand. Doodles count, tracing does not, computers count but not if you just copied something.

Nope. 0 points

2 points for handwriting something. Up to 10 points.

I take notes during therapy sessions, and then handwrite all the session notes afterward. 10 points

2 points for using math. Up to 10 points.

Calculated Points! at least three times. Calculated number of beer bottles required for wedding reception. Calculated money owed to service provider. 10 points

TOTAL: 74 POINTS

Tiebreakers: No unusual underwear, two times of walking away from potential arguments because I had enough. So: 2 tiebreaker points

This must be the long-rumored expanded weekend edition. I'm going to need some time with this. :)

This week:
6 pts: I was curious about the depth of lake michigan, so i looked it up. (923 feet); checking on the career of the actor in Night of the Comet (he went on to Star Trek Voyager); curiosity about the difference between cynar and aperol (both Italian, one is artichoke, one is orange).
2 pts: work passed without my noticing.
10 pts: I made white bean and garlic scape dip, onion and tomato tart, scratch biscuits and oatcakes--didn't use a recipe for any of them, either; an envelope to hold cards of things I no longer do for a communal art project.
8 pts: I read two essays from the Unpredictable Constitution: The Anatomy of an Execution: Fairness versus "Process", by Stephen Reinhardt and Women and the constitution : where we are at the end of the century by Martha Craig Daughtrey for fun and two articles from a couple law reviews about bond courts for work
2 pts: I saw a book store cat in the window
10 pts: I made an envelope out of paper
1 pts: I wore white sport bra
5 pts: I drew a shoe while on hold
8 pts: wrote out a poem long hand, copied a dozen tweets longhand, made a to-do list for work next week, took notes on a piano instruction video, wrote a card to my cousin
6 pts: divided the weight of the biscuit dough into nine biscuits, added the cost of my hat to the cost of my dress, divided distance by time, multiplied by days.
58 points
+ 2 for adding these points together makes a total of:
60 points

8 points - looked up TSA requirements for child ID, the US Exploring Expedition, the origins of baked alaska, and the current protocol for giving CPR.

10 points - twice while working on problems for clients (one was digging into a report to see why it was wrong, one was documenting a procedure for them); once while walking around talking to someone on the phone. I ended up in a part of town that I wasn't familiar with, and had to use my explorer skills to get back home. Twice while reading; once, I missed my bus stop; the other, stayed up way past my bedtime.

2 points - made bread from scratch. I cook all my own meals, but nothing new this week, plus summer means that meals are usually "two peaches, and a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt from the container, all eaten while sitting next to the fridge." In terms of actual cooking: I made coconut rice, some bean curry, and eggs-in-a-nest. If those count, I'll up these points, but they didn't really feel like a project from scratch.

6 points - read my kitchenaid manual, a bit of a stats textbook, and a manual on the Florida tourist development tax.

2 points - saw a seeing eye dog at the airport.

2 points - managed to take two flights and stay in a hotel for a couple nights without any stress, anxiety, or crying (someone is a bad traveler, and that someone is me.)

10 points - took a bus from work to my future apartment, and then walked from future apartment to present apartment. Does that count?

Foreign meals - none, unfortunately.

8 points - sports bra, t-shirt, socks, different t-shirt, tank top, dress, shorts, dress shirt. There were actually four different sports bras and pairs of socks in there; I'm just counting them each as one.

5 points - drew on the whiteboard outside my office. Every month, I draw a little scene the shows everyone in my department. This month, it's a bunch of fireworks over Pittsburgh, with my boss on a pirate ship coming down one of the rivers.

10 points - hand wrote my to-do lists on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, my client visit notes on Thursday and Friday, and my shopping list, to-do lists, travel expenses, budget, and thank you notes this morning.

10 points - figuring out the tip 6 times, budget, travel expenses, balancing my checkbook, figuring out what's left on my car loan.

So far: 73. I know I'm behind, but I'll do the tiebreakers anyway.

2 points - sports bras, strapless bra. Multiple gym visits and runs, and a strapless dress for a date.

6 points - all but one work related. To a client: "Okay, we're not solving anything and we're both frustrated. We should each think things over and talk again on Monday." To my boss, "I can't have this conversation right now, since I'm with clients. You can write me an email, and I'll respond tonight, or we'll talk when I'm back in the office." To a coworker: "Hey, this day was rough and I need a little quiet time. Can we not talk until dinner?" To another coworker: "Don't look into it; she's lying and it's not worth it." Twice, I stopped eating when there was food on my plate (osso bucco, and 1/2 a bagel and some smoked salmon.) I'm a devoted member of the clean plate club.

5 points - gave up my bus seat for a mother and her two kids, gave up my airplane seat for a father and his kid, helped a neighbor carry something into their apartment, loaned my brother my (new!) car so he could drive to a job interview, sent an email to my boss and the CEO complimenting a new employee.

Wow, good thing it's not a work day.

I'm not sure I've had enough coffee for this, but I'm going to try since I was so close yesterday and underneath my sweet exterior I'm a competitive beast. I'm going to score high on this one owing to the fact that I was on vacation for a week and had lots of time to alter my routine.

2 points for looking something up or doing research just because you wanted to know, not because you had to or had a specific goal in mind. You can score up to 10 points.

2: Research on goldeneyes (the birds) because I was watching a mama and her babies and didn't know anything about them
2: Research on trout feeding habits
2: Research on edible plants of California (Did you know that the entire cattail plant is edible?)
2: Research on what makes different types of feathers different (in the context of fly-tying; some are suitable, some aren't)
2: Research on one of the actors in a series I'm currently Netflixing, just because I was curious

10 points.

2 points for becoming so absorbed in something you lost track of time or "woke up" once it was over. You can score up to 10 points.

I just spent a week on a lake, alternately reading, watching birds, watching people, watching mountains, watching fish. I'm claiming all 10. I ought to get 100.

2 points for every project started from scratch, such as a recipe with no pre-made ingredients or a project that didn't come from a kit, growing something from a seed or starting a paper or writing with no guide or started research. Up to 10 points.

Having been camping actually hurts me on this one, because I usually make all my meals from scratch. I'll claim the two I've made since I've been home (4 points), plus a new blog (2 points), plus a brand new database at work (2 points), for a total of 8.

2 points for reading a textbook, manual or scholarly article. Up to 10 points.

Filemaker manual: 2 points

Though part of my job is working with our faculty and sending their scholarly works to outside reviewers, I can't claim to have actually read any of them this week. However, I emailed almost [4 faculty members x 4 articles each x 43 reviewers = 688] 700 scholarly articles in the three days I was at work this week, so I'm going to claim 4 courtesy points for doing all that damn work.

6 points.

2 points for achieving an altered state of consciousness. Up to 10 points. And extra 5 points for gaining something from the experience, such as knowledge, wisdom, a true moment of contentment, etc.

See above, sitting on a lake for a week, staring at mountains.

15 points.

2 points for every working animal or communal animal you encountered, such as a bookstore cat or a firehouse dog, barn or temple cat, even a very hungry bat will do. Up to 10 points.

I stopped off at the True Value Hardware Store in Palo Cedro, CA, to get some ShoeGoo for my fishing boots. A sign on the door listed their five friendly in-store animals. That would be 10 points, but I only saw two of them -- the two dogs curled up in a bed behind the counter, for four points.

However, I'm going to claim 6, because I think there's a pretty good chance that one of the hardware store cats could clearly see me as I shopped, even if I couldn't see it. With cats, that counts as an 'encounter.'

6 points

2 points for doing things you don't usually never do, such as making your bed when you never make your bed or going for a walk when you never walk anywhere, cooking when you always eat out, etc. Up to 10 points.

Peeing outside, cooking outside [Oops! Grilling. I forgot grilling.], hiking around a lake at 8 a.m., fly fishing, putting quarters into a coin-op shower, washing my feet in a dish tub because they were filthy black.

10 points

10 points for doing something for the first time.

0 points :(

1 point for every foreign meal you've had. It must be foreign to you. Up to 10 points.

0 points

1 point for every time you wore an item of white clothing. Up to 10 points.

1 point

5 points if you've drawn anything by hand. Doodles count, tracing does not, computers count but not if you just copied something.

0 points

2 points for handwriting something. Up to 10 points.

I make a to-do list every morning, on paper.

10 points

2 points for using math. Up to 10 points.

I've done four departmental budgets in the past week. I'll count them as one activity for 2 points. Did some math about my woefully mismanaged bank account. 2 points. Calculated appropriate tippet size for dry fly using the rule of three. 2 points. Participated in this thread. 2 points.

8 points

Oh, one tie breaker is unusual underwear in the last week. If you never wear a thong or boxer briefs, that's unusual. Strapless bra, corset, swimwear, sports bra, jock, cup, etc. 1 point for each and Mormon underwear is 100 bonus points.

Hey! I actually bought a new pair of boxer shorts to wear around the house. I'm wearing them now. I haven't sewn up the flap yet. No religious conversions, though, so only 1 point.

Alternative tie breaker: purposefully ending something in the last week. Walking away from the computer, shutting of the tv, walking away from a conversation, stopping eating because you had had enough-- I hope you get the idea, you have had enough and are choosing to remove yourself from a situation. 1 point each.

See one week on the lake with no computer, TV, Netflix, phone, contact with coworkers, demands from boss, demands from cats, demands from garden.

10 points

Yet another alternative tie breaker if the other two can't be applied: going out of your way for another person. It only counts if you wouldn't have done it anyway. 1 point each.

I have access to my boss's email, and I check it periodically to make sure he's not getting too far behind and that everyone who needs something from him gets a response. Yesterday, a coworker sent him an email about a random thing, and mentioned in it that she wasn't available by phone because she was working in someone else's office. She'd seen a big black widow when she went into her own office yesterday morning, and it retreated into the A/C unit. She couldn't work in there.

I took her A/C unit apart and extracted the spider (she was right, it was big) and released it onto a big tree a little ways away from our building.
1 point for reading my boss's email and seeing a problem that needed solving; 1 point for disassembling A/C and extracting spider, thus making office habitable again; 1 point for not killing spider.

3 points

By my math, that's 98 points.

Shoot, I realized I did wear a bathing suit as underwear because SOMEONE didn't do laundry when she should have. Also, my math might be bad because I edited everything a lot and got careless.

I scored up to 130 points!

Does 'improving my librarian skills' count as a specific goal? I think it's more of a general one, so I'll take ten points. Just from today--lesbian African-American fiction (then fiction with down-low themes), Windows 7 file structures, eBooks for iOS (then non-Adobe .pdf readers), math resources for homeschoolers, Ozark big-eared bats (then Arkansas bats in general), genealogy databases.

Losing track of time? This, too, happens to me a lot. Reading books, playing video games, hanging out with people, etc. Let's say six points.

I mostly cook from scratch, but the only thing I did last week that rose to the level of 'project' was a batch of beer. Two points.

A couple books about library stuff (Atlas of New Librarianship, Intellectual Foundations of Information Organization, Sign Systems for Libraries), the manual for my car radio, a bunch of articles about library stuff, ten points.

Yes to altered states, no to details. Wait--I sat in a sauna on Sunday. Seven points.

Sadly, no working animals. We had some folks from the state park bring animals out to the library, but those are less working and more captive. Don't recall doing anything unusual this week, either.

Used my cast-iron pizza pan on the grill for the first time, ten points.

I dunno about foreign meals--I don't know where to put tikka masala and crab rangoon and stuff like that, plus, y'know, I am a man, nothing human is foreign to me.

White t-shirt, three bike rides, three points.

Don't recall any drawing, but probably doodled something. Handwrote a postcard for R, a list of books, a bunch of notes and office-ish stuff. Ten points.

Added these numbers, calculated mileage, did some math involving shelving and budgets and circulation statistics. Ten points.

Sixty-eight, if my math is to be trusted, and I'm not sure it is.

occhi and punch already beat me, and pup's on fire like NBA Jam, so I won't be needing the tiebreakers.

+ 10 (first I wanted to find a Julia Child roast chicken recipe; then I wanted to see if there were any videos on youtube with Paul Child in them; then I wanted to look up the actor who my father said played a particularly interesting Hotspur at the Globe last year [Sam Crane]; then I needed to see what plays are going to be staged in Pittsburgh next year, and New York; then I fell into a pile of links and drowned)
+ 0 (there is a good chance of this but it hasn't happened yet)
+ 0 (in the midst of too many to indulge myself in starting a new one)
+ 10 (hurrah for workplace access to jstor!)
+ 2 (meditation; contentment achieved, but not the kind that persists after I open my eyes)
+ 0 (my mouser is firmly retired)
+ 0 (ordinary day)
+ 0 (see above)
+ 0 (I think I've eaten everything in the neighborhood around my place of work)
+ 1 (underwear!)
+ 5 (sketching outline for another scene of my animation)
+ 10 (notes on articles are handwritten into my project notebook)
+ 4 (calculating some conversions for work)
= 42 (which suggests the meditation may have been effective after all)

+0 (most of the research I do is goal-oriented and I can't think of anything in the past week that wasn't in some way)
+6 (processing collections just zones me out in a good way (done on Tuesday-Thursday))
+2 (made a user guide for the new microfilm reader)
+4 (read 2 textbooks for ACA)
+0 (meditation just isn't working for me, but I keep trying)
+0 (no communal animals this week)
+2 (took my mother out to a late lunch)
+10 (first time processing a collection by myself)
+0 (no foreign meals)
+2 (underwear)
+0 (I never doodle)
+6 (notes for the processing, notes from the ACA books, directions)
+2 (figuring out how to divide 32 by 4)
= 34

I love this game.

Yowza!

+10 (Olive Prouty, what is the origin of "cat's pajamas", if it was still true you can't get pho in this town (yeah, pretty much), the Perry-Berenson Dance Camp history, where Isabella Stewart Gardner got her money)
+10 (Reading at lunch ... and long after getting the check, mapping out a mythical road trip that got incredibly detailed, finishing a doodle long after call was over (I don't actually remember the call ending), putting a series of books in order that led to reorganizing the whole book section, zenned myself out so much at the dentist trying not to notice what they were doing they had to tell me it was done.)
+10 (started knitting toe-up socks, made a folded blank book for a friend, designed a brand for a friend, started new suncatchers, and made cookies)
+2 (read 1930s Ford truck manual)
+2 (my dentist gave me enough drugs so that I felt no pain, and it was floaty and lovely)
+4 (a pack of cats at an antique mall, a seeing eye dog)
+2 (sang in public)
+10 (Missed the entire duration of a green arrow due to my own idiocy. This is one of my biggest pet peeves, and I did it at a light that has 6 minute waits)
+6 (2x Mexican, 1x Chinese, 1x Japanese, 1x Thai, 1x Italian.)
+0 (my mother trained me never to wear white)
+5 (I draw a lot! doodles, new designs, all sorts of digital designs)
+10 (1 card, 1 letter, directions around a slowage on the highway, a Don't Eat This, It's Mine! note, and several to-do lists)
+10 (calculating sales tax, area of an empty mold, exactly how much the new bank fees would cost me as a baseline and for the add-on services, explaining how percentages of the whole work)

81 points
Ending tiebreaker (+9 - 3 political convos, 4 really mediocre books, 1x having only ne bite of dessert, 1 conversation about my lack of a husband)

10 points for pointless research: homemade puff pastry, object permanence, habit extinction, homemade bacon, Moto (a molecular gastronomy restaurant in Chicago). That's right, I looked up not one but two recipes I will almost certainly never bother to make. I could rack up dozens of these; pointless research is dear to my heart.

10 points for absorption: playing ReBuild, a zombie-apocalypse game; listening to WTF, Marc Maron's podcast, while I organized junk; writing; down the Wikipedia rabbithole; reading creepypasta (now you know some of my deepest secrets).

10 points for from-scratch projects: flour tortillas; anadama bread; invitations (I'm cobbling them together from cardstock, a rubber stamp, vellum, ink, and glue); simple syrup and cold-brewed coffee; wrote several thumbnail movie reviews.

10 points for reading a textbook, manual or scholarly article. This is where I'm a Viking! Off the top of my head: a scholarly article outlining Billy Wilder's struggles with the Catholic Church and the Legion of Decency; a study of gender and agency in David Lynch's films; Eric Partridge's Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language; James Deetz's Small Things Forgotten. I suppose that crappy feminist critique of "Chasing Amy" counts, too; just because it was BADLY ARGUED doesn't mean it wasn't scholarly.

0 points for achieving an altered state of consciousness.

0 points for every working animal or communal animal.

0 points for doing things I never do. Wow, that's a bummer.

10 points: I made jam tarts for the first time! Mmm, jam tarts.

10 points for foreign meals, I guess. How foreign is foreign? I've had quesadillas, pasta & spinach with red sauce, Chinese dumplings, Greek pizza, and quesadillas again. I am not Mexican, Italian, Chinese, or Greek.

0 points for white clothing. Not a single item.

5 points for drawing by hand: sketched out some invitation ideas and did a few doodles.

8 points for handwriting something: grocery list, library lists, guest list for an upcoming dinner, label on the simple syrup.

10 points for using math: calculated ratio for small test batch of cold-brewed coffee; calculated surface area of cardstock; converted Celsius to Fahrenheit (does that count?); compared price-per-bottle of various cases of sparkling wine; converted ml to ounces. Also, I had a very pleasant dream in which my (late) father and I talked out a math problem.

83 points.

Obviously I'm nowhere near Eideteker's score, but I'm going to calculate my bonus anyhow just to reinforce the positive behavior. (Not the underwear: 0 points. I did buy myself a slew of new underthings, but they are just replacements of the usual, not something unfamiliar.)

I thoughtfully walked away from: a go-nowhere conversation with a family member; an online fight (not here!) that made my hair bristle with righteous indignation; a broken DVD player that was not yielding to the screwdriver; a paper-craft project that wasn't going well and from which I needed a rest; a book that I was not enjoying and didn't need to read; a recipe that wasn't working out and needs revamping.

Bonus: 6 points.

I tend to hang on like a terrier, so I was pleased that I took a breath and walked away from these things. Yay, me!

People are being kind of liberal with the points, but so far I think mudpuppie has 84 points before tie breakers (hiding cats don't count).
I'll leave it open a little. I didn't think I'd get many people on a Saturday. I'm tempted to score up my points but it would take forever and I don't qualify.

10 - looking up something (IMDb and Wikipedia, I use both sites a lot)
02 - altered state of consciousness (as long as T3s count, ha!)
10 - doing something for the first time (watched Million Dollar Baby)
02 - for using math (adding up these points)

Total = 24

Not going to bother with tie-breaker points, because man, I'm way behind.

I stand behind my points. I actually feel like I was holding back. Too much typing.

It's mudpuppie's, so run with it.

Yay, I'm a winner!

Points will return on Monday morning. There are no points on Sundays.

Baby, you were always a winner.