What does qis mean?

alphabet board game bundle close up
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

While I was with my kids, my son asked me to drive to Target and buy a game of Scrabble. I’m not keen on driving in the Bay Area — really not driving anywhere. I’d walk everywhere if I could.

If you were watching the weather, a bomb of a storm was predicted. Fortunately, where we were in Berkeley — it wasn’t hard hit. There was a ton of rain and wind. Some houses were flooded, but we were fine.

Still. I wasn’t excited about driving. I walked to my daughter’s apartment, which is less than two miles from my son’s house. She asked me to walk Waffles the pug while she was at work. I asked if I could borrow her car to go to Target and the grocery store. The answer was “of course.” She left the car keys for me inside her apartment. She’s so close to her job, she doesn’t have to drive.

Scrabble wasn’t at the Target .2 miles from her house where I could walk. I had the choice of two Targets in other towns. I buckled in and found my way with little trouble except for dodging massive potholes — which must have cropped up from the storm. They were tire or car killing potholes. I avoided all but one and felt proud of myself.

Armed with Scrabble and groceries, I returned to my son’s house. He and his fiancee have been playing Scrabble online as of late. I haven’t touched the game since I was around 10 years old?

I played my son who was home alone (and doing very well after surgery FYI.) His first word he laid down was qis — notice there isn’t a u after the q. His word was placed at the center star where you get a gazillion extra points. I challenged the word.

“Look it up,” he said. “Google to see if it’s a word in Scrabble.”

I had my laptop handy and BINGO! Qis is a “yes” for Scrabble.

The next word he played was drat.

“That’s not acceptable. That’s slang!” I said.

“Slang is allowed.”

“Not in my day,” I argued.

Needless to say I lost by more than 100 points. This is not the Scrabble of my childhood.

We both broke out in fits of laughter when he built a new word and it resulted in a second built word “za.”

“You can challenge that if you want,” he said. “I’m not sure za is a word.”

“What do you think it means?” I asked.

He said it was short for pizza — but we were laughing and he admitted he had no clue what it meant or if it was a word.

I checked the laptop. Za is a yes for Scrabble. Short for pizza.

Do you remember slang words in Scrabble? What are your thoughts about what I believe are new rules for Scrabble? Is this the Scrabble of your childhood?

And now there’s weather

View from Indian Rock
View of San Francisco from Indian Rock park I enjoyed on an earlier visit to see my kids.

It’s my son’s surgery. I’m mentally preparing for the day ahead by visualizing what the day will bring. Go to the surgery center with my son. Buy him congee after surgery for a light easy-to-digest meal, buy ice, and help him get comfortable (FYI, I’m writing this on the morning of Jan. 4).

But then I got an email with friends who know I’m in the Bay area.

Here’s an excerpt from Yahoo News:

San Francisco is about to be hit with a ‘brutal’ storm so severe that a meteorologist says is ‘one of the most impactful’ he’s ever seen

The National Weather Service’s Bay Area office issued a frank and dire warning to citizens in a statement, saying the storm, which is currently forecast to begin peaking Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, could bring about flooding and the loss of life.

“To put it simply, this will likely be one of the most impactful systems on a widespread scale that this meteorologist has seen in a long while,” the warning read. “The impacts will include widespread flooding, roads washing out, hillside collapsing, trees down (potentially full groves), widespread power outages, immediate disruption to commerce, and the worst of all, likely loss of human life. This is truly a brutal system that we are looking at and needs to be taken seriously.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/san-francisco-hit-brutal-storm-155156145.html

Yep. This storm may make my caregiving duties more challenging than I was expecting. I’m hoping the news is over-hyping the storm and danger. But you never know.

Keep me in your thoughts and prayers as I get through the next few days.

What is your weather like this week? Do you have storms headed your way?