Obsessed With Bejeweled Blitz

I’ve chronicled my passionate love for Bejeweled Blitz here a couple of times. If I have a few minutes to kill at work, or just need to zone out and clear my head, I’ll log on to Facebook and play a few rounds. There’s something about the falling jewels stacking up and clearing out, and the Bejeweled announcer rooting me on that relaxes me.

And then the developers upped the ante. Last Tuesday they released an updated version. It was already an addiction for me, but now the jewels are more dazzling, the sounds are all tinkly and crystally, and the announcer gets really worked up when you do well! “Good Job!” “Excellent!” Really, everyone should hear those words once or twice a day.

They also added a few new way to rack up points. They already had the Hypercube, which appears when you line up five of the same jewels. Click on that and then click on any one jewel next to it and it clears ALL of the jewels of that color off the board. To jack up the points they added the Flame, too, which gives you a flashing jewel if you line up four of the same color. You can either match that with two more of the same to get a bunch of points or if you don’t, you still get a bunch points at the end just for being on the board.

Then they added the best feature—The Last Hurrah! And that’s exactly what it is. When the game ends, it automatically searches through possible matches and finishes them off for you, giving you gajillions of bonus points.

Overall, I think each match is worth more too because I seem to bet getting a ton of scores like this:

Still can't get the 150K badge...

I’m insanely competitive about this. You can see your friends’ scores and I get jealous when they hit 200K, 250K…and I get determined to beat them. I realized I had a serious problem today when I walked away from my computer after playing for 5 minutes…um, okay 25…and my eyes were red, watery and glassy. I had to cut myself off. And then 15 minutes later I was jonesing to play again.

The worst part? Every Tuesday the scores clear out and you start over. I hate Tuesdays.

Happy 1st Blogoversary

Today is the 1-year anniversary of my blog.

The Daily Snark is 1 today!

I can’t believe it’s been a year already. I could spew all the cliches about time flying, and it seeming like yesterday. But I won’t—even though they’d all be true.

I started The Daily Snark because I needed a creative outlet. I wanted—scratch that—I desperately needed a place to go that was my own. A place where I could be my sarcastic self. A place where I could get back into the habit of writing. And where I could write whatever I wanted.

When I started the blog, I had exactly one reader, my real-life friend Lesley from Um…What?? For a couple of weeks she was literally the only person who’d click over to read what I wrote, no matter how lame, how mundane. She was my biggest cheerleader. I think she even paid her mom to click over occasionally so it looked like I actually had some readers. Then I picked up a few readers from the WordPress.com home page. I was giddy over getting a couple of hits a day. And then I’d get a few more. And I’d think, Damn, this is awesome. I am the shit. I was all, “Dooce, you’d better watch your back. There’s a new blogger in town.”

Snort. Um, yeah.

About a month or so after I started this blog, I finally told my husband. He’s very private and I wasn’t sure he’d be thrilled that I was spewing our personal life all over the interwebs so I didn’t tell him at first. I’d furtively type away when I could get a few minutes, and he never wondered why I suddenly became so interested in my laptop. But one night in the middle of our vacation I was feeling no pain from all the rum punch we were drinking in the Cayman Islands. As we sat at the bar on the dock of our resort and suddenly I was all:  Soguesswhat?IhaveablogandIactuallyhavereadersandeverything!

Once I explained what a blog was and how much fun I was having writing again (and promised not to write about our sex life or any other super personal details), he was very supportive of it. In fact, he told just about everyone he knew.

Over the past year, like every other blogger out there, I’ve struggled with the To Blog or Not To Blog dilemma, I’ve been obsessed with blog stats, stressed about not posting regularly enough. I try to remember that this is supposed to be fun. Sometimes it is. Other times, it’s a struggle. But I love that I have this place to come to write about whatever’s on my mind, no matter how random, how snarky or how serious. And I appreciate every single one of you who come by here.

Here are a few highlights from the last year:

1. Neil Diamond may have nearly ruined my marriage, but he brought me a crap load of readers. This most gets a ridiculous amount of Google searches, nearly a year after I wrote it.

2. After posting about my Bejeweled Blitz addiction, I realized I’m not alone. Millions of you out there need an intervention as well. I get about 50 hits a day on this post alone.

3. I think this post about Costco is one of my favorites. If you’ve ever been, you know why. If  you haven’t, I’ve probably scared you away.