Hi everyone...

First.. .welcome to everyone who recently joined. Please come and play... just about all of our events are casual and you should expect to feel welcome and have fun regardless of your level. If you're really good you're likely to find a good match. And if you're a beginner you'll learn more the more you play.

We now have regular events on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. Along with a few impromptu ones. And i keep saying this (sorry... life has kept me incredibly busy) but i still keep hoping to put together a Scrabble101 class. I've actually started.

I just realized i've been managing this group for 2 years (though Michelle, Peggy, and some others do most of the work in planning their weekly meetups). In case you don't know this, Meetup.com charges $150 a year to run a meetup group ($75 every 6 months). I want to keep this group officially free, with no obligation (or pressure) to pay anything. But just because i run it doesn't mean i wanna pay more than my fair share.

So.. if you're new and haven't really played, there's no need to give me anything. If you come to every event, but you can't afford to pay anything right now, then keep coming and no worries. That's what friends are for. However... if you do come to events and get some value from this, please find a way to get me $5 or $10 so we can keep it going. And by the way... i didn't declare myself dictator for life... if someone else wants to drive, feel free to let me know and i'll happily hand over the keys. Otherwise i'm happy to keep doing it as long as it's not costing me too much.

It's not hard. $150 breaks down to 15 people giving me $10 a year (and one of those people is me). I wanna thank everyone who's helped so far over the past 2 years (special thanks to Bob Boardman, who made it possible in the first place). And so you'll see exactly how the money has sorted out since i took over the group, i'm attaching a jpg picture of a spreadsheet that shows everything (it looks kind of small here as i'm writing this... i hope you can click on it to make it bigger... if not i'll be happy to email it to you)

(Note: Some of you gave me different denominations than i'm showing... i tried to spread it out to balance the amounts over the membership periods. But the total amount showing at the right should be the correct amount you've given)

So... thanks again... and as always... if there's anything that would make this group better for you, please let me know.

Barry