Poll results

Well, I guess I am glad I put the poll about our email address up on the blog!

Despite most thinking that we have that email address due to my excellent Rook playing skills (they are good perhaps, probably not great)...if you scroll down to the bottom of the blog (which I am guessing almost no one does) you would see Sharkie.

I cooked up the email address rookshark@hotmail.com almost ten years ago. I liked playing rook, but because of chess, rook@ was already taken. I thought of Sharkie, our faithful Rook mascot while I was trying to come up with an email address that would not add some long string of meaningless numbers before it would be accepted (I believe rook285@hotmail was available…rolls right off the tongue, eh?) and tried rookshark, and it was accepted, so it stuck. The fact of being a card shark being taken as the meaning did not occur to me until much later when it was suggested back to me “oh, you are a rook master eh?” Uh, not exactly. One thing that makes it really work is that once you hear it, it does seem to be easy to remember.

How did Sharkie become the mascot? Long story: Honduras trip late 90s, Rook playing until 2:30AM daily, stuffed animals donated, mischievous Rook player (my partner Stan Nicholson) uses shark + Jaws theme to have said shark drop key card to defeat opponents (I was as shocked as they were…only somewhat pleasantly), opponents seek to destroy shark rest of the trip...mascot born, somehow with me ending up holding onto him for, quite likely, way too long a period of time.