No Words, Wrong Words, Frustrations, and Belly Laughs

As we progress through this experience of being seniors, we are experiencing both frustrations and laughs.

You see, it's frustrating to spew out the wrong word and even more frustrating to not find the word at all. The former tends to happen to Sue and the latter to me. For example, I was trying to tell friends about meeting someone they knew at Balderson, but danged if I could come up with the name at the time: "The town over there (pointing vaguely westward). Near um um Perth. Where they make cheese. Or used to make cheese. And they have stores there."

Sue, however, doesn't fumble much for words but just tends to throw in the wrong ones willy nilly, which she doesn't usually realize until she gets some strange looks coming back at her.

She was recently telling some friends or I should say trying to tell some friends about the haunted tours that they do at the cemetery come Halloween. Except, instead of cemetery, it came out seminary. Well, the mental pictures I got of touring a haunted seminary led me to much mirth. So much so, that weeks later, I can still recall that moment at a time when I am at a point in my life when recalling just about anything becomes a victory of sorts.

Then, when Danica was looking at my birthday card from Allyson and Alycia from out west, Sue told her that it was from Auntie Heather and Auntie Alycia. Danica had a time puzzling that out because Auntie Heather is Sue's sister and lives in Toronto while Auntie Alycia is our daughter-in-law who lives in Vancouver. How in the world they would somehow combine to send one birthday card was indeed a profound puzzlement for the child.

Now, this next example isn't quite the same thing, but it does involve lack of clarity in what one says or at least in how one says it. And it did result in the belly laugh of the title for this piece.

Picture the three us — Sue, me and Danica — sitting in the coffee shop after enjoying a light breakfast. We are talking about exercise classes. Yoga is mentioned because Dani is signed up for Yoga this fall. From there the conversation shifts to Zumba for some reason. But the belly laugh comes when Sue decides to tell us how beneficial belly dancing is, not that she knows this from personal experience.

In the course of her thesis, she says something like: "And all you wear is a coloured sash around your waist."

Now, I knew what she meant, but I looked up to see a rather strange look on Danica's face as she tried to process the information: "All you wear?"

Which is what led to the belly laugh as I made the most of Sue's faux pas. I am not exaggerating, when I say belly laugh as I got to the point where my stomach was almost hurting. Somehow, being in the coffee shop seemed to make it all the funnier, and another round or even two ensued.

Laughs like that are quite wonderful. Too bad they come along so seldom. And too bad they come as a result of atrophying brains.

A Short Sit

Sue goes to a ladies exercise class two mornings a week. Lately, she has been cycling the 3km to class. We use the nearby trail for the first half of the ride, and the second half is on very quiet streets, so it's a nice ride.

Since she's a little reluctant to cycle on her own, I have been escorting her back and forth. Between her two trips, I usually come back to the house for a half hour or so, and then cycle back for her. I don't mind the extra bit of exercise.

But this week, for whatever reason, I struggled a bit on the ride, so I didn't come back to the house. I intended to head to the coffee shop, but when I arrived, it was full, and I'd really had my fill of coffee that morning.

So, I kept cycling and stopped on the dock at the park for a bit where I took this pano. I like taking panos with the phone; it's easy to do, and then it stitches the scene very well.

This is a 180° photo which looks like I'm sitting on a v-shape dock, but I assure you that it was straight.

When I upload these panos to FB, I can hold the phone up and just rotate the phone so that the photo rotates as if the viewer was sitting in the same spot. I really like this, but it doesn't work here.

If you click on the image below from FB, it should take you there for the rotating view if you wish to see it. (I think.)




You'd think that I could have just sat and enjoyed the scene for more than a few minutes, but I find it difficult to sit and just contemplate. It's not that I am an energetic guy who's always into projects, but I do find it difficult just to sit and do nothing. I will fiddle on the computer or pick up the tablet or a book or whatever. It's a bit of a weakness really because that was such an enjoyable scene. I mean, I did appreciate it, but not for as long as some would have.

I kept on riding before heading back to rendezvous with Sue and thereby put on more miles than I would have had I returned home. But it was pleasant enough, and I found that I was no loner struggling with the ride.

Stuck But Solved

After posting of Wordscapes yesterday, I played the game that I showed a blank screenshot of. This screenshot.

And ... what often happens is that I get stuck on one word. Does this type of thing happen to you? It doesn't have to be the same word that gives me fits. It could be another. Or maybe you're a whole lot better than I am at these kinds of things.

Here's where I got stuck. It took me quite awhile (relatively speaking) to come up with the solution.

You'll probably guess it right off, but just in case you want to struggle with it, I'll post the answer below after making you scroll for a bit.

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The big reveal.

HYPE

My One Game

I don't play computer or tablet games; I really don't.

Oh, sometimes a game will catch my interest for awhile, but it is usually short-lived.

Back when computers were young, like in the mid-80s, I played a lot more. There was Frogger, Pacman, Pole Position, and Tetris (a little later) along with others.

But since maybe the early 90s, not much.

However, one game that I have downloaded onto my tablet does get played a bit as proved by the level that you see in the screenshot: Wordscapes.

Mind you, I completed all of those levels over a long period of time, during which the game might be set aside for a week or more. So it's not as if I'm addicted although I also have the game on my phone, where I have play a similar number of levels. Sue plays it a lot more and is on level 2641. (I just checked.)

That's a lot of levels, and I don't know if one ever comes to the end of the game. But Sue is not addicted either; it's just a good game to pass a little time when there is a little time to pass if you know what I mean. In other words, you can play a round in fairly short order when you're between tasks.

BTW, they're not so much levels as rounds. At least, I don't notice the rounds getting much harder if at all.

Here is what the game looks like: kind of a mix between a crossword and a word scramble. The crossword part of it helps you after you fill in a few initial words. I mean, knowing one letter in a word can really help you to figure out the whole word.

But I didn't really start this post to extol the glories of Wordscapes. No: I came to post of the weirdness of the mind — or at least of my mind.

I don't know how many times I have wrestled with a problem only to leave it and have the solution pop into my head while I was doing something else. The shower, by the way, seems to be a good place for random inspiration, which I found to be quite true when I was doing website coding a number of years ago. I would hit a roadblock and leave the coding but then have the solution pop into my head in the shower or while chopping onions or whatever.

I hadn't expected this to happen with Wordscapes. But it did.

I had been playing a round that was longer than the one pictured above, and I got totally stuck on the last two words. There was something that needed doing in the kitchen, so I passed my tablet to Sue, and said, "Here, you try it because I'm stuck."

Maybe a half moment later, without the clues to look at, I asked Sue from the kitchen, "Does matron fit?"

Sure enough, it did. And that helped to unlock the very last entry, which I got in a flash.

I find that strange: to go round and round, trying all sorts of combinations of letters and being stymied, only to grasp the answer when I wasn't even looking at the letters.

BTW: if you want to try the game, it's free although there are commercials after every round, which you can eliminate by forking up $3.99, which is not bad at all ... although I haven't done it.

Down the Bunny Trail

A little photo op with the kids and their step sisters.

Sunset on the Trail

In my previous post, I showed a few sunrise shots from the trail. Later, I returned at sunset. I had guessed that there might be a relatively good one, so I packed my gear and drove up there. It only takes about 5 minutes. Once I parked, I had to walk up the trail a bit but not too far.

You can see the trail a bit in the second shot, which, along with the first, was my fave of the bunch. There is golden rod in the foreground of the third and fourth shots, but matching the exposure of the foreground with the sky is always a bit of a trick, and I probably should have tried to lighten it a bit. The final shot is almost nothing but sky with just a bit of the distant trees below, just to anchor the shot a bit.

The Trail at Drummond Road

Yesterday, Sue and I explored a bit of the new trail (old railway line) north of town. The trail also runs through town, but our section is still under construction. The county (or township), however, has completed the section to our north.

Once we crossed a somewhat busy road, that wasn't very busy on a Sunday morning, there were no obstacles. However, because the fine gravel is not totally worked in yet, the cycling was a little harder than usual. It was a treat to get back onto pavement afterward.

The round trip was only about 15km, but that is the longest we've done this year, and for a whole decade, I think.

I discovered a spot for potential early morning photos, but come morning the roving emergency ambulance was parked in that exact spot. Can you imagine? In all of the rural county, they were parked in the one isolated spot where I wanted to shoot.

I looked around for a composition anyway, but this one wasn't so good. I could see the glow from the rising sun, but the stubble in the field isn't very appealing. Still, a shot is a shot.

I went into the farm field for just a few steps and found this composition along a harvested row. While there's no sunrise light in this view, I like this one a little better than the one above.

Then, still in search for a better composition, I walked north along the trail, where we hadn't cycled previously. Not far along, I found a composition that I like better. There is some sunrise light and a patch where it is falling on the ground a little, plus some tracks that form a leading line.

I think that photo, above, is my fave, but I switched the camera into vertical mode, and I like this one too. I've processed it a little brighter, and sometimes I think I might like it more.