Tag: Wordle

Thursda’s Wandering Thoughts

It’s a potpourri of offerings and updates. Nothing important. Just sharing.

Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), my black and white wonder floof, had some issues this morning. I heard him in the litter box at a quarter to daylight this morning. The familar tones of him puking followed. I rose to check it out and soon learned that he was constipated. After comforting him, I warmed water and gave him a few CCs of that via syringe. Next, warmed water and made a slurry out of his kibble, which he eagerly took in. Finally, warmed water, mixed it with a Churro bisque and fed him a few CCs of that. Meanwhile, in his wanderings, three small, hard stools were released. After these treatments, he retired to his litter box and had a large bowel movement. Then he acted normal. But this is a warning shot; I need to shift his diet and ensure he’s eating more wet food. I’d noticed that since his teeth have been removed, that’s been a problem for him. I’m also picking up some cat laxative to keep on hand, just in case.

My healing continues, and my edema issues are improving. I’ve been experiencing bi-lateral edema. Started a few years ago, in conjunction with an obstructed bladder caused by an enlarged prostat. Ankle surgery last fall made it worse on my right leg and foot. I focus on reducing the swelling by day’s end every day. Here in general is what I’ve done.

  1. Increased hydration. I’m drinking a ton of water a day. Peeing a lot, too.
  2. Reduced alcohol and coffee.
  3. Reduced my sodium intake. Banished any lunch meat from my lips. Bacon and sausage, which I never consumed much in the first place. Breads were cut back. Swore off most sauces and all salad dressings. Almost completely cut out butter. Eating more raw fruits and veggies. I consult labels for sodium content before buying or consuming.
  4. Massage a CBD lotion into my legs, ankles, and feet each morning and evening. I follow the contours of my muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. This seems to help my blood and lymph flow.
  5. Wear compression socks during the day. I typically have them on for about ten hours.
  6. Elevate my feet. Each night I lie on my back with my feet up on the wall for 30 to 40 minutes. I exercise my legs, feet, and toes during this time. I then also elevate my right ankle further during the night.
  7. Exercise several times a day to raise my heartbeat. Significant emphasis is given to moving my legs and feet. Besides brisk walking, I stretch and flex, plank for a minute, wallsit three times a day for a minute at a time, run in place, and do some light free weights.
  8. Bought and wear orthopedic footwear.

This all seems to be paying off. My left limb and foot doesn’t swell much during the day at all. The swelling on my right foot, ankle, and leg is completely gone by each morning. Although it slowly swells during the day, the swelling isn’t as heavy. My mobility, strength, and flexibility have all improved, IMO, based on the exercises and my observations. I commence my lymph-edema massage therapy next week.

My wife and I both like to do word games like Connections, Spelling Bee, Wordle, and Hurdle. Each day, we talk about how easy or hard the games were for us. We also laugh about how we sometimes screw up. For example, with Wordle and Hurdle, you’re guessing a five letter word. You have six guesses. Correct letters show up in green. Letters which are in the word but in the wrong location are in gold or yellow. It’s humorous but irritating to realize after making some guesses that we’ve overlooked or have forgotten to use a letter in yellow in our guesses. It’s like, “OMG, I had a N in yellow that I forgot! What is wrong with me?”

It’s all fun and games.

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Satrda’s Wandering Thoughts

There’s a disturbance in the force. I mean, the Internet. It doesn’t appear Trump related. Doesn’t seem to be politically connected at all.

The short of it, many games won’t load on my laptop. I’m running Windows. Surfing on Opera, Chrome, Edge. None will load the games in normal or whatever ‘stealth’ offering the browser provides. Started yesterday afternoon. Research on the net about it is useless. Search engines focus on one aspect of the question posed. In this case, they’re all about giving me answers to games. Answers to questions I didn’t ask. Information which I don’t desire.

I’m not talking multi-role games. This is Connections and Wordle at the NYTimes. Sudoku at the Seattle Times and NY Times. Spelling Bee plays fine, as does several other games. Error messages say things like, “Yikes, you’re offline.” Yet I’m not offline.

Actually, I just tried a new, broader variation of the question on DuckDuckGo. ‘can’t play games online’. Answers remain useless but at least it’s focused on my issue. Must be your connection, they tell me. Your browser. Your firewall settings, or security. Nothing that touches the nub that the rest of the net works fine, and no settings were changed and all settings are per usual, and diagnostics show nothing. My wife’s Mac laptop doesn’t share the issue. And yes, the cache has been cleared, of course. Yes, I powered up and down. Yes, everything is updated. No, the sites are not reported as down. No issues are reported on them.

Overall, it’s a small thing. More first world blues. Just annoying to me, personally. I like playing my games and getting a little rush from completing them. The larger question is, is it my machine? Or is it the net? My bet is on the latter but it’ll take time for that to be revealed.

Guess I’ll just read a book instead. Halfway through ‘The Library at Mount Char’ per my wife’s recommendaton. It’s sucking me in. Gotta go out into the gloomy day and write soon anyway.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

I enjoy doing online puzzles and games in the mornings. Nothing strenuous or involved — Wordle and Hurdle, Sudoku, Connections, Spelling Bee — or pangram, as my wife and I call it — and Tiles. Easier and more satisfying than addressing the life puzzles superballing around my mind.

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

Getting Wordle in two moves engenders a sensational feeling of luck and success. Two days in a row pump you up. But three? Man, capture that feeling and sell it in bottles. WordleBot was generous — 99 for skill, 99 for luck.

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

He’d done Wordle in two moves yesterday, and he was proud and pleased. Two moves! He was usually lucky to get it done in four. But he’d taken his wife’s advice to be intuitive. And, you know, he’d been lucky.

She’d finally joined him in the office, giving him the chance to crow. After mentioning the intuition thing, he said, “So my first guess was offbeat.”

Confusion creased her expression. “Offbeat is too big.”

He stared at her. “Let me try again. My first guess was an offbeat word choice.”

“Choice is six letters. That’s too many letters.” Understanding broke on her face. “Oh, I see.”

His stare deepened. “Tell you what, honey. Let’s get some coffee in you and then I’ll continue this tale.”

Both laughed.

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thought

They used to tell him, “It’s the thought that counts.” But as everyone knows who thought they won an election, or bought a lottery ticket and didn’t win, believed they were going to win a football game, or thought they had Wordle in two moves, it’s not the thought that counts. It’s the results.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Rotating and orbiting as the planet has done for billions of years, we now come to February 2, 2022. A Wednesday, it may be memorable to many people for many reasons, but how does it compare to the past trillions of days? Our human lifespans are so short compared to the universe’s life scale that little of what we do is memorable in the cosmic sense. It’s why we narrow our focus down to our personal spaces and calendars. Contemplating the greater scale may well lead to nihilistic conclusions or heavy consumption of coffee, alcohol, or other drugs. Or eating disorders. So let’s just keep focus on our smaller but amazingly impactful days. They are impactful on us and that’s what builds our memories and experiences and skew our emotions.

Anyway, the sun ‘rose’ at 7:23 AM and will ‘set’ at 5:27 PM. I’ll drink some coffee and eat some food. I’ve already done some of the latter. You’re probably doing something similar, eating, or thinking about what you’ll eat, even considering, perhaps, who you’ll eat it with. Here in Ashland, it dropped to 28 F last night. Now it’s 36 with a high of 44 expected for the day. Dollops of congealed gray and white cloud float on the blue sky. We do not expect rain.

I haven’t done any of my daily games. They’ll come soon. I guessed my first word in Wordle in two guesses yesterday. On the other hand, it required all six in two games. Four other games took three or four. Yeah, I like Wordle. Getting it in two is luck. For instance, in the first game when I guessed it in two, the last two letters of my first guess were green. On a whim, I entered poppy as my second guess. That was the word. Yea for me.

Weirdly, I have a song called “If Not for You” living in the morning mental music stream. Bob Dylan wrote and recorded the song. Then George Harrison recorded it, followed by Olivia Newton John. I had the albums for the first two performers. I heard the ONJ version on the radio one day and then turned around and pulled out the vinyl 33-RPM album to listen to Dylan and an eight-track tape to listen to George’s version. Doing that back then in my bedroom in Pittsburgh somewhere around 1973 (all of the versions were out by 1971), I never imagined the technology that would allow me to sit at my computer and pull up the same songs. Trippy, innit? Just think of how it all might be in another fifty years or so, right?

Part of me thinks about memories like this and wonder why it stays so sharply in my memory today that I can look around that room from my vantage here and see and hear the details of my life then. A sliver of me muses that maybe there’s some cosmic entanglement taking place. Another facet of me shrugs and mumbles, who knows?

For today’s theme music, I’ve selected a recording of Dylan and Harrison playing it together. Makes me smile. Stay postive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. I’m off for coffee now. Looking forward to it. Here’s the music. Cheers

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