Good News

Most days I like to ignore whatever is going on in the world around me.  I rarely read the newspaper because it is so chock full of depressing stuff over which I have no control,  and I don’t want to contribute to the negative stress filled freaked out vibes that surround some stories.  What I don’t know can’t hurt me, right?  Murders, horrific accidents, bombings, strikes, recessions, Angelina’s suspected affair – there’s just no point in getting emotionally involved in any of it, so I don’t. 

Now there’s another great reason for my apathy concerning world affairs and other people’s problems.  While the rest of  you negative and easily distressed people get dementia, I’ll still be perfectly cognitive and sane!   Relatively speaking, of course.

For the study, published in Neurology, 506 older people (without dementia at the time) were asked about their personality traits and lifestyle. Researchers found that people who were not socially active, but were calm and relaxed had a 50 per cent lower risk of developing dementia.

I also learned that there is a part of the brain called the hippocampus.  Whoever named that one has my deepest respect and admiration, even if he wasn’t trying to be funny at the time.   

The other great news is that I’m back to playing mega word games because Scrabulous is back, sort of. 

KOLKATA, India – December 12th – RJ Softwares today announced that it has settled the litigation brought by Hasbro Inc., a Pawtucket, RI, USA, based company that owns the U.S. and Canadian rights to the SCRABBLE crossword game. The settlement resolves disputes concerning Scrabulous, previously offered by RJ Softwares, as well as Lexulous, and Wordscraper that are currently offered by RJ Softwares.

In this case it was a good thing that many easily distressed future dementia sufferers went ballistic and called the Hasbro people a bunch of weinies.  They finally backed down because the little guys hired a team of lawyers and fought back.  Too bad they can no longer use the term “Scrabulous” – it was a fabulous name.  And the Lexulous word game uses eight letters instead of seven, but otherwise it’s pretty similar to Scrabble.  Wordscraper has much more bizzare boards and is a whole different kind of fun.  So out of the whole big schmozzle we now have TWO crazy word games on Facebook and they have become my daily fix.  For my laid back calm non socialistic hermit like dementia free lifestyle. 

Now wasn’t that a nicer way to settle things than going the ‘lengthy and costly litigation’ route?  I no longer regret purchasing my travel Scrabble game.  YAY Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla!  Chalk one up for the underdogs!  Hopefully you two guys don’t end up with dementia!   Especially now that you have a global audience.  Might be bad for business.  Not that I’m worried about it or anything.

1898

So!  How freaky is this picture?  It looks like some kind of pioneer ghost family.  Right there in the middle is my grandma, with her brothers Jack, Iden and Walter on the left;  her dad Edward with baby Herbert, and her mother Elizabeth (Lizzie) on the right.  And that would be their mansion in the background.   I would have been very hard pressed to figure all that out on my own, but this was one of my mom’s pictures, and she had a habit (good or bad) of writing pertinent information on things.  So that’s how I know the year is 1898 and grandma is 11 years old.  There are two more baby brothers yet to come – Carl and Jake.  What an incredible amount of change grandma must have seen in the world from this moment on, all the way to 1985.  She used to tell us we had no idea how hard life could be, and of course she was right that we didn’t.  All those brothers, for one thing.  And I expect being the oldest and the only girl made for a lot of responsibilities and hard work for her. 

When I was little my grandma was just ‘grandma’ and it was beyond my imagination to conjure up any other kind of role for her.  She looked after us whenever mom went away.  She made delicious potato and yellow bean cream soup.  She ate bread dunked in bacon fat to grease her joints.  She sewed and quilted and worked long hours in the garden and her flower beds, and she went to church every Sunday without fail.  Then when we were older she embarassed us by saying strange things to our boyfriends. 

I wonder what her dreams were when she was eleven.  I hope some of them came true.

Farrago

Bellum, evil phantom, has been vanquished by my powerful sword.  Finally.  I thought he was never going to give it up – came back no less than three times in different guises.  Phew.  Can I now get on with my own life??  I checked out the on-line ‘cheats’ to discover that there’s quite a few power/wisdom/courage gems that I didn’t find, some ocean treasures never retrieved and a lot of missing ship parts.  Sigh.  I don’t have the heart to go back and do it all again.  I saved Tetra.  That was my quest and now I’m very done with all of it I think.  But there IS a “clear” button….hmmmmm. 

Last night W. bought a new snow blower, so our driveway is cleared within an inch of it’s life.  It will soon look like no snow fell within ten meters of our house in all directions.  We will be the only house in town with a bare lawn in January.  I’m almost not kidding you know, snow removal being one of W’s great passions.

I’ve put my name down to attend an optical conference in Vancouver in April.  Didn’t go to the one last year because at that time I had enough credits, so I get first dibs on this one.  I suppose there are worse ways to spend a weekend.

The garbage has been picked up already and it’s not even noon here.  That’s kind of a nice change from being four days late after New Years.  Our neighbors have gone to Disneyland with their three kids.  I only remembered that because their usual mountain of curbside debris was missing this morning. 

As much as I’d like to keep up this incredibly interesting ramble, it’s time to get ready for another brilliant day at work.  And then three days off to catch up on all the various things I’ve been neglecting while wearing out the screen protector on my DS.

ITSA NEWYEAR! Mama Mia!!

And the first month of it is practically half gone already!  I hope I’m not going to make it a habit to start all my blogs this year by freaking out about the date……so popping in here a little more frequently sounds like a plan. 

What I have been doing follows:

1.  Reading many books.  Or halves, or fractions of same.  Running out of bookmarks.  Must finish SOMETHING soon.  Okay, I’m not completely hopeless, I did finish Book One of “The Gideon Trilogy” called “The Time Travellers”.  But Book Two “The Time Thief” is just more of the same, and I’d really like them all to get on with things in a more timely fashion.  They’re setting a bad example for me.  And in the spirit of reading even more children’s books in the form of trilogies, I’m also part way through Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass.)  It’s all in one massive volume – a deal too hard to resist – and in that one I’m using my work schedule to mark where I left off.  There are four more books on the go, and a half dozen waiting in the wings.  Plus several sitting around waiting to be reviewed.  Who knows if I’ll get around to that, and what I’ll remember when I do.

2.  Watching season two of Heroes.  I absolutely love this show.  Half the time I have no clue what’s going on, or who the good guys or the bad guys really are, but it doesn’t even matter.  There are so many great characters able to do bizzare things!  If you are not acquainted with the likes of Hiro and Suresh, you are missing out on extreme excitement.  Yes, my life is that dull.

3.  Playing the Zelda Phantom Hourglass DS game.  I am truly obsessed, as I think I may already have mentioned.  I have talked to my co-workers about amassing rupees and  slaying two headed dragons.  Gah.  Good news is, it will all be finished before long, just as soon as I can get that third rare metal and forge the phantom sword and make it to the very bottom of the Temple of the Ocean King for the final battle.   I hope this gives you some indication of just how very busy I’ve been, staying up late, night after night, to get the little guy in green over his hurdles.

My ceiling fan in the kitchen is finally installed!!  I was afraid the three bulbs under glass shades (vs. the previous six on our old chandelier from the 60’s) would not give us enough light.  So I had purchased some high wattage energy saving twirly bulbs to use.  Wow.  It was like being in an operating theatre.  So since we’re not likely to be performing surgery on the kitchen table anytime soon we changed that to somewhere around search light intensity. 

There are plans to be made for the summer at camp and our Newfoundland trip in the fall.  But sheeesh, it’s only January.  Plenty of time to think about those things when the snow goes.  Sometime in June, by the looks of things right now.

So that’s where I’m at.  I will eventually pop myself out of this big fantasy bubble where I’ve been not having to deal with a whole lot of reality.  Hard things happened last year and I guess my emotions need a break.  My brain is taking a little holiday.  I’ll get back to the serious historical stuff soon enough.