Category: Uncategorized

Dave recently discovered an app called Knot Words. This is a crossword puzzle game but not one of which I’ve ever seen the like before. In this one, they give you the letters and you have to decide how to arrange them to discover what the words are. But…

They don’t give you all the letters for one word. Instead, they give you a section of the puzzle and the letters that go in that section.

For instance, the letters might be o s n t and they fit within a 2×2 grid.  Attached to that grid might be additional spaces going up, down or sideways making some of your letters part of additional words.

Let’s say two of the horizontal spaces are a stand alone word. Now you have to decide if that word is so, no, to, or on. You make your best guess then try to fill in nearby spaces to help confirm or deny your guess.

If you truly get stuck you can get a hint. The hint is for an entire word just like in a normal crossword puzzle. When you ask for a hint the game will show you arrows indicating which words you can choose from to get your hint. You are allowed a maximum of three hints per game so choose wisely when to use them.

Oh, and you only get one game per day.

Except, when we started there were several days in April available to play, which we did. But, at the beginning of May all the April games disappeared. So, if you start today, you can play the May games as long as you do so before the end of the month.

If you decide you don’t like the letter blocks of this game, in the options menu you can choose to play whole words instead.

So, go. Challenge yourself to this new game. I dare you.

TTYL.

Linda

I don’t know how many of you get Crankshaft in your Sunday comics but his message a few weeks ago spoke to me.

“If you can’t find it, you don’t own it.”

To facilitate finding things we own I have learned not to ask about new items, “Where should I put this?”

Now I ask, “Where would I look for this?”

It’s so much easier to find seldom used things now.

TTYL,

Linda

James Clear, Atomic Habits:

“Look around your environment.

Rather than seeing items as objects, see them as magnets for your attention. Each object gently pulls a certain amount of your attention toward it.

Whenever you discard something, the tug of that object is released. You get some attention back.”

 

Also from James Clear’s blog:

Writer Jenée Desmond-Harris on how to divide your to-do list:

“I started dividing my to-do list into 1) things I have to do, 2) things I want to do, and 3) things other people want me to do. Life changing! I often don’t get to #3 and I finally realized… this is what it means to have boundaries.”

Source: Twitter​

 

Sometimes it help me to read what others write instead of writing myself.

TTYL,

Linda

Ok. So, I had my follow up appointment regarding my cataracts and glaucoma with my optometrist. She did lots of testing but, of course, did not tell me any results of that testing. What she did do was refer me to the ophthalmologist  she recommended do my cataract lens replacement surgery. She picked him partly because he also treats glaucoma so maybe he could do something for it at the same time.

So, now I’m in the preparation phase for that appointment. That means I am still putting prescription drops in my eyes every night for the glaucoma but I am also putting over-the-counter artificial tear drops in my eyes four times a day. I’m using TheraTears because I was already using those occasionally but I have a list of others I could use if I choose to do so. I do the drops right before meals and before bed because that’s the only time I’m sure I will remember to do them.

Now, it’s just waiting until the day of my appointment for consultation arrives.

Isn’t this exciting?

TTYL,

Linda

 

Part 3

Well, I had my consultation. The ophthalmologist could not tell me if the drops to reduce pressure were helping because they didn’t have a starting pressure against which to measure.

The assistant put drops in my eyes to dilate them then put a second set in saying they were the ones this doctor preferred to use. When the the doctor came into the room he immediately put a third set of drops in my eyes. I had blurry vision for hours after the appointment. Was this third set a duplicate of the second set?

The doctor recommended a procedure to be done during the cataract surgery to help with the glaucoma. When he went to give me a brochure about that he couldn’t find one so he wrote down the name of the item for me to search on. I am allergic to one of the components in that item. (Nickle)

The doctor also could not keep his mask up over his nose but he seemed totally unconcerned about that in spite of me having four co-morbidities if I get Covid.

In the week after the appointment, I sent the doctor two messages about my concerns. He never acknowledged either message.

Is this someone you think I should trust with my eyesight?

Wordle has been sold to the New York Times so, if you want to play it now, you need to go to their website to find it.

Wordle was the first of these games I played and it keeps score in a way that makes you want to find the answer in as few rounds as possible.

Then Cheerful Monk introduced me to PuzzWord, an app for my iPhone. PuzzWord keeps score in a way that makes you want to guess as many words in a row as you can.

That made me start seeing the game differently so I gave myself two new guidelines:

1. It’s OK to use all six rounds to figure out a word.
2. It’s OK to enter a word you know is not correct to learn something helpful.

Using those two guidelines I got my win streak up to 50 words!

I’m so proud of myself. 🙂

TTYL,

Linda