Dark Storm Clouds

 

With thoughts of "Father's Day" coming up, yesterday unfortunately, I went into a very dark, cloudy emotional space.  I had begun to think about my kid that I no longer write about here.  And, although things with this kid are on a relative "even-keel" at the moment, I still feel (when I allow myself to wade in such thoughts) extreme hurt and despair...  and a longing for what was, what could be, but likely never will be. Without honest communication, things will simply remain surface-level.  

Yesterday was quite bad for me emotionally.  I tried to force myself out of it by pounding out more running miles and more weight efforts.  By nightfall I had migrated into a numb neutrality.  I still find myself in that state thus far today.  

* * * * *

The U provides us faculty with a free, basic, electronic subscription to the New York Times.  Even though it is not as fun nor enjoyable to read electronically compared to old school actual newspapers, I have grown accustomed to reading it on my tablet, and it is nice.  

A "new" discovery for me, regarding the New York Times, is that in our basic subscription, I had not noticed until a couple of weeks ago that we had access to some NYT games.  I had always presumed they were not part of the "basic" subscription.... and in fact, most are not.  However, I did find out just recently that there are TWO games that ARE free within the basic subscription..... ONCE A DAY....... Wordle and Pips. Pips is basically a mathematics game using dominos and is relatively fun.  But, I am especially enjoying Wordle, now that I know and figured out the goals of the game.  I had heard about the game before, but never felt inclined to pursue it, until I saw the NYT example.  

I now have been playing the game once each day for the last three weeks.  It took me a bit to figure out how the game worked and to develop a strategy... but I am able to state that after I solved today's Wordle, I am in the midst of an 17 day streak.

PipeTobacco