Transplanted Life
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
 
See, I didn't get crazy about Valentine's Day
I could, I suppose. It's tempting. Even more than selling greeting cards, certain dates on the calendar are designed to get us to think on specific subjects, and though Valentine's Day can be a kind of sadistic way to cause one to ruminate on love and romance, it's worth thinking on.

My friends are all paired off, even if it's not serious in some cases. Jen's pregnant. They're all moving through this process, forming certain types of connections in order to establish families. Even Maureen and Anna are doing that, though not in the same exact path, obviously. Whereas I, right now, don't feel like being on a path. The part that sucks about that is that not wanting to be on a path doesn't keep a person from being lonely, and not just in terms of wanting to get laid. I want to do stuff with people, but not have it be pointed at anything, so to speak.

Maybe it's time to start dating again. I don't feel like less of a woman for not having a man, though sometimes I do feel like less of one - less of a person, even - for not wanting to go after one.

-Marti
Sunday, February 12, 2006
 
Made in America, dammit!
So, I was out at the mall yesterday, picking up DVDs instead of canned goods because I don't watch the news and thus major storms just hit me with no warning. I go into Borders looking for reading material, gravitate toward the puzzle magazine section, and find "Dell Kakuro Cross Sums Collection Volume 1", labeled "America's Newest Puzzle Craze! From the creators of Original Sudoku Puzzles!"

That's right. Apparently cross sums, which for the uninitiated are sort of like crossword puzzles where the entries must add up to a given sum without repeated digits, have taken the same migratory path as Number Places, which went to Japan, then were picked up by some UK paper that liked the exotic "su doku" name, and finally hit the US and now get just as much space in every freakin' newspaper as the crossword.

I'm not complaining, really, because I have loved puzzles in both my lives, and have often bought some of the lamer Dell magazines to get, like, 10 cross sums. I have completeld roughly 40 in just the past two days. If this will make the darn things easier to find on the newsstand, I'm in favor, although you will never see me calling them "kakuro". It's just that, man, why did these things have to circumnavigate the globe before people started liking them?

And can diagramless crosswords be next?

-Marti

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Note: This blog is a work of fantasy; all characters are either ficticious or used ficticiously. The author may be contacted at JaySeaver@comcast.net