Addiction

The playing card symbol shown here is aptly named “Freecell Addiction”. I must confess that I probably have suffered from this addiction. When I was still working, I would take a few minutes at the close of the day and play a few random games to relax a little. We eventually purchased a computer for the house and continued playing an occasional game or two. The computer we purchased came with the old Windows 95 operating system which offered 32,000 Freecell games. In checking it out on the web I found that there were some people on this planet that actually claimed to have played all 32,000 games. I could not bring myself to believe they were able to do this since I felt they would have to be playing 24 hours a day. But what a challenge that must be? I decided to start playing games sequentially beginning with number 1. Well, I have to admit, it did become somewhat of an addiction.

During the course of this Freecell marathon I decided that when I reached 5,000 I would quit. Well, 5,000 was eventually reached, but I was unable to stop, next target 6,000 and so on. As the thousand figures came, I tried to stop each time, but stubbornly carried on after Marge said, “why not keep going”? Well on and on I went till this week I completed my 15,000^th Freecell game. Since I’ve been told by my friends many times that I have too much time on my hands and that I need to get a life, I’ve decided that I’m going to go cold turkey and stop right now. I must admit that I did have ideas of doing them all, but if anything convinced me to call it quits it was the fact that the new xp operating system in this computer has 1,000,000 game possibilities. Since my first 15,000 took several years, I don’t plan on living long enough for the next 985,000. Wish me luck in keeping my fingers off the keyboard. I guess if I was able to quit smoking cold turkey, this should be a snap.

Valentine's Day - 2009

I sat down at my computer this morning with the intention of composing an addition to my ”Blog” site. When I keyed in the date I realized what day this was, the “High Holiday” of romantic gift giving to wives, girlfriends, mistresses, and teachers. Oh Oh, here we go again…….nothing really against the day, but after being married for fifty four and one half years, do you have any idea how difficult it is to make yet another day memorable.

Think about it, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Birthdays, that’s four a year times 54.5. Two hundred eighteen unique, thoughtful gifts. Mind boggling isn’t it. What should I do? We’ve already not given ourselves gifts on a few occasions like this last Christmas. Can I get away with another one even though it is the one romantic one that reminds your loved one that you still care? Well I guess that statement pretty much gives me my answer, but what do I get for the 55th time? Candy, no we’re on diets, jewelry, no, done that one many times, don’t forget this is the 55th time.

Well, I guess it’s going to have to be flowers. Price Chopper here I come. My God look at all the flower displays, roses everywhere and such beautiful arrangements, but look at the “freaking” prices, forty and fifty per dozen, not like it was fifty five years ago. At today’s prices I could have bought an entire garden. Well, stepping away from all those high priced (perfect for the young guy trying to impress) ones, I ventured into the old guy’s section. Look at that…..I was immediately attracted to three pretty yellow roses with fake diamonds inserted in them and accompanied by baby breath and some additional unidentifiable piece of vegetation. Actually it was very pretty for the modest price of $9.99. Well, naturally it came home with me. I found a great little vase, trimmed the flowers and made a valiant effort to arrange them perfectly. In doing so I proceeded to almost knock the head off one of the roses. Really a bit of a disaster when you only start off with three, but I neatly propped it up, at least until Marge had a chance to see them.

All’s well though, I really think Marge liked them and was a bit surprised that this old fart made the effort.


Happy Valentine’s Day to all my women readers.