I like pizza. Won't make any bones about it. Pizza is one of the major food groups. So when the whole family visited my mom on the Friday before Christmas, we decided to stop at a Pizza Hut for supper.
Now if your Pizza Hut is like our Pizza Hut, the placemats have factual info about Pizza Hut on one side and kids' games on the other. This time, mine was "Zoo-Logical" with the theme about, well, zoos. I mean, what would you expect?
This one had a crossword puzzle, which I sought to complete with the aid and suggestions of everyone else. The crossword is oriented to little kids, but I figure I had to come up with some alternate answers and see where that leads to.
OK, here we go.
1 across: "an animal is kept in this." Four letters. Pretty easy: "BARN." I wrote in the letters.
2 down: "what you see at the zoo." Seven letters: A------, including the A from BARN. We thought and thought and decided to move on.
3 across: "a big cat with stripes." Five letters. We thought, and then I think my wife came up with the answer: "TABBY." The pen went to work. Some of those tabbies, you know, can get pretty big.
4 down: "King Kong was one." Seven letters: B------, with the B from TABBY. Let's see. What describes King Kong in seven letters starting with a B. I got it! "BIGSTAR."
5 across: "he eats bananas." Six letters. We were stumped. We knew it had to be some kind of monkey, but what? David, who knows his video games, solved it: "DONKEY." Remember Donkey Kong from video game fame? Of course!
6 down: "they have trunks." Nine letters: E--------, with the E from DONKEY. I was stumped again, but not my wife. "EMIGRANTS," she said. (She later explained that she was inspired by a book she was reading.) Anyway, it fit, so another clue was solved.
9 across: "a zebra has these." Seven letters: S------, borrowing the S from EMIGRANTS. It was hard to come up with the subtle correct answer for this one. I finally wrote down "SUNBURN." (Forget the "this/these" matter.) Remember the old joke? Q: What's black, white and red all over? A: A sunburned zebra.
We had skipped a few, so we went back:
7 across: "what the animals look at." Six letters: -I--T-. That's the I from EMIGRANTS and the T from BIGSTAR. This also took some thought. At last, I got an acceptable answer: LIGHTS. Don't they always look at the lights? Anyway, it fit. The pizza would be coming in just a few minutes, so I wasn't about to quibble.
8 across: "a lion does this." Five letters: --A--. Hmm, what do lions do in five letters with an A in the middle? I thought back to all those nature documentaries. So did my wife, I guess, for she came up with the answer: STALK. You bet they do!
That left only one clue unsolved:
2 down: "what you see at the zoo." Seven letters. Thanks to BARN and DONKEY, now it reads A--D---. I had to think fast. The waitress was fussing with a pizza nearby. Time is running out. What do I always see when I'm visiting the zoo? Then the lightbulb flashed on, and I triumphantly wrote APEDUNG.
Finished! We did it! We solved the crossword! Not exactly the level of the New York Times crossword, but we were proud of our accomplishment.
And if you don't believe me, here is proof positive:
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Sunday, December 4, 2005
The story so far
My latest promise was a brief introduction. So here goes:
Name: Peter. I don't have a dog, either. Two cats, tho. I adopted the name from the Firesign Theater. Anyone remember them?
Place: I live in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In fact, though, we are part of Wisconsin in every way except politically. (Unfortunately, I might add.) Small town (about 3,000 peoples) in a rural, mostly wooded with a very low population density. But, yes, I do like to visit cities, too. It just takes time and money, both of which I have in short supply.
Age: Soon to be 56. Three more weeks.
Occupation: I work at a weekly paper. I write sports, news, features, editorials, and I take a lot of pictures. I enjoy the sports and pictures the most. I think I'm pretty good at it, too. Low-paying job, though.
Hobbies: With my job, I don't have a lot of time for my own pursuits. I enjoy computers and the internet. My first real blog was at ModBlog, but their shaky status lately led me to start this blog. For now, I'll keep both.
Let's see. I also enjoy sports (baseball and hockey, especially, and even cricket!), reading (when I get the time, which isn't often) and movies. My favorite directors are Kurosawa and Fritz Lang. Love many kinds of music: Jimi Hendrix leads the list.
Family: I had a brother, but he died in 1985. My dad died in 1994. My mom is 83 and had been in good health until falling this fall, and that has led to a number of medical issues. She is at an advance care center, about 50 miles away, and I'm in charge of her, also. There is nobody else.
I'm on my first marriage, which is, let's see, 34 years old now. My wife is my best friend. I also have two polyamorous relationships. I've known K for about three or four years--she lives 90 miles away but soon will be moving 250 miles away. I met S at a neopagan gathering this summer, and we have become very close. In October, she moved from Wisconsin to Ontario. I'm driving over to visit her for a few days this week. The relationship with K is not sexual. The one with S is both sexual and spiritual.
Two sons. Both out of the home. The older son (nearly 28) lives in the north Detroit suburbs and works at a bank corporation down there. The younger one (23) lives in town, about five blocks away. He's autistic--works at a couple jobs in the area.
Belief system: I've fallen far away from organized religion. Don't believe in guilt as a basis for a belief system. I believe in love and in caring for one another and our planet. God lives in each of us--it depends on whether you want to look for it. Best spiritual experiences from this year were: that neopagan camp, the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" and reading Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land." Anyway, I feel life is moving in a positive direction for me, despite the problems with my mom for the last few months, and that I'm happier than I have been for a long time.
That's the basics. It sure wasn't brief, was it?
Anyway, this is the last you'll hear from me for a while, what with my long, long drive (to visit S) this week. Take care, all, and we'll see you next weekend.
Name: Peter. I don't have a dog, either. Two cats, tho. I adopted the name from the Firesign Theater. Anyone remember them?
Place: I live in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In fact, though, we are part of Wisconsin in every way except politically. (Unfortunately, I might add.) Small town (about 3,000 peoples) in a rural, mostly wooded with a very low population density. But, yes, I do like to visit cities, too. It just takes time and money, both of which I have in short supply.
Age: Soon to be 56. Three more weeks.
Occupation: I work at a weekly paper. I write sports, news, features, editorials, and I take a lot of pictures. I enjoy the sports and pictures the most. I think I'm pretty good at it, too. Low-paying job, though.
Hobbies: With my job, I don't have a lot of time for my own pursuits. I enjoy computers and the internet. My first real blog was at ModBlog, but their shaky status lately led me to start this blog. For now, I'll keep both.
Let's see. I also enjoy sports (baseball and hockey, especially, and even cricket!), reading (when I get the time, which isn't often) and movies. My favorite directors are Kurosawa and Fritz Lang. Love many kinds of music: Jimi Hendrix leads the list.
Family: I had a brother, but he died in 1985. My dad died in 1994. My mom is 83 and had been in good health until falling this fall, and that has led to a number of medical issues. She is at an advance care center, about 50 miles away, and I'm in charge of her, also. There is nobody else.
I'm on my first marriage, which is, let's see, 34 years old now. My wife is my best friend. I also have two polyamorous relationships. I've known K for about three or four years--she lives 90 miles away but soon will be moving 250 miles away. I met S at a neopagan gathering this summer, and we have become very close. In October, she moved from Wisconsin to Ontario. I'm driving over to visit her for a few days this week. The relationship with K is not sexual. The one with S is both sexual and spiritual.
Two sons. Both out of the home. The older son (nearly 28) lives in the north Detroit suburbs and works at a bank corporation down there. The younger one (23) lives in town, about five blocks away. He's autistic--works at a couple jobs in the area.
Belief system: I've fallen far away from organized religion. Don't believe in guilt as a basis for a belief system. I believe in love and in caring for one another and our planet. God lives in each of us--it depends on whether you want to look for it. Best spiritual experiences from this year were: that neopagan camp, the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know" and reading Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land." Anyway, I feel life is moving in a positive direction for me, despite the problems with my mom for the last few months, and that I'm happier than I have been for a long time.
That's the basics. It sure wasn't brief, was it?
Anyway, this is the last you'll hear from me for a while, what with my long, long drive (to visit S) this week. Take care, all, and we'll see you next weekend.
Friday, December 2, 2005
A quick howdy
ronic, isn't it? That on the day I discover ModBlog has risen from the dead, Frankenstein-like, I go off to find a new blog home.
Yes, still another ModBlog refugee. I'm not bailing on MB. Not yet anyway. I'll be posting to MB, but I'll also be writing here, too. Whatever I write, you know it will be wordy. Full of words. Some good. Some bad. Some interesting. Others not. All by me. That's what I wanted my MB space to be. That's how it was.
But with all the outages lately, I feel like it's time to put many of my blogging eggs--perhaps most of them--into another basket. So that's what this is about.
By the way, I reactivated my Blogger blog during the long outage and felt the same lack of community as I had before. It's different here, I sense. One of my ol' MB buddies, laughingwolf, directed me in this direction, and I appreciate the tip.
This intro is as long as it's going to get. I've got a letter to write and, yes, an MB blog to write, plus many others to read. But before long I'm going to write a short intro here, introducing myself to strangers and bringing my fellow MB refugees up to date with my story. No commercials, either.
Yes, still another ModBlog refugee. I'm not bailing on MB. Not yet anyway. I'll be posting to MB, but I'll also be writing here, too. Whatever I write, you know it will be wordy. Full of words. Some good. Some bad. Some interesting. Others not. All by me. That's what I wanted my MB space to be. That's how it was.
But with all the outages lately, I feel like it's time to put many of my blogging eggs--perhaps most of them--into another basket. So that's what this is about.
By the way, I reactivated my Blogger blog during the long outage and felt the same lack of community as I had before. It's different here, I sense. One of my ol' MB buddies, laughingwolf, directed me in this direction, and I appreciate the tip.
This intro is as long as it's going to get. I've got a letter to write and, yes, an MB blog to write, plus many others to read. But before long I'm going to write a short intro here, introducing myself to strangers and bringing my fellow MB refugees up to date with my story. No commercials, either.
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