TMI

There was a Funk and Wagnalls encyclopedia set in a bookcase in the dining room of my childhood home. When I was old enough to read and to know what an encyclopedia was, I would spend hours sitting on the floor by the bookcase, pulling out random volumes and reading about...whatever. I was addicted to knowing stuff. Fast forward way too many years and the child I was is still spending hours, now sitting on the sofa with a laptop, clicking on random links and reading about...whatever. I'm still addicted to knowing stuff.

Some people doom scroll. I fun scroll. Instructions for origami bats that flap their wings. Recipes for low fodmap gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate oatmeal cookies. Luddites! I want to know more about Luddites! The IMDb! Who played Reverend Mother Mohiam in Dune: Part 2? Oh, look - a video of someone catching smallmouth bass on the Mississippi in Minneapolis. And another video on how to tie a fly to catch them on! I also news scroll, of course. And weather scroll. And “Oh, this looks like an interesting article” scroll. And “What did he say now?” scroll.

When one is addicted to knowing stuff, Too Much Information can be one's drug of choice. And like all addictions, knowing stuff requires ever-increasing amounts of one's devotion.* I can pat myself on the back for not turning on the television all day, or at least, until the 10 pm news, but can I make it past 7 am without going online and seeing if the Google News headlines have changed since I read them last night? Only if I've overslept. And the fact that I access all my information on an aging laptop rather than on my phone does not allow me to score points for being any sort of a technological Luddite. Where once I might have given up watching all television for Lent, the closest I've come to giving up knowing stuff for Lent is to rein it in a bit, check my email once a day, read the news once a day, look at facebook for no more than five minutes, once a day. Limiting myself to actual paper newspapers or spending time that I normally would have spent online reading books – real paper books – may make me feel more noble, but I need to face the fact that I'm still in some way feeding my addiction to knowing stuff. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful for the World Wide Web and the almost immediate access I have to information. It's saved dinner many a time. It's fixed potential household disasters. It's helped me navigate a myriad of medical issues. But how Much Information is Too Much Information? Do I even recognize the hold the information highway has on my life? Am I willing to ask the Luddite question: What have I gained in my access to unlimited information and what have I lost? The spiritual question I ponder is this: How much do I really need to know if I already have an all-knowing God? Am I usurping His place in my life in some way, depending on myself and my online life to have the “right” information immediately to go forward with my life? How much am I depending on Him and how much am I depending on the sometimes dubious information that the internet is always willing to provide? Is my first inclination to pray, to turn to that all-knowing God when I think I need to know something?

*Funny story about trying to attribute the original source of this quote. I'll save it for tomorrow.

 

Screen Time and Knitting

As most children of the 1950s, my brother and I grew up in a home with one small television set. Unlike our peers, we still had a small black and white TV long after others had moved on to larger colored models. And we had the added onus placed on us that television should only be watched if we had something productive to do while watching it. Grandma ironed while watching soap operas, peeled apples or potatoes while watching the news, mixed batters and dough with a wooden spoon during other programs. I was the queen of crafts as a child, an early crocheter and knitter and embroiderer, so I could justify watching almost anything. My brother, lacking such productive occupations, watched less television.

As good Catholic kids, it was not uncommon for one or both of us to give up television for Lent. I think we viewed it as visual candy, something that was enjoyable but not particularly good for us. I don't remember being insightful as to why this was so, and I don't remember deliberately choosing to fill the lack of TV watching with more noble pursuits, though I probably read a lot more books during Lent. As an adult, the few times I gave up TV for Lent I was a bit more purposeful in choosing to fill the time with the reading of “good”, if not downright spiritual books.

By the time we had kids I was more aware of the ups and downs of television watching and had deliberate purposes for the one television policy that so tormented our son. My explanation to our kids as to why we had only one set was in the interests of family unity. Their peers had their own TVs in their bedrooms, as did their parents. Everybody got to watch what they wanted to watch on their own, seldom interacting with one another while watching. We were not going to be that kind of family. We would watch television together. For the most part, it worked for us. Our girls could recite the battle cries of the movie Gettysburg as easily as our son could quote Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Nobody got to watch what they wanted all the time, but everyone had a say in what was to be watched. Our one television unity worked until the adolescent sport obsession took hold of our son. This coincided with the start of his telling his friends about his Amish upbringing. The two were related. Out of pity for our poor deprived son, he got invitations to friends' homes to watch significant football and basketball games. Though we usually gave him permission to go to their houses, he was always quick to point out if we had a second television set, he'd still be in our house watching the game, keeping the family unity intact...sort of.

In some ways, television watching, if it can even be called that anymore, is more controllable than it was for my childhood or even my children's childhood. DVDs, then streaming services made entertainment watching no longer tied to a station's schedule, but available when we determined we wanted to watch something. This is both good and bad news. Binge watching when I was a child was turning on the Million Dollar Movie which would show a single movie, such as Godzilla, once every night, Monday through Friday, and twice on Saturday and Sunday. Binge watching today is seeing all six seasons of Downton Abbey in as tight a time frame that eating and sleeping will allow. And if one has enough knitting or crocheting projects, one could justify watching Lady Edith getting her heart broken repeatedly as productive craft time. Just saying...

Some questions to ponder this Lent regarding the time spent before whatever we call television these days: How much time do we spend entertaining ourselves with what we watch? Are we doing it because we sincerely enjoy it, or are we just filling up time to avoid doing something else more productive, more valuable? Are we doing it alone or are we enjoying other people's company as we do it, maybe critiquing said entertainment afterwards over wine or coffee, tea if you watched Downton Abbey? What is the quality of what we are watching? Guilty pleasures are sometimes OK, but to paraphrase Huskins' question: Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I watch this show? Will I be doing myself spiritual damage if I watch this show? Am I brave enough to even ask these questions about my entertainment choices and, ultimately, am I willing to let God into the process of determining the answers?

The trouble is that the channels of entertainment – and television (being) the chief culprit – disorient more than they orient. Promising to make sense of the world for us, they merely multiply the collage of disconnected images and sounds and experiences that come at us. - David Henderson, in notes in The Next Christians

The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. For it is that above all which prevents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction. But for that we should be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape, but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death. - Blaise Pascal

 

Lent Like a Neo-Luddite

A number of years back, I stumbled across a book that, after the Bible, was, for me, the most life-changing volume I'd ever read. Entitled The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life, it came about as a result of the Second Luddite Congress. Interestingly, there probably wasn't a true First Luddite Congress, as the original Luddites only met informally in small groups to plan their attacks against the mill owners. The Second Luddite Congress was a bit larger, drawing people from across the United States to a Quaker meetinghouse in Barnesville, Ohio in 1996. Organized by the Center for Plain Living, the attendees came from all walks of life, some from the metropolitan areas of the East Coast, some of them midwest farmers, some Amish, Friends (Quaker) and other Anabaptist groups. Some were ministers, some teachers, some ecologists. All were there to share their interest in what it means to live a simple or simpler life and to ask the tough questions about what place technology should or shouldn't have in their lives.

As far as I know, there were no technologically destructive incidents as a result of the Second Luddite Congress, at least no physically destructive ones, though some attendees attest to drastically changing their lives and lifestyles as a result of the Congress. What the gathering did produce was a wonderful collection of essays that were informative and thought-provoking and leaves the reader asking some of the same questions the original Luddites asked. These neo-Luddite essayists revisit the questions – Does allowing “this” into my life make my life better, “this” being a new gadget, a new technology, a new version of an old technology, perhaps even a new social construct, or whatever the powered looms of our day may look like? Do I gain something valuable and worthwhile? Do I lose something old but precious in allowing a new way of doing something into my life?

I highly recommend tracking down a copy of The Plain Reader and going through it. Not every essay is for everyone, though all are interesting and thought provoking. There are the expected essays in such a volume, those on sustainability and organic farming, living a simpler life in general and a few alarmist anti-technology, anti-computer selections. There are instructions on how to hand wash all your laundry (Thank you, but...no.) and what simple toys are best for children. Wendell Berry has an essay on what the medical industry says about how we view health. There are also several articles on unplugging the media. Despite the book being close to 30 years old, most of the essays are timeless and surprisingly still relevant.

One of my favorite essays, entitled “Mix and Match” does a good job of summing up the Luddite dilemma of discerning when to hold onto the old and when, perhaps, a venture into the new is more appropriate. Written by James Huskins, a businessman-turned pastor/farmer from Ohio, this essay is a succinct and humorous look at Huskins' struggle to discern what elements of modern technology he should allow in his life. He uses a horse and buggy for local travel, but still maintains a car for long trips. As a pastor, he long resisted using anything but pen and paper for sermon preparation. As he took a pastorate at a larger church he ventured from word processor to PowerBook, saving hours of sermon preparation time per week, time better spent in the more relational aspects of pastoring. In addition to the questions I mentioned above, he added an additional one: “Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I have this tool?” In the case of the computer, he felt the answer was yes. As the essay ends, Huskins leaves us with the image of the glow of his computer screen emanating from the inside of his horse-drawn buggy as he travels about his pastorate.

I find this essay encouraging, partly because I, too, have chosen to forgo pen and paper and write this blog on a laptop, but then I go a step farther to publish it on a website and link it to - gasp! - facebook. Huskins' honesty about the tension between technology and the simpler life helps me see how much thought, discernment and prayer needs to happen when we make choices on how we are to live our lives. No matter how strong our Luddite leanings, most of us will not take a sledgehammer to our present jobs and lifestyles and take up organic farming with horse and plow or use a horse and buggy as our primary means of transportation. But we can choose to live our lives differently from the way the surrounding culture says we should. I think Huskins' question - “Will the Kingdom of God be any closer to existing on earth as it is in heaven if I have this tool?” - is a good starting point for my Lenten look at thinking, discerning and praying about the choices I make in my desire to live a simpler life. This question, I suspect, can generate a series of related questions – Is this tool/item/idea going to bring me closer to God? In what way will this tool/item/idea impoverish the talents and creative skills God has given me? Such questions will ultimately lead me to a simple basic one – Am I willing to let God into my decision-making process when I am given the opportunity to allow a new tool/item/idea in my life?

                                

 Lent Like a Luddite

 

My son was in middle school when he started telling his friends that his family was Amish. Yes, we grew our own vegetables in a garden nourished by our own compost piles. Mom baked bread without a bread machine and hand knitted sweaters. And, yes, Dad didn't own a snowblower and cleared the driveway with a shovel. The chief evidence, however, of my son's claim, according to his observations, was that we lived in a four bedroom house with a living room and a family room and had only one television set. Just one. He repeated this unimaginable fact to his friends, said it in German in his high school language class, and even briefly convinced his college roommate freshman year that his upbringing might as well have been without electricity.

Of course, we weren't Amish, not by a long shot. Had my son known as much about history and low technology philosophies as he does today, he probably would have come up with another, more accurate word to describe our family life style. He might have declared us Luddites.

This year I decided to do some random Lenten writings exploring what it might look like to do Lent like a Luddite. If you are familiar with the term “Luddite” and you have read this far, you might have a picture in your head of me taking a sledgehammer to my laptop and writing this with pencil and paper. Or perhaps imagining my husband and I finally getting the household television count down to zero. Neither is true. Since the term “Luddite” is often used incorrectly,I thought I'd spend the rest of this post explaining who the Luddites really were and why I think they have something to say about how we can spend Lent.

The Luddites were highly skilled weavers and textile craftsmen living during the early days of the industrial revolution in England. Named after the semi-fictitious Ned Ludd*, the Luddites were neither anti-technology nor ignorant of the operation and working of the textile machines of the day. They were “educated” craftsmen in that they spent years in apprenticeships learning their craft. The quality of their work reflected their effort and they took pride in the excellence of their product. In the early 1800s in England the hard economic times brought on by the ongoing Napoleonic wars coincided with the beginnings of mass produced fabrics. Many of the operators of the new textile machinery were untrained, poorly paid and produced low quality goods. The Luddites attempted to get the attention of textile mill owners, hoping to maintain the high standard of the textile craftsmen and earn a wage appropriate for their training and quality of work, even if they now would produce it on powered machines. The mill owners preferred to pay untrained operators and settle for inferior textiles, pocketing the savings for themselves. Angered at what they saw as a insult to both their livelihood and the quality of their craft, the Luddites began their destructive attempt to get the mill owners to reconsider. Using large sledgehammers, they smashed and destroyed weaving frames all over England. Machine breaking became a capital offense and eventually the retribution by the authorities against the Luddites became more violent than the Luddites' assaults on the mills.

In 1829, Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle noted that the people of the time were aware of both the positive and the negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution and the amazing “mighty change” it would cause in their “modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”

Today, the Luddites are mainly remembered for their violence against the technological machines of their day. But the Luddites also asked important questions that we can learn to ask in our day, and I think Lent is a good time to ponder these questions. For each new technology - “machine” - we let into our lives, are we losing something valuable, something of quality that the “old way” of doing it provided? How can this loss be avoided? When we can't live without the new technology, how do we decide to adapt, to use it in a way that does not diminish our lives and relationships? To what extent are we in danger of growing “mechanical in head and in heart, as well as hand”? I'll be asking myself these questions in the weeks before Easter. I suspect the answers will not come easily.

*Ned Ludd might have existed, but he was only a symbolic image of the movement, giving his name to it. He was by no means a recognizable leader. He may have been a young apprentice that damaged some weaving equipment in a fit of rage years before the Luddites did their own spectacular damage.

 

Compost, the Harbinger of Spring

It's been the third snowiest winter on record in our newest home state of Minnesota. It has been a persistently snowy April as well, with twelve inches of heavy wet snow on April 1^st, three more inches on the 16^th, and enough to cover the deck on the 22^nd. I suppose this persistent winter was why I was so excited last week to discover I had four buckets of lovely compost ready in the garage, just waiting to be added to my stock tank gardens on the back deck. Nothing shouts "Spring!" more than compost ready for the growing season.

I've always been a composter, with various piles and bins in each house we have lived in. In the early days of this blog, I published a post on composting in celebration of Earth Day. I've even had a compost pile be the selling point of one of our homes.* For years I had a decorative glass bowl sitting on the kitchen counter for coffee grounds, tea bags, vegetable scraps and other sundry organic matter waiting to be added to the outside compost pile as well as a vegetable garden into which the finished compost would make its way.

When we downsized from our last house to a townhome, I downsized my expectations of what vegetable gardening would look like, buying two 2 x 6 foot stock tanks to put on the back deck to plant all the vegetables I used to grow in the ground, just in smaller amounts. The stock tank vegetable gardens were a success, but I couldn't let go of the nagging thought that the soil wasn't good enough unless some homemade compost was involved.

In the middle of my first townhome growing season, Aldi, that purveyor of useful and often surprising seasonal items, had composters for sale. I had my doubts about it's usefulness. It was small, slightly below the minimum three cubic foot critical mass for good aerobic decomposition. But it was small and would fit in the garage, hidden away from our HOA. It was on a stand that allowed frequent tumbling, and it was inexpensive, becoming more discounted in the Aldi way the longer I procrastinated in my decision to buy one. I finally decided to give it a try, bought one, put it together and placed it in the corner of the garage.

Saving kitchen scraps for composting was such a long standing habit it was easy to slip right back into it. I found my decorative glass bowl for the kitchen counter and reverted to my scrap saving ways, though with some modifications. I opted not to add coffee grounds since our frequent coffee consumption would make for a very acidic compost which only a few of my garden vegetables would survive. Since the garage composter was small, I also decided to chop all scraps and garden debris into small pieces. Old floral bouquets that went from vase to compost pile now got cut into two inch pieces. I gave my visiting daughter a pair of scissors and a pile of end-of- season tomato and pepper plants and as well as old hostas and frost-killed annuals to cut up in bite size bits for quicker decomposition. Into the composter it all went.

Swiss chard, lettuce and peppers, Summer 2022

Roma and Patio Princess Tomatoes, Summer 2022

All that was needed now was some activator for the composting process. I've always used garden soil, but access to dirt is a challenge when living in a townhome. Our HOA religiously believes in landscaping fabric covered with decorative stones with an occasional shrubbery popping through. I do, however, have easy access to neighborhood trails that meander through woods and densely forested parks. I also have a husband that strives for 10,000 steps a day. All I had to do was provide him with a hand trowel, a sturdy ziplock bag for one of his walks and convince him that I just needed a few shovelfuls of dirt discretely taken from under the trees a few steps off the trail and into the woods. It was a bit harder than one might think. "Is this even legal?" I assured him that I'd come and bail him out if he got taken away for dirt stealing. I eventually got some nice humusy forest dirt and added it to my composter.

All fall and winter I continued to add organic matter and tumbled the contents with each addition. Yes, the compost did freeze – this is Minnesota – but the tumbling also allowed it to thaw quickly in the spring. About a month ago I stopped adding new material, putting the vegetable scraps in a temporary bucket in the garage, and continued to tumble the old compost for that month. Finally, not sure what I would find in the dark depths of the composter, I emptied its contents into a bucket and did it three more times for four buckets of beautiful black compost. Into the stock tank gardens it went, stirred into the existing soil. Soon after, I planted snow peas, spinach, purple top turnips and broccoli raab. Yeah, they did get snowed on by those late April snows I mentioned earlier, but cold weather crops that they are, they took it in stride and are now well above the ground and look happy in their composted soil. Ah, spring has truly arrived!

*For that story and more about my adventures in composting and how to build a compost pile, here's the blog post:https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2013/04/p-margin-bottom-0_22.html

So You Say You Want a Revolution...

One of the joys...and burdens...of my life is that I save everything, at least for a while. Oh yes, I go through periodic dejunking and clean out stuff whose time has come to move on to the trash or to become someone else's treasure. My home has always looked relatively neat, if you don't count the basement,* but I still keep a lot of things I've deemed too significant to let go. It's why there is a copy of a fifty-two-year-old Time magazine sitting in the "Truly Miscellaneous" folder in my file cabinet.

On June 21, 1971, Time Magazine's cover had a psychedelic portrait of Jesus Christ on it, the featured story titled "The Jesus Revolution". If it sounds familiar, you are probably one of those who saw the recent movie by the same name. The movie, which I've yet to see, tells in part the story of the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and 70s. My son saw the film and reported, "Hey, Mom! Your magazine is in this movie!" A peripheral part of the movie plot, so I'm told, is about the Time reporter doing research for the writing of this magazine article.

In April of 1971, I was a senior in high school. During Holy Week of that year I had had a profound and lasting encounter with God. Some would say I was saved, or became a believer or gave my life to the Lord. I probably would say that God/Jesus became real to me. It was a time in the the spiritual history of this country that all sorts of weird and wonderful things were happening to a lot people and churches, and I found myself in the midst of it.** I shared my experiences with a few of my high school friends and one of them, having a subscription to Time magazine, passed along the Jesus Revolution issue, thinking I'd be interested in it, "being into that kind of thing." That magazine became one of those items deemed too significant to let go.

After I heard about the Jesus Revolution movie from my son and several friends, I did a deep dive into the most likely spots that I may have stored the now vintage Time magazine. I found it, reread it and then took some snaps of the article. They may be a blast from the past for some, or a time traveling portal into the 1970s for others. They are posted below to read and enjoy.  

The last page of the article mentions an upcoming Catholic Charismatic Conference at Notre Dame that was expecting 3,000 attendees.  They underestimated - 6,000 people showed up.  I was one of them...

 (Click on an individual picture and it should open up in an enlargeable and readable format.  You may have to right click on the picture and open it up in a new window, but it will eventually be scrollable and readable.)

*If you want to read more on the blessing and curse of my saving tendencies, check out these two posts:

https://habanrus.blogspot.com/2023/03/written-from-heart-love-of-letters-part.html

https://marynapier.blogspot.com/2014/03/mentalshelving-myhusband-grew-up-in.html

** More details here: https://habanrus.blogspot.com/2023/04/haban-r.html

 

The Slippery Slope to Wordle

"Go ahead. Just try it. It'll be fun. And it will develop your mouse skills." It was another century, and my husband was trying to spark in me some interest in our first computer. He was always slightly ahead of both the curve and his peers when it came to technology. I, however, was downright Luddite when it came to adapting to such nonsense. So it was a brilliant idea to tempt me onto the new computer with a solitaire game. I did try it and it was fun. And it did develop my mouse skills. And it started me down a somewhat dubious slide toward always having some computer-generated game available to "take a break" from housework, homework, kid's sports or whatever was the main focus of my day during various stages of life. Eventually, I did see the advantages of word processing over a typewriter, and fully bought into computers when the internet provided unlimited knowledge online, whether it was really useful or not.

Over the years since, I've Tetrised shapes into solid blocks, had gorillas toss exploding bananas, and dropped many colorful circles into their appropriate places. Solitaire games grew in number and availability. Terrace, Forty Thieves, Spider and all their variations have been played at least once...O.K., a lot more than once... I've wasted much time, I'm sure, and dinner has sometimes been late, but I've also had a lot of fun. My mouse skills have grown into touch pad skills.* So here, in another century, I'm still at the keyboard, "taking a break" from writing or reading or housework or whatever I need a break from. The following are my top five break-taking games I've slipped into over the years:

#5 Wordle https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html: "Do you play Wordle? No? Why not? You'd love it!" A conversation with my old college roommate prompted me to give it a try. I was already getting the New York Times email everyday and had tried their Spelling Bee and their Mini crossword. Couldn't hurt to try the Wordle...and that's how my most recent addiction started. I quickly developed my own set of rigid rules for playing – I use the same starter word every day; no sacrificial words, i.e., if a letter is in the right place it stays there, no words used with eliminated letters. Wordle fever spread and my husband started playing, developing his own set of rules. He tries to choose a topical starter word everyday. Bad winter weather? How about "snowy" as a starter? He goes the extra mile every day, keeping a spread sheet of his Wordle choices and then creates a Wordle "story" with his attempts which he emails out to a select group of Wordlers. A typical communique from last Tuesday, which also happened to be the mayoral election in Chicago:

#4 Solitaire: Here's where I started and here's where it's still fun to go. My husband put PySol Fan Club Edition on my latest computer and I'm embarrassed to say how many different Solitaire games I now have access to as well as types of Mahjongg. Many of the games are broken down into families. Like to play Forty Thieves? I do. There is a head-spinning number of variations on it. Same for Terrace and Spider and a dozen other solitaire families. Enter PySol Fan Club at your own risk.

#3 Numbrix: You may be familiar with the paper and pencil version of this game that appears in the Parade magazine insert of many Sunday newspapers. (Remember newspapers?) https://parade.com/numbrix/ is a 9 x 9 grid of 81 numbers you have to fill in to have numbers 1 through 81 snake through the grid in some kind of contiguous order. There is a new one every day. Some are easy, some are hard. Most are fun. There is a visual pay-off when you get it right at the end.

#2 Jigsaw puzzles: Like to do jigsaw puzzles? Yeah, I know, not really a game, but online jigsaw puzzles can be just as addictive as solitaire. www.jigsawplanet.com has a great collection of thousands of jigsaw puzzles. Don't like what you see? You can then take any photo of your own and turn it into a puzzle. Whether you use one of their images or one of your own, you can manipulate the puzzle by choosing eight different size puzzles up to 300 pieces, and choose one of eight different puzzle piece shapes, including straight-sided pieces, a real challenge. The default has the puzzle pieces in the correct orientation, or if you prefer to make yourself crazy, you can choose the rotation option and have a really, really hard puzzle. (I'm not that crazy...yet.) I enjoy doing the 300 piece mandala and geometric design puzzles, just the right amount of hard. Added bonus: Turn the sound on and there is a very satisfying click each time you put a puzzle piece in the right place. Like Pavlov's dog, it keeps you coming back for more.

#1 Kakuro: My all time favorite online game. (Sorry, Wordle friends...) Not Suduko, but a number game where you fill in numbers in squares so they add up to a certain designated number. https://www.kakuroconquest.com is the best kakuro site out there, which I found out recently when their website was down and I was forced...forced!...to try other kakuro sites. Kakuro Conquest allows you to choose the size of your puzzle and one of four levels of difficulty. This site also lets you put in multiple choices and eliminate them as you work through the puzzle. For those of you out there that are thinking "Math?! I didn't know there was going to be math!" this is more of a logic game than a math game, more about elimination than just adding numbers. Give it a try.

I've arrived at a stage of life when I probably have more discretionary time on my hands than ever before. While I try to use that time wisely, I still take breaks from my productive pursuits, justifying those breaks to myself in various ways. I tell myself I deserve a change, a mini vacation from my work. I tell myself I'm stimulating my aging brain. I tell myself I can listen to the news and do a jigsaw puzzle at the same time. If all else fails, I can tell myself I'm developing my mouse skills...still.

*I've never made the jump from playing games on computer to playing games on my phone. I don't want to slow down my phone with any more apps, and I have some finger mobility issues, so it just makes sense to stick to my laptop keyboard.

They say I'm lazy but it takes all my time 

- Life's Been Good by Joe Walsh