An Edition of This 'n' That

It’s the middle of August and it’s hot out there. I start to take Maggie out for her walk and about 20 seconds into it, we’re both panting with our tongues hanging out in desperate need of some H20 to cool us down. 

Maggie too pooped to stand and drink!

Fortunately, I don’t mimic her and hunker down on the ground to lap water out of a bowl. 

It’s not pretty. And I’m a little crankier than usual these days. 

So I’ve been trying to stay inside in the A/C and chill. Ha ha. Get it? Chill?! 

(Hey, I just got back from our latest walk and this is the best I can do.) 

I haven’t been enjoying watching the news or looking at social media much these days; people are so divisive and the political rhetoric is out of control. 

One person posts an opinion – and all hell breaks loose as people bash others for their opinions. Fights ensue. Long-time friendships are shattered. People are unfriended left and right. 

I’m weary of the fighting. 

Adding to this is the whole COVID-19 thing. We’re still in the midst of it. Some people believe it’s all a big scam. Others are fervent in their belief that we should all don masks and continue to socially distance ourselves. I suppose the biggest factor that might change one’s opinion is if they have a loved one who has either fought off this illness – or who has succumbed to it. 

So what I’ve been doing instead is trying to find ways to entertain myself. Sometimes I’m easily amused and other times? Well, it takes a little more effort. 

There is a game app that I play frequently called Trivia Crack. Have you heard of it? If you like trivia, I recommend it. 

However, I was playing the other day – just a random game with a random person – and I realized the questions were very definitely not in English. 

Somehow when I started the game, I inadvertently changed the language from English to Dutch. 

I don’t speak Dutch. (Shocking, I know.) 

But I didn’t see any way to change the language back to something I might halfway recognize, so I continued to play the game. I figured it would be a quick loss since I had no clue what the questions – or the answers might be. 

Strangely enough, I ended up winning – 6 to 0. How? You ask. I haven’t a clue. Apparently I’m very good at guessing. 

Well, except for the one question – something about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – and I clearly recognized the word “Beatles” as one of the answers. Yay, me. 

So the win was a small thing – but it made me smile and I was entertained for a moment. 

Another weird thing happened one day last week. I was sitting at my desk in the kitchen working on a “patio music playlist” when Vince came in and asked Alexa to play some music. 

I was scrolling through some of my songs and came across something called “Worth It” by Fifth Harmony. I didn’t recognize the song and, frankly, wasn’t sure I recognized the group who sings it – so I started to play a snippet on my phone. 

At precisely that moment, the exact same song started playing on our Echo Show. The Exact. Same. Song. 

It was a little freaky. 

Mostly because (a) I didn’t know I even had the song in my library and (b) I wouldn’t think it was a song that is frequently played on whatever discs Alexa was spinning. 

So those are just a couple things that have been going on that I’ve found interesting. (I guess these would fit under the “doesn’t take much to entertain me” category! 

I hope you are entertained this weekend and do something fun. 

No divisiveness allowed, okay?