Toss Up

Hello World, For all of the local denizens in our perusing public (and you know who you are - no doubt, as well as the KGB agents monitoring my email, whose name is legion, heaven knows) it's not your imagination, it really has been a summer in name only. But this time, you don't have to take my word for it, here's what they had to say in The Journal News recently: =========================== Cat days of summer? You can't fry an egg on the sidewalk, you don't feel like a sweat hog, you don't have to run the air conditioner every day and you might even need a sweater in the evenings. According to Accu-Weather, July 8 was the only day to reach 90 degrees this year in the Lower Hudson Valley, meaning that we're having warm - rather than hot - fun in the summertime. Enjoy it while it lasts. "The Old Farmer's Almanac" predicts a cold, snowy winter. Brrr. =========================== So there you have the scoop, the whole scoop, and nothing but the scoop on summer so far, and they're not just whistling Dixie, believe me - or in the immortal words of old farmers everywhere, "E - I - E - I - O." However, I will say that the unusual conditions in these parts haven't slowed down our daylilies and dahlias, not to mention the giant thistles, which have been going gang-busters all along our driveway, and no complaints from that quarter, I can assure you. I don't know if that's what accounts for other outdoor oddities at the moment, such as our errant rabbits around the neighborhood, but it does seem to be curious times about the old homestead lately. It was probably more than 10 years ago now that we saw our first Monk Parakeets in the bird feeders (and I still have the pictures to prove it, by golly, and don't think I don't) and a few months ago, we saw another one in our sycamore. In the "be careful what you wish for" department, that colorful visitor was soon joined by a whole flock of friends and relatives, who now seem to have settled into the environs for the long term, and exhibiting no indications that relocating to a distant locale figures into their plans in any way. In fact, our neighbors posted a picture on FaceBook with 8 of the flamboyant creatures on their bird feeders at the same time, so that tells you something right there. Like other areas where colonies have sprung up - sometimes with many dozens of the fine feathered flyers - we're starting to learn what everybody else already knows, about their boisterous habits and encroaching ways, so much so that local communities afflicted with them often search for means to be rid of them once and for all. Our other interlopers are cowbirds, which Bill remembers seeing before, but personally I have never set eyes on them in our yard in all the years I've been here, and the dinosaurs don't mind telling you, that's been a good long time now. It seems like there's been some sort of mix-up somewhere, and frankly, I don't even want to think what the Kremlin has been up to lately, thanks not. In other local news, it's really true that you can't get too far into the pre-season football schedule before you can expect the New York Giants and New York Jets to square off at MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands (otherwise known as the swamps of East Rutherford) for bragging rights around the city that never sleeps. Unlike the long-standing baseball tradition of the Mets and Yankees playing each other in the Mayor's Trophy game, the gridiron counterpart is often referred to disparagingly as the Snoopy Bowl, and features the Snoopy Bowl trophy going to the winner. One can only imagine what that must look like (NOT) and further suppose that our friends at www.nydailynews.com were being facetious when they described it thusly: =================================== The coveted and magnificent Snoopy Bowl trophy is at stake Friday night when the Jets play the Giants and it’s clearly the next best thing to the Vince Lombardi Trophy for Rex Ryan. He just loves that thing. ==================================== The story goes on to say that with both teams playing so poorly over the years, there's no expectation that they might meet in the Super Bowl, so this meaningless tilt will have to be sufficient consolation for the home-town fans bleeding team hues on both sides of the color chart. And speaking of bleeding, they also pointed out that the participants are so competitive, and the games have gotten so chippy (resulting in busted knees, broken wrists, dislocated shoulders, yards of stitches and pools of blood) that the pundits call the stadium MetStrife instead. Frankly, I would hope that MetLife would at the very least offer the players a discount on additional health coverage, I dare say. Also in the great world of gaming, everybody knows there is certainly no lack of games that you can play on your smart phones, heaven knows, many of which are the exact same games, but from different companies. For instance, everyone has a bubble popping game (Bubble Island, Bubble Witch, Poppit) and a candy matching game (Candy Crush Saga, Candy Blast Mania, Charm King) or the same idea in bakery products (Cookie Splash, Cupcake Mania, Sweet Tooth) and a gem collecting game (Bejeweled Blitz, Diamond Dash, Jewel Beach) in their arsenal. Not to mention, slots, poker, Sudoku, solitaire, Mah Jongg, and arcade games of every sort under the sun, including suns in far distant solar systems full of 3-headed polka-dot space aliens, I shouldn't wonder. As for myself, I like word games, like Bookworm, Word Jewels, Boggle and Word Seek, all of which have the additional advantage of being completely free. Then I remembered two other games that I had found online several years ago, before I had a cell phone, and I had a hankering to play them again. Mind you, this is in spite of my comments about them at the time, which ran along these lines: [[ I tried a few games that I had never seen before, including Book of Treasures and Tumble Bees, which seemed simple enough, and with adorably childish graphics that would no doubt appeal to their target audience of game-playing youngsters. Therefore, it was with no small amount of consternation (and here, mortification would not be too strong a word) that I discovered that I was so bad at both of them, that a person might legitimately believe that I was not only illiterate, but had no understanding of the English language to start with. It was a humbling experience, I can tell you that. ]] Alas, I was destined to be disappointed even more so, when I discovered that these games were not available for my phone, since it doesn't support Java, and they could only be played online with a regular computer instead. So it's back to Candy Blast Mania for me, for my gaming pleasure on the go, and I can always count on their helpful instructions to keep me on the right track. For instance, they go to great lengths to explain to me how to match up the various items I need to collect: "If you can create a T or L-shape match, you will also enchant any charms you need in the corresponding row and column. You can even enchant charms twice, this way you can reach your goal even faster. But doing so is no walk in a cake." No walk in a cake, indeed! I admit that I have long since embarrassed myself at Word Whomp and Pop Words, with the derisive howls of laughter from our old friends the dinosaurs still ringing in my ears, but at least I didn't fail the idiom test like these simpletons trying to walk through a cake. Heck, I'd take my chances against them in Idiom Blast Mania any day, if only there were such a game - although with my luck, these would be the very people making the game, so "no walk in a cake" would probably be one of their idioms after all, and that's not just the chocolate chips talking, believe me. Elle