The Wednesday HodgePodge (April 12, 2023)

Hi everyone. I’m joining the Wednesday HodgePodge yet again. Here are Joyce’s questions and my answers.

1. April 13th is National Scrabble Day…are you a fan? Do you enjoy word games in general? What’s an eight letter word that tells us something about your life currently?
I don’t like Scrabble, because eventually the board becomes too crowded for me to understand. I do love other word games. There was a game I used to enjoy on the iPhone called 7 Little Words. That is, until they introduced a special “screen reader mode” that was just slightly less inaccessible than the rest of the game had become from then on.

An eight-letter word that says something about my life… clueless. I’ll leave it at that.

2. Do you have a junk drawer? Is it full? Do you know what’s in it? What’s in it?
Not really. Oh wait, the upper drawer in my desk probably counts, as it does have lots of miscellaneous stuff in it, particularly parts that belong to my various gadgets, such as my original Apple Watch wristband (well, only the lengthening half of it, as I recently discovered). I do know of most things in it, but not everything.

3. When does time pass quickly for you? When does it pass slowly?
It passes quickly when I’m engrossed in writing a blog post or in a good book or especially when crafting. Slowly when I am waiting on something.

4. These eight vegetables are in season during spring-asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, collard greens, garlic, herbs. What’s your favorite? Any on the list you refuse to eat? Last one on the list you ate?
Wasn’t this a question last year too? Anyway, my favorite is broccoli. There aren’t any on the list I refuse to eat altogether, but I really don’t like celery. The last one of these I ate was a carrot this afternoon with my lunch.

5. What’s the oldest thing you own? Tell us about it.
I don’t think I own anything old, so I’ll have to guess either my stuffed whale which I’ve had since I was a baby or my desk. Though I’ve owned my desk for only like 17 years, it’s secondhand.

6. Insert your own random thought here.
Thank goodness for a bit of sunshine inbetween the rain today. I went for a walk this afternoon and then stopped by the day center cafeteria to have a hot cocoa and a muesli bar, the latter of which my staff treated me to out of the vending machine. Yum!

Fun and Games for When You’re Bored #AtoZChallenge

Welcome to my letter F post in the #AtoZChallenge. I want to have a lighthearted topic for today. After all, I’m bored and don’t want to delve deep into some topic of self-care. Of course, dealing with boredom appropriately can be an act of self-care. I’m sharing a few fun activities to do when you’re bored.

1. Card games. I particularly love the game of “pesten” (“bullying” in English), which is a variation to the card game of mau mau and similar to Uno. It is played with a deck of 55 cards (52 of a regular pack plus three jokers). The goal is to get rid of all of your cards first, but you can bully the person next to you by the cards you play. For example, if you play an eight, the person next must pass his turn. If you play a two or joker, the next person must draw two or five cards from the stack, respectively. There are some other rules too that are pretty complicated particularly if there are more than two players in the game. For example, an ace means to turn around, so it’s often hard to remember whether we’re playing clockwise or counterclockwise. For this reason, I usually play the game with one other person.

I should really be trying to learn some other card games, as “pesten” is the only one I know. I guess playing solitaire is a good boredom killer if you’re by yourself.

2. Board games. I don’t play those often, but as a tween, I did. I particularly liked monopoly. I now have an audio-based version of monopoly on my iPhone. Still figuring it out though.

3. Word games and puzzles. I particularly like to make word strings, where the next word has to start with the last letter of the previous word. These can be themed, such as first names, animals, etc. I also like to do word puzzles on my phone. Most regular word games are not accessible with VoiceOver. However, I have an app called 7 Little Words that is.

4. Reading. We as a system like to read a variety of books depending on who out of our personalities is fronting. For example, the young alters like reading funny stories and jokes. Like we said yesterday, there are many free kids’ stories available in eBook format from both Amazon and Apple Books.

The teens and adults prefer young adult novels and occasionally fiction geared towards adults. We also love memoirs.

What fun activities can you think of to do when you’re bored?