Skip to main content

I Hate It When I'm Right, Sometimes

     Hey, everyone. I wish you a good morning. It is frosty and cool here at the green retreat. Speaking of weather.. A year or so ago, I mentioned the fact that we had different types of trees that seemed to be dying out. Dogwoods, pin oaks, sourwoods etc. I said that I thought that entire climate zones were sliding north and I wondered how long it would be before the pines that are prevalent in middle and southern Georgia would be the dominate trees in the current hardwood country. Last night I was reading an article on the Washington Post that mentioned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reshaped its map for planting vegetation and now shows marked slides of zones to the north in most spots. When you become intimate with the environment, as we have here, you notice more readily the things that are going on with Mother Nature. They are gradual, sure, but I have noticed these things over the last ten years.
     On a less serious level, Carley wanted me to pass along a quick note for the puzzlers among you. It is about a game that seems to be a new genre on the app store. The game is Globs and has been popular on PC for a while. In fact, they claim that 70 million people have played it. There is a free version which is add supported and you can pay a modest 99 cents to be add-free. There are several copy-cats out there already. Here's the recipe for game-play.
     There is a board, with several colors of globs on it. (Hence the name) You have a few globs of a single color that are joined together in their ethnicity. You gaze at the surrounding globs and determine which color has more globs which touch your own position. We'll say it is purple. So you look at the bottom of the board and choose the colored ball for purple, which changes those purple balls which are in contact with your little patch, to a like color. Let's say that your patch is red. As you repeat the process your red patch spreads across the board, similar to the way in which white people took over the United States from the Native Americans a few hundred years ago. Oops, didn't mean to get political. Ha, ha.
    Globs only allows you 25 moves to spread your globness to all the other colors on the board. There are a multitude of levels and Carley calls it 4 stars out of 5. As a non-puzzler, I call it mildly irritating, unlike global warming, which is pretty scary. Sorry, I became political again.
    From the author's green retreat, CE and Carley Wills.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The White Chicken Mystery

    The other night I happened to come home very late. It was the middle of the night and I was driving up a steep mountain road. Near the top I saw something white in my headlights. It was standing in the other lane, standing very still. It was a large white chicken. It was probably a rooster because I thought I could see his comb as I whizzed by at my customary pace. He never moved a muscle. This is weird, don't you think?      After a couple of days to consider this phenomenon, I have come up with some plausible answers for his bizarre behavior. 1. He was conflicted whether or not he should cross the road. 2. He was feeling cocky and decided to play chicken with the traffic. 3.He was being hen-pecked at home and had decided to end it all. 4. Someone had egged him on to do it. 5. He had just watched the movie Fantastic Four and decided to try to stop a truck the way that Ben Grimm did on the bridge. 6. He had driven himself crazy wondering if ...

Egg Art

     Hey, everyone. One of the odd customs in America is the Easter Egg Hunt. Here at the Green Retreat, we do a hunt every Spring. I just ran across some of the pictures from this years hunt and it is obvious that an artist had sneaked into our midst. The orange egg is a rendering of one of the Angry Birds of gaming lore. If I were a bird and had to pass an egg that size, I would be angry too. Ha, ha.      We typically will dye about 10 dozen eggs and people get quite creative with their quotes and colors, as you can see. Many of the eggs are a bit risque for these pages. After having a few laughs, we hide the eggs. All of them are never found, which is cool. It is amusing to see old men (me) and all ages of folks, walking around with a basket on their arm. Some of the hiding spots are dastardly. Like eggs hidden in the guttering downspouts and ten foot up a tree. The kids are perhaps the most devious at hiding the colorful orbs, goi...

Cake Is Better Than Swords

Hey, everyone. On Thanksgiving, we had a get-together here at The Author's Green Retreat. One lady brought a cake which I wanted to show you. It had the look of a Roman Coliseum about it. Inside it was just as decadent...and fun, as ancient Rome. When I cut it open, homemade marshmallow cream began to ooze out in several spots, running over the chocolate cake and peanut butter icing. It is best served warm so the cream is fluid. Very tasty. The same lady, and her children, are people who have played a lot of Skyrim. They gave me some pointers on the game because I am having problems with it. They taught me how to fast travel, and a ton of other things, but the main thing was the armor and clothing problem. This is a little embarrassing, but let me explain. Okay. For several weeks when I played, I would enter towns and everyone I met would comment on my nakedness. I would select a tunic and shoes, whatever, go back around people and they would say something about it. I guess I w...