Is My Brain Working?

I like to wake up early, usu­ally before the sun rises. The world is quiet, at least for the cat

… meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, pet me dammit!, …, purr, purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …

I will usu­ally fix myself a cup of cof­fee or tea and then sit down and quickly check the Internet.

Hmmm, I never expected so many hits on the site from that post. Won­der if there is any­thing new on Twit­ter? Oh, glad @bishtraining saw the Tweet on James Mur­phy. Still too early for @ehornaday to be on-line. Any­thing new on CNN or are they just rehash­ing the same old stuff? Good noth­ing new. It is usu­ally some­thing bad if there is.

I then like to move on to the news­pa­per. Yes, I still dirty my hands with newsprint. Have it deliv­ered every day. Another habit, one I under­take both for fun and as I bit of a self check, is I start with the Sudoku puz­zle. First of all, I love Sudoku. Sec­ond, I find it really gives me a check of how my mind is work­ing that day. If I am really able to focus andklgdlhbabhbvlzhbfibfbzdkb;vb;bV:bvilf;

purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

come on kitty, how can I type if you walk on the key­board? OK, I will pet you for a minute.

purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

hey! Don’t get fur in my cof­fee! I really do love this cof­fee. It is a bit of a lux­ury and order­ing fresh roasted beans from Min­nesota seems strange but it is the best cof­fee I have ever found. Which one is this? Oh yea, Ethiopia Yir­gach­effe,  fan­tas­tic. Where was I?

and block out the world’s dis­trac­tions. I find that days when I am able to very quickly fin­ish a Sudoku puz­zle are days when I am most able to quickly see crit­i­cal pat­terns in com­plex issues. Since this is really the core con­tri­bu­tion to what I do that peo­ple give me the money Still Here Too and I use to sup­port our­selves with, I like to know how well I am likely to per­form. Those days when I may not be at my best, I try to work a lit­tle harder to sup­press dis­trac­tions that might reduce my per­for­mance. And on top of all that, I am a com­pet­i­tive old ENTJ and I just have to prove I can always beat that damn puz­zle no mat­ter how obscure it is.

Lets see, start with the “ones”, noth­ing obvi­ous,; “twos”, no; “threes”; “fours”, no; “fives”, well that col­umn has to be this square so this square has to be here but com­ing across, yes this one is “five”; “six”…

bark

“seven”, no; “eight”, no

bark, bark

I guess they need to go out. It is too early for Still Here Too to wake up. Bet­ter let them out.

Come on puppies

bark, bark

Out you go.

bark, bark

Come on, please don’t wake up the whole neighborhood.

Gosh, what a beau­ti­ful sunrise.

bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark

tweet, tweet, get back in here! You are never going to catch that squir­rel! Come on, get in here now.

huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, huh

Aren’t you proud of your­self? Pro­tect­ing us from the bad old squir­rels. Now you are all out of breath not as young as you used to be.

Where was I? “nine”? Ugh, my cof­fee has got­ten cold, I need another cup. … That is much bet­ter. OK, “nine”, yes this one. Now back through .…… now these two have to both be “three and six” … you know the other day at the doc­tor, that was the very first time any doc­tor has men­tioned “geri­atric” in any dis­cus­sion. You have to admit no mat­ter how you feel, you are get­ting to that age. … what where that two squares? “three and six”? You are never going to fin­ish this puz­zle! Come on concentrate.

Maybe you need to stop for a minute, reset, relax, and start over.

That really was a fun World Cup game to watch even if the USA did lose.

What is going on, you have the con­cen­tra­tion a two-year old. Maybe some appro­pri­ate back­ground music would be good. How about Acan­tus, that medieval Ital­ian album, that is really relax­ing? That sounds good. Good thing no one heard that, what a rot­ten pun.

Haven’t played this in a long time. For­got­ten how much I like it. OK, where was I? These to are “three and six”. So these must be

… many era­sures later…

I think I will just have to try this later.

Some times it is a very good thing it is a non-workday and you really have lim­ited respon­si­bil­i­ties. This looks like one of those times! My brain may be work­ing, but it is work­ing on fun stuff only!

Is Still Here

In case the silli­ness is not clear:

• This is commentary
• This is me thinking
• This is me talking
• This the cat talking
• This is the dogs talking