What the Future Once Held

After many years (okay, decades) and two floods, not much has survived from childhood.  One of the few things that has is pictured above.  It is my astrological birth chart that I drew up when I was in seventh or eighth grade.  I am not sure how it was fortunate enough to last.  One day, I checked out a new looking book on astrology from the public library.  It was one of the first books I had that had illustrations of naked people in it.  One of the benefits/drawbacks of being an advanced reader was being able to get books that weren't always appropriate to my age level.  I was slightly embarrassed and I tried to make sure my mother never saw those pages.  At least there weren't actual photographs.  (Parents of pre-teen/early teenage boys might want to double check their reading material at this point, especially if they say they are interested in medicine.  "But Mom, I didn't know there would be pictures of naked women in this book, honest."  This never happened to me, but be careful anyway.)  My love for astrology, and divination in general, led me to create my own birth chart, seen here.  Some of the topics didn't really interest me, but I tried to include them.  Also, some of the pre-calculus level math was almost beyond me.  Trust me, some of the calculations were very tricky.  It actually seems to be quite accurate, as I made a second one when I was in college (since destroyed, unfortunately) that almost perfectly matched this one.  Only one planet seemed to be in a different place, probably one of the outer ones -- Uranus, Neptune or Pluto.  Strangely enough, astrologers still consider Pluto a full planet even as astronomers have downgraded it.  Some astrologers even want to upgrade another minor planet to help clarify certain issues that have plagued them for millennia.  It is hard to tell, but certain things stand out on my chart.  Most of my planets hang together at one end while two more are at the top (Saturn and the Moon) in what is sometimes referred to as a "bucket."  Furthermore, all of my planets are in aspect to at least two others.  My Saturn and Moon are in conjunction with on another, while both are in opposition to my Jupiter.  I can't remember what this means, or the significance of the colors of the lines beyond that they represent relative importance of my aspects.  I also had found some other minor papers relating to astrology, but I didn't have the time to really go over them.  I am not sure if I actually believe anything about what a made, but it was and technically still is one of my favorite pastimes.

Do Have a Cross Word with Me

Let me apologize for being late; I didn't have any way to get online until today.  Anyway, let me explain a little about last week's puzzle.  I wanted a theme, and going with the four seasons seemed very appropriate.  I chose the title based on the House Stark motto from Game of Thrones ("Winter is coming.")  I was originally going to have 'spring fever' and 'summer break' as answers, but I didn't like that 'v' in any of the prospective spots, so I switched things up.  The theme answers were going to be huddled around the center of the grid, but i spaced things out to make thing easier on me.  It wasn't the case.  I started at the top right corner with 'spring break' and worked around it.  I was lucky to get the answers for 15 and 17 Across, but I soon gave up on trying to find any more long answers, even though it meant more three-letter answers overall.  I couldn't find any better answer for 19 Across than 'Ensor' mostly because I couldn't find any definition for "Reider" anywhere.  As I did the left side, I thought I was going great with 'derring-do' instead of 'derringer', but that really wasn't the case.  The lower left side was easy, even with the My Little Pony reference thrown in.  The center was hard.  I first tried to get "Iago" for 22 Across, but it just kept messing me up.  So, I stared on the bottom with the clues around 'falling down.'  I lucked out by quickly finding 'I Need You Now" and 'Garcia Lorca' for the area.  That meant that 42 Down had to end with 'a-w-n' though.  At first it was going to be "at dawn" or "of dawn."  I just couldn't make those answers work with clues I was getting for the middle.  I ultimately had to go with the faux Latin 'ides amo' for 24 Down, (I guess in means 'I like the fifteenth') even though it is really irregular.  It would wind up with me putting 'er, sawn' as 42 Down.  Technically, it could also be "ers awn" which would mean something along the lines of the beard found on a grain similar to vetch, but I couldn't cross check it, so I went with the clue I provided.  I know neither are that good, but I couldn't get it any better.  At least I could fix the upper right corner fairly well, even with 'anis' for 14 Down.  Many of the choices I made were to keep standard crossword rules, something I didn't always do the last time I made these puzzles in community college.  Lastly, I transferred my grid to an empty one from an old puzzle magazine I had.  If I knew I wouldn't be able to crop the image, I would have treated it better.  Still, I consider this crossword one of my better recent accomplishments.  I don't think I will do another for a while.  It took me a week to make this one, and I should have taken a little more time to get it right.  You can expect other puzzling entries, though, as that is the purported theme of this blog.

After Winter Comes

Warning:  many of the clues and answers to this puzzle are unconventional.

ACROSS:                                                                    DOWN:

1.  Week long recess                                                                         1.  Cover
12. Relaxation destination                                                                2.  To leap about
15.  Liked better than                                                                        3.  Paul of Mad About You
16.  Very long time                                                                           4.  Conditional direction
17.  Sheriff task                                                                                 5.  Impossible for a poet
18.  Nice friend                                                                                 6.  A bunch of people, abbr.
19.  Belgian painter James                                                                7.  'Dude'
20.  Special                                                                                        8.  Corp. division
21.   High flyer                                                                                  9.  Asner and others
22.  Welsh John                                                                               10.  Just had
26.  A 'Brute" usually follows them                                                11.  Ring results
28.  Pluck                                                                                         12.  Playful swimmer
31.  Brooklyn ballers                                                                       13.  Bigheaded
32.Compromises                                                                             14.  Licorice flavored, overseas
33.  Metric measure                                                                         22.  Legal wording
34.  Bananarama top ten hit from'84                                               23.  Can't be dated
36.  Just stay there                                                                           24.  Something Ceasar wouldn't say
37.  Two-less-than average scores                                                   25.  Coffee order
38.  Red and black, for roulette                                                       26.  Chopper coating
39.  Size comparison                                                                       27.  Patron saint for headaches
43.  Skates, e.g.                                                                               29.  My Little Pony unicorn
44.  Angry at                                                                                   30.  "If you say so"
45.  Fantasy book publisher                                                            34.  Empty space in a forest
46.  Deface                                                                                      35.  Fr. lass
47.  Greatly honor                                                                           38.  Extremely shameless
49.  Russian arm                                                                             40.  Canned heat
50.  Spanish poet Federico                                                              41.    ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽  mule
56.  Diamond ranking                                                                     42.  "Uh, cut boards"
57.  Fisher No. 1 from 1954                                                           46.  Remote function
 58.  Sci. or lib. art college course                                                  47.  Online news source
59.  London bridge, in rhyme                                                         48.  Nick's The ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽  Family
                                                                                                        50.  Comp. file type
                                                                                                        51.  Comedic actress Gasteyer
                                                                                                        52.  Something found on a tree
                                                                                     53.  Cartoon frame
                                                                                                         54.  Ugandan dictator Amin
                                                                                                         55.  Novelist Rand 


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ANSWERS:

S P R I N G B R E A K █ S P A

 P R E F E R R E D T O █ E O N

R A I S E P O S S E   S  █ A M I

E N S O R █ █ █ █ █ █ █  O P S

A C E █  █ I A I N █ E T T U █

D E R   R I G D O  █ N E T S █

█ █ █ A G R E E S █ A R E █ █

█ █ C R U E L S U M M E R █ █

█ █ L I E █ E A G L E S █ █ █

█ B E T S █ S M A L L A S M E

█ R A Y S █ S O R E █ █ T O R

M A R █ █ █ █ █ █ █ B L E S S

U Z I █ G A R C I A L O R  CA

T E N █ I N E E D Y O U N O W

E N G █ F A L L I N G D O W N 

Right on Track

There are only a few interests that I have had almost all my life.  One of them is reading (and subsequently writing).  I was reading at four or five.  I even had my own library card.  Although I don't really remember it, my mother says I was reading to the other students in class on the day she signed me up for kindergarten.  To be honest, I would have been five-and-a-half and older than many of the other kids there, but it was still an accomplishment.  I owe it all to the comic books my mother got for me.  I still get at least four or five a week, although most are not suitable for young children (some still are!).  I got to start reading adult level books fairly early, although I didn't fully understand everything.   My mother also kept getting me activity books.  I wasn't too fond of the coloring portions.  I had a tendency to color outside the lines.  Not just over them, but I would color the portions around the actual subjects as well.  I almost failed coloring in the first grad because of this.  I preferred the puzzle portions.  While I wasn't able to do all of them, I still loved doing those that I could.  My mother had to start buying books for adults just to keep up with my appetite.  I still didn't do every type of puzzle, but I started to become an expert in those I did do.  I still love doing puzzles and games.  That is what this blog is supposed to be about, anyway.  One final interest of mine is television.  I admit that I probably watched way too much of it when I was a child.  Fortunately, I mainly watch educational television.  I could watch Kentucky Educational Television for hours.  Much of it was geared to older children, or even adults.  I really liked the GED prep series.  Because of it, I somehow learned the basics of algebra when I was seven, years before I would get to pre-algebra in eighth grade.  On many occasions, I would find out about something on a show only to be introduced to it officially later in school.  In all honesty, I still watch too much television, especially cartoons geared for children, of all age ranges.  I might watch more now than when I was a teenager.  Anyway, I do have a point to all of this.  This blog began a way for me to get back into writing, particularly on the subjects I was most interested in.  However, I have strayed in the last few months into my opinions and observations.  This has to be curtailed.  I need to be writing more about my passions than I have been.  Sure hiding the occasional message is fun, but it should done in conjunction with other puzzling topics and not be just an afterthought.  For example, let's take a passage my one of my most favorite Shakespeare plays Twelfth Night, since it would be slightly appropriate this time of year.  Some scholars say it isn't there, but if it is, I think it is a great example of wordplay.  Check out Act II, Scene 5, lines 89-90.  Read it aloud, pronouncing "and" as 'n' and accentuating the long 'e' of the "P."  I know it is somewhat bawdy, if it is true, but I still kind of like it.  Starting next week, I will be trying something new.  At least, I hope I will.  I might not finish it in time, but be on the lookout for it.  It will be quite something.  It is time for me to get on the track again.

The World Doesn't Resolve Around Me

First things first, the message on the top of last week's post was supposed to say "Merry Christmas."  However, I messed things up a little, by not previewing it first.  I am truly sorry for how that didn't work out.  I will resolve to do better in the coming year.  This will pretty much be the only resolution I will make, as I don't really make New Year's resolutions.  Oh, I try to improve my life, but it is more of a year-round thing, and not something I try to force upon myself just because it is January first.  This is not just a random thing, either.  I pick up and discard improvements throughout the year.  I am always trying to eat better, exercise more, and quit bad habits while trying to start new good ones.  I understand the importance of starting new things at the start of a new year, but it just never seems to work out the best for me when I do.  For instance, I used to plan up to an entire month trying new food/recipes.  Sometimes, I would limit myself to just one week, if I couldn't find enough new foods ahead of time.  After a few years of this, I just kind of stopped.  Finding entirely new foods was almost impossible, and even just trying new products and recipes was becoming a challenge.  Now, I just try things when I see them.  Mostly, they are new varieties of things I already buy or get.  This gets tiring, especially when this means that products I do like are discontinued.  I have gone through over a dozen different flavors/brands of cereal and snack bars over the years, only to see the one I don't like still on the shelves while my favorites disappear.  Exercise is just the same.  I have lists of hundreds of different exercises, the majority of them I have never attempted.  I rely on a core (bad pun) group of a few dozen that I rotate through, with a little variation here and there, with the biggest changes coming in weight lifted and for how many times.  For example, this past weekend I did unilateral presses at 120 pounds for twenty total reps over three sets.  I wasn't even planning on so many, but I felt I could go all the way and I did.  My bad habits are trickier.  I try to change them as after as I can, to various levels of success.  After decades, I have all but stopped biting my nails, although I still have trouble with two fingers on my  left hand for some reason.  I even try to improve my good habits.  Typing is apparently not one of them, as I have made multiple mistakes just today.  I have corrected them, but I just seem to be hitting the wrong keys and I cannot blame the keyboard for most of them.  However,  this keyboard does have quite a few keys that are sticking.  Anyway, I will try to improve my life next year; I just won't announce how I will be doing it.

Top of the Charts

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████   ▐     ▌  ▐     ▐     ██   ████      ▐      ▌  ▐   ▐    ▌   ▌     ████

I have always been fascinated by lists, particularly Billboard magazines' Hot 100 chart.  I have been following the Top 10 pretty much every week since I was in grade school.  Over the decades, I have become so familiar with their various charting techniques, that I have frequently been able to determine the top songs of the year.  I havn't always been exact, but I come close very often.  Sometimes, I have been able to guess upsets that many people wouldn't even see coming.  Take this year.  One would think that "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber would be the number one song of the year.  I mean, it spent sixteen weeks at number one.  However, through my own analysis of the weekly top ten lists, I discovered that "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran had actually spent more total weeks in the top ten, even though it only spent twelve weeks at number one.  It would be a close call, but Ed wound up getting number one song of the year, just as I had predicted.  In fact, I correctly predicted the top three songs of the year in order, with "That's What I Like" by Bruno Mars coming in third.  Each of these songs had chart performances so dominating, that no other songs really came close.  In fact, any two of these songs spent more weeks in the top ten  then all songs by solo women combined.  I had felt that this was the case, but it took my research to conform it.  Anyway, it was an interesting year in the charts.  I hope you like my Christmas message at the top of the page.  It was going to include a snowman graphic, but I couldn't get things to work out just right.  Still, I think it came out pretty well.

 

Not Too Naughty, Not Quite Nice

I am naturally very inquisitive.  I just have to find things out.  It is one reason I was going to be a journalism major in college, if I had only gone to the right school.  This sneakiness really came to the front at Christmas.  Hardly a year went by without me finding out at least some of my presents before I unwrapped them.  I had all the tricks.  Not only would I shake my presents, I knew how to peek under the flaps without greatly disturbing them.  I would even moisten light-colored portions of the wrapping to make it transparent enough to try and see images underneath.  One year, a great aunt had given me a water game, and I later would get the exact same game from a cousin.  I had to feign enjoyment, since I already knew I was getting another one.  My "best" year was 1980.  That year, I could figure out almost every single gift I had under the tree.  I wasn't that careful in hiding the fact, and my mother hid everything until Christmas, even the one I didn't figure out.  How was I supposed to know she had gotten my a giant teddy bear that she got as a special offer with one of her fragrance purchases?  Our house wasn't that big, so there weren't too many places to hide gifts before they were wrapped.  I would sneak around, frequently finding them and sometimes claiming them early as prizes in a successful hunt.  Not always, but I did sometimes play with them.  For instance, I easily found my Super Nintendo game system.  When I was the only one in the house, I took it from its hiding place, got it out of the box, hooked it up to the television, and played the first few levels of  Super Mario World.  I then put everything back before I could be caught.  My mother suspected something, but she couldn't prove anything.  This secretiveness also helped me when I started to buy gifts for my mother, as well.  Once, in the late '90s, on one of my infrequent forays outside of the house, I was just wandering a store, when I found something my mother had been wanting for some time:  a bonnet style hair dryer.  I managed to get it, and a Michael Bolton tape, and hid it in the trunk of my car and put in it so it wouldn't move around to make noise so my mother wouldn't hear it when I went to pick her up.  I managed to slip it into the house and wrap it without anyone knowing.  My mother took awhile to even notice it under the tree.  She was very surprised when she opened it up.  Unfortunately, she rarely had the time to use it, and it was ultimately thrown out years later.  I had a knack for picking good gifts, but my mother doesn't.  When I was in high school, she once got me a sweater I liked, but I couldn't wear because it was the wrong size.  I had tried it on weeks before and had to get a different one instead.  She thought I had grown enough so it could fit.  I hadn't.  She was so certain, she had thrown away the receipt.  Although I would grow a little more (as well as develop some muscle tone), that sweater never did fit me right.  That is one of the reasons why I don't ask her for gifts any more.  She always thinks I would like or need something, but she turns out to be wrong.  Christmas isn't as much fun when you have to ask for an exact gift, and nothing else will do.