Candy Crush Soda Saga OR Lumosity: A Quiz To Determine Which One Is For You

May 12, 2015August 29, 2018 / Ally Bean / 20 Comments

:: THE QUIZ ::

Q1: Do you like to eat chocolate? Y or N

Q2: Do you resent being asked, every stinking day, how many hours you slept last night? Y or N

Q3: Do you enjoy searching for cute bears hidden underneath things? Y or N

Q4: Are you indifferent to the migratory patterns of flocks of black birds on a screen? Y or N

• • •

Q5: Are you always up for a colorful, cheerful game with lots of groovy fish that make things blow up? Y or N

Q6: Do you think that doing arithmetic problems, that fall randomly down your screen, are the real reason you have begun to have nightmares about 5th grade again? Y or N

Q7: Do you think that when you lose a game seeing the message “You’ll get it next time!” is encouraging? Y or N

Q8: Do you think that when you encounter the opportunity to make words starting with two random letters, it’s best to make a long multi-syllabled word and that it’s poor manners to scold someone for not making a short three-letter word? Y or N

• • •

Q9: Do you like to eat honey? Y or N

Q10: Do you think that any game, for which you cannot find an unauthorized website of cheats + hacks, is of dubious value because you’re not learning how to advance in the game? Y or N

Q11: Do you think that you did your time as a waitress in college and need not relive that experience by serving pretend food + beverages to cartoon people, with specific names, at a nondescript virtual beach cafe? Y or N

Q12: Do you think that you can keep your brain healthy and sharp by playing a free game; rather than challenging your cognitive abilities by playing games that have a monthly fee? Y or N

:: SCORING ::

The more you answered YES, the more you will like CANDY CRUSH SODA SAGA.

You can learn more about the game here.

• • •

Conversely, the more you answered NO, the more you will like LUMOSITY.

You can learn more about brain training here.

Curly Hair, Haircut Appointments & The Games I Must Play

April 28, 2015 / Ally Bean / 27 Comments

I. I have naturally curly hair.

Only a few people know how to cut naturally curly hair so that it doesn’t turn into a frizzy, choppy mess. In fact, I recently got one of those lousy haircuts, but that’s not the story I’m going to tell you here.

No, this story is about how it came to be that I needed to go to a different hair stylist than my usual one. It is a story about how difficult it is to get an appointment with my usual hair stylist, who moved her business to Salon Lofts about two years ago.

II. Here’s why.

As a client I book my appointments with my hair stylist online using the Salon Lofts easy, intuitive scheduler. ‘Tis a breeze to use it. Love it.

At first this process was easy and wonderful. When I needed a haircut I’d go to my account online and look to see when my hair stylist had an opening. Then I’d pick my appointment.

However, other deceitful clients have begun to take all the appointments that they think they might want. For instance, if Little Miss Suzy Self-Absorbed likes to get her hair cut at a specific time on Wednesday afternoons, she’ll book all of those Wednesday afternoon appointments for months ahead.

Then, 24 hours before said appointment, our Little Miss Suzy Self-Absorbed will decide if this is the week she needs to get her hair cut, or not. If she no longer wants the appointment, she’ll cancel it without financial penalty.

III. This leaves me in a difficult situation.

Either I play this take-all-the-appointments-I-might-want-game, or I check online every morning to see if an appointment I can use has opened up for the next day. Then I re-arrange my schedule to take advantage of it.

I’ve talked with my hair stylist about this scheduling situation, but here’s the thing: from her point of view this is not a problem. After 30+ years of cutting hair she has an established clientele who will do anything to get an appointment, so she’s always booked with clients who show up.

Leaving me to play games to get an appointment. And when that fails, forcing me to go to some other available hair stylist who, as this last cut would prove, ain’t so good at what she does.

Tweeted Twaddle: A Blog Post “Written” Without Doing Much Of Anything

April 9, 2015April 9, 2015 / Ally Bean / 20 Comments

• I can’t see straight today. My April allergies are in full swing making my eyes itchy & watery. This happens every year, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Now does it?

• Because I refuse to stop reading while my vision is blurry, I have set my Kindle’s font to old-people-rheumy-eyed large. It’s a feature on there. Really.

• Naturally, while reading I became a bit peckish so I tried a new-to-me snack. I did not like it, so I had to share this fact on Twitter. That’s what Twitter is for, right?

• So in closing of this eclectic [some would say filler] post, I leave you, my gentle readers, with this tweet of creative writing in which I summarize what I wish was going on outside today. Because a girl can dream. Yes?

In Which I Grouse About Punctuation & Think Fondly Of Erma Bombeck

March 24, 2015May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 18 Comments

I RECEIVED an invitation to attend a talk, at a university, given by an author. Profits from the talk go to support the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, so it’s a good event to attend.

However, I find the invitation to be lacking, in a most disturbing way. A way that displeases me, an English major and blogger extraordinaire.

A way, I have to believe in my educated-by-this-very-university heart of hearts, that would also displease Erma, a newspaper columnist and author.

~ ~ • ~ ~

AND HERE is what I’m talking about. One of my pet peeves is that periods [as in punctuation] are disappearing, inexplicably, from the end of sentences.

Look at most billboards anymore.
Look at tag-lines on advertisements. On the sides of trucks. On the packages which hold the food you eat.
Look at this invitation in which many lines of words are sentences, but WHERE ARE THE PERIODS?!!

~ ~ • ~ ~

HEAVEN KNOWS that I’d have flunked out of this university if I’d indulged in such disregard for punctuation. I’m trying to not take this personally, but the evidence in this invitation shows…

A total lack of concern. For the very thing that I hold dear. Proper punctuation. Used almost frivolously. Stylishly. And without regard for cost.

Which is the only reason that I can fathom for why periods are disappearing from the end of sentences. I have to suspect that in these economically challenging times, the up-charge for adding them to any written communication is so costly that leaving them out helps the bottom line.

That’s the reason, right?