{"id":5481,"date":"2011-10-07T14:04:53","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T18:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/?p=5481"},"modified":"2011-10-07T14:04:53","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T18:04:53","slug":"miscellaneous-word-cube-i-hate-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/miscellaneous-word-cube-i-hate-you\/","title":{"rendered":"MISCELLANEOUS: WORD CUBE, I HATE YOU"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>WORD CUBE, I HATE YOU<\/h1>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I have had many love\/hate relationships over the years, including with Mr. X!  But I&#8217;ve never had one as badly as the one with the Word Cube game!  I love it.  But I hate it.  In all honesty, I&#8217;m addicted.  (Mr. X pointed out that he knew I was addicted when I started taking multiple pictures of my highest scores, which, I&#8217;m proud to say, top out at 66,900 as of this writing!) [Note: in case you&#8217;re re-reading this column, which I would really appreciate, by the way, I don&#8217;t want you to think you&#8217;re going nuts; I <em>do <\/em>keep changing the totals to reflect my new highest score.]<\/p>\n<p>Until a few years ago, when her eyesight fell victim to macular degeneration, my mother did crosswords constantly, and my friends are always amazed how sharp she is, which I really do feel is, in at least part, due to constantly challenging her mind.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0704.jpg\" title=\"IMG_0704\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-5877\" title=\"IMG_0704\" src=\"http:\/\/www.itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0704-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/><\/a>I, too, love crosswords; the harder the better.  But, with my crazy, busy life, and running this E-zine, I never have time to just sit somewhere quiet and do puzzles anymore.  And Solitaire just doesn&#8217;t cut it for mental stimulation.  (Nor do most of the TV shows I watch, which I&#8217;ll be reviewing next week.)<\/p>\n<p>Solitaire you can stop and come back to anytime, even days later.  But Word Cube is different; you have to Jack Bauer it.  I always feel like I&#8217;m going to vomit.  My heart stops, and I can&#8217;t focus on anything else.  It&#8217;s really perfect for when my brain gets too scattered.<\/p>\n<p>Also, crosswords are satisfying only on real paper with a pen. (Yes, I do do them in pen.  Jealous???) But nowadays, between iPads, laptops, desktop computers, and intelligent phones, (that so far I&#8217;m shunning,) sadly, who has time to find a pen and paper?<\/p>\n<p>It all started in United Airlines&#8217; Business Class.  I was on my way to New York in July because my mother had been rushed to the hospital.  I was a wreck, had been up overnight to fly stand-by, and couldn&#8217;t stop crying.  Even though I love watching movies on the personal entertainment centers the airline provides, I knew I didn&#8217;t have the concentration to do so.<\/p>\n<p>But, I didn&#8217;t want to keep thinking about what awaited me in Brooklyn, because I&#8217;d scare my seat-mate with my hysterics.  So, to occupy my myself until I&#8217;d fall asleep, I figured a mindless game would do the job.  Boy, was I wrong!  I chose Word Cube and the rest is history.  I played it for most of the five hour flight!<\/p>\n<p>Thank goodness you can&#8217;t get it on the iPad or who knows what would have become of me in the two months I spent on the east coast, but on the plane back to Los Angeles, I picked-up right where I left off.  And I&#8217;ve been making myself sick playing it on every electronic device at home for the past three weeks.  (Maybe it&#8217;s time to switch airlines?  And actually, not just because of the game, but I&#8217;ll tell you that debacle some other time.  I have to hurry and finish this column so I can get back to my game.)<\/p>\n<p>So, lest you read this and think, for some reason, that Word Cube sounds fun, here&#8217;s a little story that Mr. X once told me:  For a period of a few weeks when he was a teen-ager, he and his pals couldn&#8217;t stop playing Chinese checkers.  They then started having a strange reaction to the non-stop gaming.\u00a0 No matter where they were&#8211;at the movies, in traffic, in restaurants&#8211;they all were making mental jumps over people&#8217;s heads, a la the board game!  They couldn&#8217;t stop.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5876\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0701.jpg\" title=\"IMG_0701\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5876\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5876\" title=\"IMG_0701\" src=\"http:\/\/www.itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/IMG_0701-e1322529733920-300x195.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5876\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I told you I take multiple pictures of my scores!!!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>He predicted this would happen to me with Word Cube, and he was, unfortunately, correct.  I can&#8217;t stop spelling words; in my sleep, when I hear people talk, even at parties.  I constantly visualize a word cube.  It&#8217;s driving me nuts.<\/p>\n<p>So, there you have it\u2014the reason I didn&#8217;t post every day this week.  I sit down at the computer to write, and wind-up playing Word Cube.  If I start writing columns in only three- or four-letter words, you&#8217;ll know why.<\/p>\n<p>So, if ever I miss a day here, please don&#8217;t worry about me, as some of you kindly do, which I really appreciate, by the way.  Just assume I lost a day to mind-strengthening.  And really, if I have to have an addiction, isn&#8217;t this a healthy one to have?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WORD CUBE, I HATE YOU &nbsp; I have had many love\/hate relationships over the years, including with Mr. X! But I&#8217;ve never had one as badly as the one with the Word Cube game! I love it. But I hate it. In all honesty, I&#8217;m addicted. (Mr. X pointed out that he knew I was<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/miscellaneous-word-cube-i-hate-you\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsnotaboutme.tv\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}