A puzzling day

Weather update: I have a sweater on! Hurrah! The sidewalk was wet and the branches wafting when Margaret and I went out this morning for our walkies and to get the newspaper. Hurray!
Speaking of newspapers – I am an addict! The net just doesn’t do it. I want something crinkly in my hand and inky fingers when I am done. My favorite newspaper died recently and it was like the death of a dear friend. I have read the Seattle Post Intelligencer forever, and I just don’t like its competition. Now I am really bitter towards the competition because I feel it schemed and connived to drive the poor PI to its destruction. Besides which, it seems like a dumb newspaper. The PI was delightfully left wing, and the Times is not. The PI had wonderful columnists on the OP Ed page and the Times has boooooring ones. And the entertainment section – dare I say it? – sucks. So, when my PI subscription turned into a Times subscription, I bore with it till I got a bill to renew. Yuck! I couldn’t do it. I felt rather daring and started the New York Times, which we have gotten in the past - Becca kept getting special offers which we could not resist but they were always temporary. So when the offers ran out, it always seemed too expensive, especially when it was the second paper. Now it is not the second paper. My first issue came on a Friday, and I was determined to finish the first crossword puzzle in my new subscription. Friday puzzles are hard. But I felt I could not fail at this. After at least two hours (when I could have been doing something more productive) and liberal use of Wikipedia to find out the names of the stars of TV shows I had never watched, I completed it. You may wonder about the red ink, but this is one of my little compulsions. I do them in black if no red available, but am never as happy doing them. I took a book of Will Shortz’s favorites to Hawaii, and flipping through it I can tell immediately which of us did the puzzle. My Aunt Pauline’s are neat and in pencil, my Aunt Dakki’s are superneat and in black ink, and mine are totally sloppy and in red ink. Does that tell you something about us? It probably isn’t true, whatever you are thinking.

Here is the same Grandadddy's Rose a day or two older. It looks a little blowsy, doesn't it?