Promises, Promises

For the record, I try very hard to keep promises I make to other people, but I rarely keep them when I make them to myself.  Maybe that's why promises made to myself don't work as incentives for getting things done.  However, I made one to myself this morning -- if I write up this writeup that I need to send to an editor today, and go grocery shopping, I can then draft my Regency stays that I've been putting off for "more important matters" such as school work or yard work.  Let's see if I stay true to form (do the chore then don't reward myself) today.

Yesterday was yardwork day, or at least yardwork morning, as it was projected to get up to a hundred degrees in the afternoon.  I was completely finished with the tasks I'd set out for myself by 11:00 in the morning, but the doing of the thing(s) took all the mickey out of me.  Mowing the back yard wasn't bad at all, but I had to whack the weeds between our fence and the alley, and although it wasn't a long task, it was all in-the-sun work -- that's what drained me like a sink.  I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night and hardly moved until nearly ten o'clock this morning!  The Emperor is still in bed, although he didn't do any yard work.  I just went in and told him to get his happy tuchas moving.

This is Simon's Cat, the main character in a series of cute cartoons as well as the major protagonist in a (very silly) online game that I've been playing since February or so.

The game is called Simon's Cat: Crunchtime, and the basic idea is to feed Simon and his buddies crunchies.  The game itself takes place in a beautifully illustrated garden full of cats and other creatures doing hilarious things.  You have to complete various tasks such as feeding cats, getting rid of gophers, defeating "villains" such as a vacuum cleaner, a slobbery dog, a mean gardener, or a hedgehog, and rescuing treats from an upside down jar.  After the first ten or so levels, the game becomes progressively difficult and it becomes harder to achieve higher levels, so I can only play and fail for four or five turns (each about two minutes long) before I have to put it away.  This makes it almost impossible to binge on it, so it's not sucking up hours of my time, but in odd moments I enjoy plaing "feed the cats" and figure out how to solve the latest puzzles.  Most of the other games I had been playing have begun to crash too frequently to be fun anymore, but Simon's Cat still works pretty well on my "ancient" iPad Mini, even if Apple has stopped updating or supporting it for over a year.  The iPad is still in perfect shape, the battery still holds a charge for hours, and the camera is excellent so I don't plan to replace it any time soon.  I mostly just use it to play games and as a digital access point when I'm away from home (instead of hauling my laptop everywhere).

Now that I think about it, the other two games I'd been playing can be played on my laptop.  However, if I move over here to play, I'll lose my game progress -- in one case, that's about three years of progress, and I'm nearly finished with the game -- unless I connect it through Facebook, with I'm not thrilled about doing.  Oh, well, they're not that important.

What's important now is fulfilling the promise I made to the Emperor to get him out of bed -- make brunch -- and writing the thing I need to write before I can draft my stays pattern.