Rex and Oscar

Today I want to write about two important men in my life. One is a very cerebral blogger. The other always appears in public in the nude.

One of my favourite leisure activities is doing crosswords. I like puzzles and games of all kinds, but I love doing the Sunday NY Times crossword. We used to do it together. I still do it most weekends. Here in Raincity the NY Times Sunday puzzle appears the following Saturday in the Vancouver Sun. So I am always a week behind.

Today I did a particularly (I thought) difficult one. I had to google many of the clues. If I can finish it without googling anything I call the puzzle easy. Then I check it on this blog: http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/ Rex, of course, is a pseudonym. I have a theory that Rex's real name has the initials "R" and "E" because the "X" in Rex can be put with "word" to create an abbreviation for crossword: Xword.

Rex rated yesterday's puzzle as medium. He does puzzles every day and competes in tournaments, so he must be good. He finished yesterday's in eleven and a half minutes!!!! It took me a couple of hours over two days and some googling to get it. Even then, I had two letters wrong. Some people think because they filled in all the letters, they have it right, but if I check, I often find some mistakes in mine. So Rex really helps me with Xwords.

Anyway, each puzzle has a theme and if you can get the theme it goes a long way to helping solve the puzzle. Some of the themes are quite original and complicated; some are simple. There are many links from Rex's blog to other Xword pages. If you like Xwords, you might want to cozy up to Rex like I do.

Today is a rainy Sunday and I spent some time today thinking about the other man in my life, Oscar. As in golden statuette. I am planning an Oscar Party. I love seeing the gowns and jewels and the touching, funny or just plain stupid acceptances speeches. It looks as if the writers' strike will be settled soon and the Oscars will be a go. Yay. Turner Classic Movie network has been showing Oscar-winning movies for a week. I've caught a few and really enjoyed them.

Bye, bye for now. Hey, get out here and blog!

One of my favourite quotes from one of this year's nominees: JUNO
Vanessa Loring: Your parents are probably wondering where you are.
Juno MacGuff: Nah... I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into?