What the Heck?....

Recently I looked at my iTunes account balance.  It's been untouched for some time.  So I said to myself "What the heck with it" and decided to spend a bit of it on games for my iPhone (one can play a free version of Minesweeper for only so long).  One of my purchases was a game called "Transistor".  Initially I was rather cautious and only played my way through a few initial battles.  Then something clicked and I couldn't stop playing.  It took me a couple of sessions playing until the wee hours of the morning on Monday and Tuesday this week to finish the game.  Unfortunately, the long hours spent awake caught up to me.  The sore throat I got on Sunday, which was the result of belting out Zaz's "Champs-Élysées" a bit too exuberantly at karaoke, turned into an all out cold on Wednesday morning (today).  Symptoms are a sore throat, cough, and runny nose.

Ah...runny nose.  I've had some fun explaining that one to students.  Many of them encounter that in an elementary level text.  Up to that time they've only been introduced to using the verb "to run" for the physical activity of moving rapidly on foot.  It often takes me a few minutes to explain how the verb can be applied to the flow of moving liquid.

Anyways, I found myself in a situation where I need to blow my nose and there wasn't a box of tissues close by.  So I tore off a few sheets of toilet paper.  Whereupon I found myself whiffing a faint strawberry scent.  Yes, our office uses strawberry scented toilet paper with images of the Sanrio character Miffy printed on it.  Yet another "What the heck?" moment.  Who ever would of thought of making strawberry scented toilet paper.  The minor wonders of the world never cease to amaze me.

PS: "Transistor" is a darn good game.  One not only has to employ quick movements to control your character in battle, but you also have a mode of combat called "turn()" where you can lay out a series of attacks and movements to damage and destroy ones opponents.  That aspect of the game caught my fancy.  Some of the opponents are quite challenging and it took a bit of thought to figure out a "method", in an object oriented programming sense of things, to defeat them.  The programming metaphor is appropriate to this game.  The weapons your character has on hand are called "functions" and their names echo a syntax which is similar to that found in computer programming languages.