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Sunday Gratitude – 18.X.2026
Hi everyone! Glad to be back here. I’m still struggling with a lot, and there’s a lot that’s really overwhelming. However, I’m going to give it a shot as far as gratitude here.
Most importantly, probably, is that my son had a surgery on his ear a couple of weeks back, and everything went really, really well. Yes, he had the same surgery back in February on the other ear, and it went really well, but there’s still a good bit of nervousness attached to all these things.
Secondly, I recently took part in the Serbian Orthodox Choral Association’s annual choir festival. Because it was only a week after the surgery, I wasn’t going to go, but then there were people who had signed up who either couldn’t go or couldn’t sing, and I was asked if there might be some way that I could go. I managed to get things arranged, and I went. It was an amazing trip, and I hope to write about it separately. Most of us who went ended up driving, including the people I rode with, but everything went off without a hitch, there were no accidents or incidents with the driving, and the event was a lot of fun. I am very grateful for that, and for getting to see the city and experience the city a little.
If any of you are interested, our choir’s performance can be found here (our group starts at 45:15):
The weather has gotten cooler, and I’m grateful for that (St. Louis at over 90F was quite a shock to the system). This just seems to be one of those patches that is especially rough, so I’d appreciate your prayers for me and my kids.
Thank you ever so much for following; you are amazing!
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Thank you very much!
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Wordle #447
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Still hanging on to using “baste”. “E” correct; “T” in the wrong place. The letters are so common, it’s not a lot to go on.
Line 2: I figured if “T” wasn’t in position #4, it was fairly likely to begin the word, and we see here that it does, and while more letters have been eliminated, there are still a lot of 5-letter words that begin with “T” and end with “E”.
Line 3: So now we work on eliminating more letters as possibilities…
Line 4: “Thyme” seems like it would be a great Wordle solution, so I’m a little surprised that the “Y” is incorrect…
Line 5: Therefore, it’s “theme” – yay!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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I’m like a bird…
…I keep flying into windows
About a week ago, I was sitting in the living room of my house with Middle Daughter, and, all of a sudden, we heard a very distinctive “thunk”.
We both knew what that meant – once again, some little bird had come crashing into our front windows.
It doesn’t actually make any sense; the house I live in has a little bit of an overhang in the front; it kind of gives the illusion that the top floor is wider than ground level, but it also creates a little bit of a front “patio”. Many say that the birds mistake the reflections off windows for the real thing, but it hardly makes sense here; not only do the birds have to fly between the posts and under the overhang, it’s not like we have a big picture window – the window section itself is comprised of four vertical panel windows.
Yet somehow, this set of four windows is a bit of a bird magnet. When we hear that thunk, we know that some other poor bird has headed straight into them. They always seem to be these little brown birds, and a couple of them have actually died on impact.
In any case, on this day, we went over to the window to look out, and there was the little bird, lying on its side, the wing under it looking as if it were not quite in the right place. At first, it almost seemed as if it might be dead, but it had its eyes open, and it was obviously still breathing.
After a few minutes, the little bird got to its feet, and stood there another couple of minutes, like the bird in the picture here. It stood incredibly still, dazed from the hit, eyes not completely “with it” and beak partially open.
I looked a little bit into what would need to be done if the bird needed more help, but it then hopped to a more hidden spot about a foot away, stayed there a couple additional minutes, then, I assume, flew off. Once the bird was standing, it didn’t look like anything was wrong with its wing, but I’m sure the bird was very sore for a couple of days after this.
It is amazing to me that these little creatures that can fly on the wind with ease, can travel hundreds of miles in groups, and are pretty adept at avoiding predators can be fooled by a set of windows that are obviously not the sky.
At the same time, at the moment I feel like I am a lot like the little bird, having “hit a window”, and working on the part of getting back up and keeping going. It’s what they are programmed in their genetics to do. For us, it’s easy to talk about giving up when we do “hit the windows” (or a wall) but even if we do need a little bit of time to regroup, it’s important to get up and keep going as much as possible.
Yesterday, I was sitting in the living room again, and once again, I heard the familiar “thunk”. Lord have mercy. Luckily, the bird did not hit with as much force, and it didn’t even look like the bird went through the stage of laying on its side, so I felt like I could go outside and get a couple of pictures without disturbing it too badly. (Thank goodness for a decent zoom!) In the picture above, the bird’s eyes aren’t open completely, but its beak is kind of open… Still stunned, but recovering. Just a couple of minutes later, the bird was gone, because that’s what these little birds know to do.
I could add in Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like A Bird” here, which is kind of the easy thing, but instead, I’ll share Jim Croce’s “The Hard Way Every Time”.
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Wordle #446
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Still hanging on to using “baste”. “A” and “S”, but not in the correct placement. Considering all the 5-letter-words with those letters, this might be a big challenge!
Line 2: “A” is correct, but the “S” still needs to find the right position.
Line 3: Oh, boy… If I go “hard mode”, I can only change that one letter, and there are, technically, a good number of letters this could be. Should I play a word solely to figure out the mystery letter, or guess one at a time?
Line 4: Looking at the options, and knowing that Wordle generally does not play 4-letter words that are merely plurals, I figured “class” was a better choice to guess than say, “claws”. If this hadn’t have worked, I would have gone for a letter eliminator word, but thankfully, it did work!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #445
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: “Baste” again. An “E” in the wrong position; not much to go on.
Line 2: Not much help here; I should have remembered to move the “E”!
Line 3: Why not go for something kind of strange? The position of “E” would make an “O” or a “U” in the word kind of odd.
Line 4: It was a good guess, but one of the few I could think of at the time where “L” was neither in the 2nd position, nor “R” at the end.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #444
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: “Baste” again. “A” is good; “T” needs to be moved
Line 2: No new letters
Line 3: Finally, we know where the “T” is! On to figuring out more letters!
Line 4: One new letter, but in the wrong place.
Line 5: But of course, I would pick the other word that fits 4 of the 5 slots!
Line 6: Phew, indeed! I knew I’d get it though. There are ones that make me more nervous to get to six!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #443
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: No luck with “baste” here.
Line 2: And no luck with “fling”.
Line 3: You’re getting to see 3 of the 4 base words here… The “H” and the “P” are correct
Line 4: “W” seemed to be the only consonant left that could go before an “H”. The only (normal) vowel left seemed to be “O”, so considering these things, I played “whoop” and solved the puzzle! 🙂
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #442
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Starting with “baste” again, and the word has “T” and “E”, but in different places.
Line 2: More letters, but still all in the incorrect spaces
Line 3: This really wasn’t my top game, obviously “I” and “N” are in the same places, but I was so tired, I didn’t even notice that until after I had played the word.
Line 4: What in the world is “niter”? (Niter definition) At the very least, letters are finally in the correct position, which leaves only one word…
Line 5: “Inter” – and of course, it took me a minute to realize it as it is as a word in its own right – as in “he was interred at Riverview Cemetery” – rather than the prefix that heads so many of our tech terms now. Yes, I was really tired when I did this.
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #441
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Starting with “baste” again. No luck here.
Line 2: On to the next base word. “G” and “L”, but not starting the word, because “L” isn’t in the second place.
Line 3: My next guess is to move the “L” to the 4th position and turn it into an “LY” word. “Godly” fits the bill, and all three of the correct letters are now in the right places.
Line 4: I would have rather have had something that didn’t have the double “L”, but being as I had used “A”, “E”, “I”, and “O” and none of those vowels are in the puzzle, I figured that the vowel had to be “U”, and “gully” was the only thing that came to mind. Thankfully, it was the correct word!
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #440
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: Using “baste’ again. Only letter here is “A” but in the wrong position
Line 2: Playing “champ”, as it kind of belongs to the “base words”. It does really, really well here. 🙂
Line 3: Third time’s the “charm”, isn’t it?
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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Wordle #439
Never played Wordle? Check out my Wordle strategy page!
Wordle explanations are posted a day late to ensure that no one accidentally sees the solution before playing.
Line 1: I changed up one of my base words to make it more common to get an ending “E”. Unfortunately, it didn’t help here, because none of the letters are in this word!
Line 2: So, where I changed up one base word, I thought to myself, “Why not do that again?”. This was slightly better, in that we can see that there’s an “I” in the word.
Line 3: Considering that an “I” would most likely be in one of the three middle spots, I thought maybe an “oi” combination would be appropriate. “GR” seems to be the most likely blend with the unused letters.
Line 4: It’s quite curious that there is “I” and “N” and “G” in the word, but “ING” doesn’t end the word. What is even more curious is that the “N” and the “G” are now in the correct spots, but the “I” is not. Therefore the “I” has to start or end the word. It’s more likely, in general, that “I” will start the word, but as I look at this, I can think of one major exception…
Line 5: Bingo! “Fungi”
Did you get this Wordle? Tell me about it in the comments!
Happy Gaming!
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