Sudoku Monster

A force has entered my life that threatens to ruin everything I've worked for - my career, my relationships, and my sanity.

Sudoku.

The dark force was introduced to me in March by my dear "friend" Erika. She cautioned me it was addictive but I didn't heed to her warnings. Then again, she sent me home with sample puzzles, so technically, she is an enabler as well.

Sudoku, for those of you who don't know, is of all things, a logical number puzzle game. The logic behind me loving this game escapes me as math is, and has always been, my worst subject. The aim of the puzzle is to enter a number from 1 through 9 in each cell of a 9×9 grid made up of 3×3 subgrids, starting with various numbers already given in some cells. Each row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral.

I had never heard of Sudoku before Erika showed me the ways of the dark side. Suddenly, I notice Sudoku puzzles in the newspaper and puzzle books at stores everywhere. I even found a website where you can play games online and time yourself. (I have learned through this site that I officially suck at the game, whereas about 76% of the players kick my ass in how quickly they can solve a puzzle).

I bought my first Sudoku book at Target about a week after visiting Erika. It contained 100 puzzles and I'm already down to the last 25 in the book. They go from easy, to harder, to tough, and I'm about to start the diabolical level. Reaching level tough means solving the puzzles is no longer fun. At level tough, Sudoku becomes a frustrating guessing game where the answer you think is correct, usually isn't. I'm terrified of what the diabolical level will do to my mind.

I bought a second Sudoku book last week while waiting for the ferry. The book claims to have a years worth of puzzles, but as I told Tim, I give the book four months tops at best before the puzzles are solved.

I can no longer help myself...I play Sudoku all the time now. I play while watching TV at night and before going to bed. Somedays I wake up and think about how many games I can squeeze in between jobs. Tim sighs everytime I pull one of my books out. Even my cat Angel has taken to attacking my pencil while I'm playing as if she's trying to stage an intervention or something.

Where computer solitaire games once possessed me, Sudoku has swooped in to take over. I need help obviously. Is there a Sudoku Anonymous out there?

The Hoff and Me...

For the love of God, I do not love David Hasselhoff!

In fact, I deplore him. And yet somehow, the Hoff and I have become synonymous. I feel the need to defend my reputation from being a Hoff groupie...so here goes.

It all started as a joke. Someone sent me the "Hooked on a Feeling" video last year and after laughing hysterically, sent it out to all my friends with a sense of humor. (If you haven't seen it and need some comic relief, you have to visit http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2433520 immediately!)I didn't realize the monster this would create.

Soon afterwards the strangest David Hasselhoff items began arriving in my inbox. First there were the annual Hoff calendars, followed by random links to Hoff photos and games where you can shave Hasselhoff's chest hair off. Then when it was announced he was leaving his wife, I must of received 20 emails from friends to alert me to the news. It began to occur to me that every time my friends saw anything Hoff from Knight Rider to Baywatch, they thought of me. I find this thought incredibly disturbing. Associate me with being funny or kind...but a Hasselhoff fan? NOOOOO!

The final straw was coming home in November from vacation to find a seven-foot-long cardboard cutout of David Hasselhoff on my bed. My "wonderful" friend Rick was housesitting and decided that I was missing a larger-than-life Hasselhoff in my home.



I can't even begin to tell you how unsettling this cutout is in real life, and how much it scared the begeezers out of me after a 26-hour travel day from hell. If the home attack wasn't enough of a violation, I returned to work the next day only to find some other "friends" had attacked my cubicle with images of David Hasselhoff that were so perturbing I couldn't even concentrate. (Why the theme of David Hasselhoff and animals? Has PETA been alerted?) Not only that, a new employee was hired that week and I had to introduce myself as the woman with the Hoff crap in her cube. You just know he was telling people about "that crazy woman" at work who has some strange Hasselhoff fetish.

So to my "friends" stop it already. I have all the Hoff one girl can handle for a lifetime.

Ooga chaka...ooga chaka...