Play Chuzzle!

I have a terrible confession to make. I have been absent from my beloved blog for almost two weeks and it is because I am an addict. I have treated my friends badly, neglected my work, forgotten to feed the dogs. My tea is cold by the time I remember it and in the last week or so, I've walked off with the laptop while it was still connected to the camera more than just a few times.

It all happened over Christmas when we were trying to entertain children and we discovered Chuzzle. It's not a drink or a drug, but it might as well be. It's a computer game and I can't stop. I mean it. I. Can't. Stop.

I might as well be handcuffed to my computer. And to think, it was just an innocent (and, in my defense, very successful) effort to entertain, primarily, a six year old. She went home Chuzzle-free however, and I am sitting here a week later glued to a computer game, considering taking up smoking to keep my hands otherwise occupied.

I also blame the Y Chromosome Who Lives In My House because he was the one who found it and he showed me how to keep finding new trials of it until I finally downloaded a virus. You'd think that would have stopped me. But no. The infected laptop went flying under the couch somewhere and I'm now using my retired laptop, which is almost ten years old and weighs about 47 pounds.

Finally, I downloaded an official version of the game for about $10 after a frantic and risky internet search for a discount coupon. It's a good thing I purchased it so early in my Chuzzling career because I think if I had waited much longer, at this stage, someone could have charged me 100 times that amount and I would be stealing money from my neighbors to get it.

When I went back to work on Tuesday I almost cried and in a lame attempt to cheer me up, the Y Chromosome suggested that I take my laptop to work but to make sure I turned the sound off.

I didn't think that was funny at all. And it was very disrespectful too.

Apparently, Chuzzle has been around since 2005. Obviously, its remarkable ingenuity has been long recognized by far greater minds than mine. In case you haven't had the pleasure of acquainting yourself to it, allow me:



The display screen consists of 36 little chuzzles that sort of bounce around to a hip little drum beat. Don't ask me what chuzzles are -- they look like swishy fuzz balls and they're all different colors with big eyeballs that follow your curser. As you drag them around and group them by color, they explode and their eyes fly into a bottle that racks up points. (Who came up with that?) The game doesn't appear to have any rules, doesn't require any thoughtful strategy, and bonus points get awarded for no apparent reason whatsover. As you can imagine, under these conditions, I am astonishingly awesome at this game.

When I close my eyes, I see chuzzle imprints on my eyelids. When I get up in the morning, I immediately start thinking about when I can start playing Chuzzle again. I promise myself just one more game and four (fourty) of them later, it's midnight. I hear Chuzzle music in every advertising jingle and have considered loading it up on my i-Pod. I think I might even want to be a chuzzle when I grow up. My name is X and I am a chuzzle. No, wait, that would be for the 12-step program.


Seriously though, tonight is the last night I'm playing this game, I swear it.