Puzzles

Do you do Sudoku?  How about Brain Training?  Crossword Puzzles?  Jigsaw Puzzles?  Solitaire?  I always have something going - Math Puzzles magazine in my purse.  Logic Puzzle book for the plane or car ride.  Something I can pick up and easily put down to pass the time.  It's a good subsitiute for patience.
Once, about 3 years ago, I was waiting for my daughter to get out of class in a French Café enjoying the small plate of most excellent pommes frites, that 5 euros will buy, when I had my hand snatched excitedly by a French woman close to my age.  She dragged me over to her table and fussed in her purse until she produced her own version of the hand held video game I had been playing.  The French version of the Nintendo DS complete with Brain Training, exactly like mine - but hers was in French of course.  She told me that her son had gotten her this to keep her brain active.  (Better translation of what she said, was "to keep her brain from dying".)  I told her that my son had given mine to me for the same reason.  She then told me that she was taking painting lessons in the same garret that could have been used by Gauguin and told me that I must come and see it.  Which I did.  Pretty amazing.  I always thought that the attics were used for painting because of the light.  But according to her it was actually because the paints were lighter than the other art mediums (granite, marble, iron, clay) and wouldn't come crashing down.  Since I am only half French, I only half believed her!  One of my most wonderful memories, and so I keep brain training to keep it available.