There are no pics this week.

The world’s gone mad

I don’t like hand cream. But as I got older and my fingers started cracking in the dryness of winter, it became the lesser evil. I finally found one that was less obnoxious than most and got two large jars, one for work and one for home. It came to pass that I used the last of this cream lately. Fortunately, I knew what to buy — Gold Bond. When I got to the store,  found 8 types of Gold Bond, with no idea which was the one that might be similar to what I had been using.

Books

I had terrible luck queuing books from the library. If I wanted to finish the book I had without incurring a fine, I had to read 400 pages in 2 days. That’s hardly an impossible task, but it’s not how I prefer to enjoy books. I finally worked through all the backlog and turned to one I got as a gift — James Gleik’s “The Information”. The book is about as strange as the title. The the author climaxes the preface with the idea that the “bit” (the smallest unit of information) is the fundamental unit of the universe. I decided to try the first chapter before giving up. I found an amazing discussion of African talking drums, among other things. Gleik jumps all over the place. He creates causality from the weakest evidence. And he presents some totally amazing ideas. when I agree and when I disagree, this is an incredible read.

Movies

There isn’t much on TV this time of year. There is the Rose Bowl Parade, but that’s only 2 hours. It’s a good time to look for movies using our Amazon Prime account. One evening we watched “Coherence”. It reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode, without Rod Sterling. I loved it. Danita hated it.

Holiday activities

Having a financial plan for retirement is one thing. Actually executing it is another. That first action was emotionally difficult. It marks a transition. No matter how much we look forward, we know that having started on the next leg of our journey, there’s no turning back. Our timing was not prompted by the holiday. It is total coincidence that the time to start executing our plan was the week before the new year. But it is a symbolic coincidence.

New Year: It’s silliest of ideas, that one day out of the year is more important than all the others. But it can be a fun way to acknowledge the passing of time. How would you like to celebrate the end of an old year and the start of a new? Would you like to stay up until midnight and then make some noise? What’s the point? Are we trying to scare off evil demons that might sneak in on the start of the year? How silly. Perhaps it would it be better to have a killer breakfast at Miss Shirley’s in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor! How about if the breakfast included validated parking and a dawn walk across the 7th floor sky bridge?

Our new parish has family dinners more or less monthly. Everybody is invited. There is no fee. There’s a donation box, but nobody seems to be overly worried about it. The only purpose of the dinner is to promote interaction among the parishioners. Those who wish to, bring their own libations. Some might call it a party. Danita and I volunteered as servers. In truth, there wasn’t much work. One of the groups at one of my tables brought the libations but forgot a bottle opener. Fortunately, I have a cool pocket multi-tool. I love to play with it, and it can open bottles. I wasn’t willing to lend them my tool, but we had some fun opening bottles as their dinner progressed. It was a lot of fun watching all those people talk and eat and have a good time. This dinner was last night. It is possible to have a dinner this time of the year with nobody mentioning the New Year.

Danita is enjoying 2 weeks at home, largely by cooking. She cooked dinners ahead until the freezer was full. Then she started cooking for church. She made brownies for the dinner. Today she plans to make a casserole for St. Vincent’s Place. Unfortunately the casserole is supposed to be frozen. After over a week of very cold 20 degree evenings, temperatures have climbed 20 degrees. It won’t be possible to freeze the casserole by setting it outside overnight. And the freezer is packed. Fortunately, Danita is a clever and resourceful person. I have no doubt we will deliver a frozen casserole Sunday morning.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.