In retrospect, our Christmas turned out to be a little more quiet than we would have preferred. We opened presents in the morning. Then Danita prepared a brunch and we took it to Mom’s. We had quiche, fruit, and muffins. It was all very good.

I received a gift that I think is way cool. Of course, some may not understand its significance, but I think it’s an amazing idea. It’s a digital sundial. It actually displays time in digital format (like this: “12:40”). It needs no batteries, computers, or WiFi. It has one moving part. You set the time by twisting the sundial body. As simple as it is to use, it is based on some math that I frankly don’t understand. Digital sundial math What could be cooler than that? I’m a little frustrated that we haven’t had a day of good strong sunshine, so the display is not very good. I’m including a picture from the internet.

Our parish has two teams counting the plate. Each team counts once every four weeks. The other team got the checks wrong two times in a row. For some reason I don’t understand, getting checks wrong is a much bigger deal than getting cash wrong. Our bank threatened to prohibit our dropping the deposit in their night box. If we got it wrong again, we would have to send two people to wait in the bank while tellers counted. If there was a discrepancy, the two would make a corrective entry in the deposit slip. Obviously, nobody wants to sit in the bank lobby for a hour or two. Our pastor gave us his best half-time motivational speech. Because our team consistently gets it right, there was some less-than-good-natured grumbling about the other team — until I warned that we could end up doing all the counts. Nobody on our team wants that either. All in all, it was a big hoora.

Because our team prefers to count the Christmas plate separate from the regular weekly offerings, we have another count January 5. Hopefully the residual bad feelings will have been resolved.

We’re getting ready for our big vacation. This is a two-month jaunt in the western US (Jan 8 – March 1). We are deciding on clothing, counting pills, and deciding where we will have our last Sunday breakfast. (Bob Evans won.) Details to follow!

I hope this finds everybody doing well.