News and Updates

1. One of my favorite scenes in all of film comes from Lawrence of Arabia.  It’s early in the film, and it revolves around the idea of extinguishing a match with one's fingers.  Lawrence does this.  Then someone else tries it, and the following dialogue ensues:

“Oh!  It damn well hurts!”
“Of course it hurts.”
“What’s the trick, then?”
“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”

I find that this is a good bit of dialogue to keep in the forefront of my mind these days.

2. So far all of the turkeys have survived, despite one going through a bout of spraddle (where his legs splay out and he has to hump himself around by his wings, which is fatal if not corrected).  I am not entirely sure when it became normal for me to have live poultry in my house or know the definition of things like “spraddle,” but life takes you in strange directions.

3. Yesterday: 35F and snowing sideways.  Today: 73F and sunny.  Tomorrow: Plagues of locusts.  But temperate, so that has to count for something.

4. All of the high school and middle school orchestras in Our Little Town had a concert on Thursday, led by one of the guys who founded the Trans Siberian Orchestra.  It was all about the marriage of rock and symphonic music, so it was loud, energetic, and a great deal of fun even if we couldn’t see Tabitha playing her violin since she was stuck in the back somewhere.  She enjoyed it, too.  Of course it was too loud and I am too old, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good time anyway.

5. I spent part of yesterday cleaning out my office at home and uncovered a pile of tasks that needed to have been done sometime earlier.  I suppose I’ll get to them this week.

6. I wasn’t sure whether I would be of any use going back to work on Tuesday, but I decided that I’d take Tabitha to school and then figure it out once I got home since I’ve got an hour to make that call.  And then I got into a fender-bender at the end of my driveway.  Nobody was hurt and the damage to both vehicles was fairly minor, though it did answer the question of just how useful I’d be at work that day so I stayed home.  Now it’s mostly paperwork and getting my car into the shop for repairs.

7. The Wisconsin primary is this week, which means we have been the focus of a great deal of attention from those who wish to be president and their supporters.  It has been an unmitigated nuisance.  I will be glad not to have the various candidates underfoot so much and to have my phone marginally less encumbered by spam phone calls as their attention naturally shifts to the next primary state and they begin to bother other people instead of me.

8.  There is a large block of very good cheese sitting in my refrigerator, courtesy of good friends, and there is a lovely bottle of red wine in the hall closet.  At some point soon they should converge on my tongue.