1. There is much to discuss regarding der Sturmtrumper and his Blitzkrieg assault on everything of moral value in the American republic and the larger world, but part of his goal is to overwhelm and disorient so I am going to take this post to discuss other things. Rest assured that my contempt for him and his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves remains unlimited, my rage at their calculated evil is unabated, and my plan to stay malevolently well informed regarding their moral, legal, and political failings remains intact. But sometimes you have to talk about other things.
2. The Eagles are going to the Super Bowl, which is a marvelous thing if you are a fan. Somewhere my dad is smiling. My interest in football has declined over the years, but I will always support the Birds. As of this writing I don’t know who they will be playing but I’m really hoping it’s Buffalo because the Chiefs are this decade’s Patriots and nobody needs to see them win anything again for a very long time. Fly, Eagles, fly.
3. I have now acquired a Reddit account. It has been deeply underwhelming so far, but perhaps this is because I still haven’t figured out how to make that site work. I’ve joined a forum (something about 1920s vintage photographs) and tried to browse it but it seems to repeat the same two dozen photos on a loop so I’m not sure what good it’s for. People insist that I can find anything I want on this site and maybe they’re right but at the moment it’s just another task.
4. I’ve also returned the Sleep Machine as it was not for me. I promised that I would give it an honest effort and I did – even swapped out the mask at one point – but I never did manage to make it work for more than 90 minutes. When not using the sleep aid provides better rest than using the sleep aid, it’s really not much of an aid, is it?
5. Classes start up at Home Campus tomorrow. On the one hand I’m pretty set for them – I’ve only got one class to prep (in addition to the one that never actually ends) and that’s set to go. I’ve gotten my advisees as prepped as I can at this point and now it’s just a matter of getting them in for appointments. And yet on the other hand, it feels like I’m going in blind. I suspect that the catastrophic avalanche of current events is just poisoning the air a bit, but we’ll see.
6. Last week we had a demonstration of a new software system that will replace some of (but not all of) another software system and we were assured that it is Amazing and Zowie and All Things To All People and I gotta say I didn’t leave that demonstration thinking that but perhaps that’s just me. Wouldn’t be the first time.
7. Sometimes you just have to drive an hour to go to an Italian deli and clean the place out, because the only way we’re going to get through the next few years is by treating ourselves and each other well. One must fight the revolution, but one should also have snacks if they are available to you.
8. We weren’t going to make very many plans for the summer, but it looks like plans are being made anyway. I will enjoy them, I have no doubt. I will be glad I took part in them. But at some point I will rest.
9. I really need to sit down and make a list of all the personal projects that I am trying to accomplish because yesterday I remembered a whole other project that I’d completely forgotten about and it’s not good to let them disappear like that. Either do them or dismiss them.
10. When all is said and done, we will remember the people who stood up for others, and we will remember the people who didn’t.
Sunday, January 26, 2025
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
The Week That Was
It’s been an absolutely horrifying week to be an American and it’s only Wednesday.
For those of you who live under rocks or who have somehow managed to remain in a drunken stupor since 2015, on Monday a twice-impeached convicted felon who somehow managed to escape the only proper punishment for treason was inexplicably sworn into office as this nation’s 47th president on a platform of revenge, bigotry, and open Fascism.
He wasted no time in proving the worst fears of patriots true.
He’s decided that he can unilaterally rewrite the Constitution and has announced the repeal of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. For those of you keeping score at home, that was put into the Constitution in 1868 to drive a stake through the poisonous heart of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision – the one that declared that only white people could ever be citizens of the United States because that’s how the white supremacists liked it. By making American citizenship dependent on the simple observable fact of being born here, the Constitution denies any attempt to make that citizenship dependent on the whims of assholes. Naturally, Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves wish to undo that so they can be the assholes who decide who gets to be an American. In any normal year this would be seen as the steaming bag of horseshit that it is but remember that we currently have a Supreme Court that has already declared that “it’s not illegal if the President does it,” which Richard Nixon would have killed for, so who knows whether their blind partisanship will be enough to give even more absolute power to this authoritarian bigot. It will be a close call, I suspect. This unilateral declaration of absolute authority is the kind of tyranny the Founding Fathers started a revolution over.
Although, there is the fact that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship is the only place in the Constitution where American citizenship is defined and thus provides the link that makes the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. And should it be overturned, I expect to see individual states imposing gun bans immediately.
He’s declared that he’s going to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – a law that the Federalist Party foisted off on John Adams as a way to destroy the Democratic Republican Party and which Adams was smart enough never to use – as a tool to deport millions of immigrants in violation of the plain text of that law. We are not in a “declared war” with any foreign nation and there is no “invasion or predatory incursion … perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.” Not that laws ever stopped this guy or are important to his minions, cronies, lackeys, or slaves.
He's decided he’s going to “take back” the Panama Canal because reasons. This would be a war of aggression against a sovereign state very similar to the grotesque violation of international law that Putin’s Russia is engaged with in Ukraine and would serve only to destroy the international order and what good standing the United States may still have across the world.
He’s pardoned over 1500 insurrectionists from the Trump Insurrection of 2021, some of whom murdered cops (so much for the party of law and order, I suppose). This is unbridled lawlessness and a sign of far worse to come. An insurrection that goes unpunished is called a dress rehearsal, after all.
He’s declared that there can only be two genders, as if that’s any of his concern and in blatant disregard of biology. Anyone who has studied biology past middle school knows that sex and gender are far more complicated than that, and it’s not anyone else’s concern what people want to call themselves anyway. Although he and his minions, cronies, lackeys and slaves are sufficiently stupid that the actual text of his executive order means that biologically that all Americans have been defined as female since male sexual organs don’t emerge until at least six weeks into pregnancy and it defines gender to be what it is “at conception.”
He’s removed all of the Spanish language web pages from the White House site, so congratulations all you Latinos who voted for him – you got played. FAFO.
He’s withdrawn from the World Health Organization, a spectacular own-goal in an age where Covid is still thriving and new epidemics are emerging on a regular basis. He understands that his supporters see preventative medicine as the enemy and are happy to volunteer to die in bulk from easily curable problems. They've served their purpose now that he's been elected and are now expendable, after all.
Just in case they prove more resilient than he thinks, he’s rescinded Biden’s executive order capping prices for medications. So enjoy not being able to pay for lifesaving drugs again, I suppose. Did he not get the message last month? Most Americans cheered when a health insurance executive was assassinated in broad daylight, after all.
He’s attempted to fire anyone in the federal government who dares to acknowledge that there are more people in the world besides straight white men.
At his inauguration his co-president gave the Nazi salute not once but twice, prompting exactly zero shame or remorse. When people show you who they are, believe them.
When an Episcopal bishop addressed the issue of mercy in her sermon while Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was in attendance he responded by howling in outrage and calling for vengeance against her, thus proving her point. Frankly, the fact that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump set foot in a church and was not instantly reduced to a smoking cinder is fairly conclusive proof of the non-existence of God.
There’s more. Lord above, there’s more.
It is going to be a vile and grotesque four years and I put the odds of the survival of the American republic at about 20% during that period. But I will be damned if I am going to let that asshole and his minions, cronies, lackeys and slaves do it without resistance.
It’s my country. They can fuck off.
For those of you who live under rocks or who have somehow managed to remain in a drunken stupor since 2015, on Monday a twice-impeached convicted felon who somehow managed to escape the only proper punishment for treason was inexplicably sworn into office as this nation’s 47th president on a platform of revenge, bigotry, and open Fascism.
He wasted no time in proving the worst fears of patriots true.
He’s decided that he can unilaterally rewrite the Constitution and has announced the repeal of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. For those of you keeping score at home, that was put into the Constitution in 1868 to drive a stake through the poisonous heart of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision – the one that declared that only white people could ever be citizens of the United States because that’s how the white supremacists liked it. By making American citizenship dependent on the simple observable fact of being born here, the Constitution denies any attempt to make that citizenship dependent on the whims of assholes. Naturally, Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves wish to undo that so they can be the assholes who decide who gets to be an American. In any normal year this would be seen as the steaming bag of horseshit that it is but remember that we currently have a Supreme Court that has already declared that “it’s not illegal if the President does it,” which Richard Nixon would have killed for, so who knows whether their blind partisanship will be enough to give even more absolute power to this authoritarian bigot. It will be a close call, I suspect. This unilateral declaration of absolute authority is the kind of tyranny the Founding Fathers started a revolution over.
Although, there is the fact that the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship is the only place in the Constitution where American citizenship is defined and thus provides the link that makes the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. And should it be overturned, I expect to see individual states imposing gun bans immediately.
He’s declared that he’s going to use the 1798 Alien Enemies Act – a law that the Federalist Party foisted off on John Adams as a way to destroy the Democratic Republican Party and which Adams was smart enough never to use – as a tool to deport millions of immigrants in violation of the plain text of that law. We are not in a “declared war” with any foreign nation and there is no “invasion or predatory incursion … perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government.” Not that laws ever stopped this guy or are important to his minions, cronies, lackeys, or slaves.
He's decided he’s going to “take back” the Panama Canal because reasons. This would be a war of aggression against a sovereign state very similar to the grotesque violation of international law that Putin’s Russia is engaged with in Ukraine and would serve only to destroy the international order and what good standing the United States may still have across the world.
He’s pardoned over 1500 insurrectionists from the Trump Insurrection of 2021, some of whom murdered cops (so much for the party of law and order, I suppose). This is unbridled lawlessness and a sign of far worse to come. An insurrection that goes unpunished is called a dress rehearsal, after all.
He’s declared that there can only be two genders, as if that’s any of his concern and in blatant disregard of biology. Anyone who has studied biology past middle school knows that sex and gender are far more complicated than that, and it’s not anyone else’s concern what people want to call themselves anyway. Although he and his minions, cronies, lackeys and slaves are sufficiently stupid that the actual text of his executive order means that biologically that all Americans have been defined as female since male sexual organs don’t emerge until at least six weeks into pregnancy and it defines gender to be what it is “at conception.”
He’s removed all of the Spanish language web pages from the White House site, so congratulations all you Latinos who voted for him – you got played. FAFO.
He’s withdrawn from the World Health Organization, a spectacular own-goal in an age where Covid is still thriving and new epidemics are emerging on a regular basis. He understands that his supporters see preventative medicine as the enemy and are happy to volunteer to die in bulk from easily curable problems. They've served their purpose now that he's been elected and are now expendable, after all.
Just in case they prove more resilient than he thinks, he’s rescinded Biden’s executive order capping prices for medications. So enjoy not being able to pay for lifesaving drugs again, I suppose. Did he not get the message last month? Most Americans cheered when a health insurance executive was assassinated in broad daylight, after all.
He’s attempted to fire anyone in the federal government who dares to acknowledge that there are more people in the world besides straight white men.
At his inauguration his co-president gave the Nazi salute not once but twice, prompting exactly zero shame or remorse. When people show you who they are, believe them.
When an Episcopal bishop addressed the issue of mercy in her sermon while Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was in attendance he responded by howling in outrage and calling for vengeance against her, thus proving her point. Frankly, the fact that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump set foot in a church and was not instantly reduced to a smoking cinder is fairly conclusive proof of the non-existence of God.
There’s more. Lord above, there’s more.
It is going to be a vile and grotesque four years and I put the odds of the survival of the American republic at about 20% during that period. But I will be damned if I am going to let that asshole and his minions, cronies, lackeys and slaves do it without resistance.
It’s my country. They can fuck off.
Monday, January 20, 2025
Thoughts on the Inauguration
In just a couple of hours, the United States will once again be governed by a grossly unqualified, deeply corrupt, easily manipulated conman who slid into the Oval Office on the votes of a minority of Americans for the second time in eight years and who has openly vowed to spend his time enriching his minions, cronies, lackeys, and slaves while using the powers of the federal government to persecute anyone who has ever crossed him – a group that will, given enough time, eventually include everyone.
It's going to be a long four years.
The Founding Fathers understood that republics were fragile things. Historically, they tended not to last very long for reasons that they saw as obvious. Republics have to meet very high requirements in order to survive, and in the end those requirements are not all that compatible with the whims and desires of the powerful.
Perhaps most importantly, they understood that a republic required leaders with virtue, which was defined very differently in the 18th century. We see virtue as a private moral quality today, often having to do with sexual matters though sometimes taken more broadly to mean a person’s individual ethics overall. This would have made no sense to the Founders, who saw virtue as a public quality. Virtue, to the Founders, was the ability of a man (always a man – there is a reason why “virtue” and “virile” are so similar) to rise above his petty, private interests and work for the common good of the whole. A proper leader was one who did what was best for the country, even at personal cost.
The paragon for this, of course, was George Washington. Washington was by no means a perfect person and there are legions of modern critics who delight in pointing this out, often at great length, but he was by the standards of the day virtuous. Twice in fifteen years he walked away from absolute power and returned to his home as a private citizen, and the United States owes him more than we could ever repay just for that precedent. He refused to enrich himself or his friends through his office, and the idea of using the powers of the federal government to persecute his enemies never occurred to him because he was neither contemptible nor petty.
We’ve come a long way since then.
Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump will come to office already disgraced by his actions and character, and he has promised to continue that trend during his regime. He plans a barrage of executive orders for his first day in office, a sign of someone who knows very well his agenda couldn’t survive even a Congress theoretically controlled by his own party and who has little if any use for Constitutional government anyway.
He is, as many of his own former administration members including high-ranking military officers were screaming at the American people to understand before the election, an outright Fascist who plans to rule as an absolute dictator. He has openly vowed to be the worst president this country has ever seen, and 49.8% of the 64% of American voters who bothered to cast their ballots in November will no doubt be cheering him on.
I will not.
I will do whatever is in my power as an American citizen and an American patriot to block his reign of terror. I fully expect that, given long enough in power, his administration will eventually turn its attention even to small fry like me and I will not survive that. Fascists do not tolerate dissent. Perhaps I will simply outlast him, though. Perhaps we may even win in the end, though nothing is guaranteed. But here I stand. I can do no other.
During World War II the United States of America gave medals to my ancestors for shooting Fascists, and I will not disgrace their memory by supporting it here at home now.
It's going to be a long four years.
The Founding Fathers understood that republics were fragile things. Historically, they tended not to last very long for reasons that they saw as obvious. Republics have to meet very high requirements in order to survive, and in the end those requirements are not all that compatible with the whims and desires of the powerful.
Perhaps most importantly, they understood that a republic required leaders with virtue, which was defined very differently in the 18th century. We see virtue as a private moral quality today, often having to do with sexual matters though sometimes taken more broadly to mean a person’s individual ethics overall. This would have made no sense to the Founders, who saw virtue as a public quality. Virtue, to the Founders, was the ability of a man (always a man – there is a reason why “virtue” and “virile” are so similar) to rise above his petty, private interests and work for the common good of the whole. A proper leader was one who did what was best for the country, even at personal cost.
The paragon for this, of course, was George Washington. Washington was by no means a perfect person and there are legions of modern critics who delight in pointing this out, often at great length, but he was by the standards of the day virtuous. Twice in fifteen years he walked away from absolute power and returned to his home as a private citizen, and the United States owes him more than we could ever repay just for that precedent. He refused to enrich himself or his friends through his office, and the idea of using the powers of the federal government to persecute his enemies never occurred to him because he was neither contemptible nor petty.
We’ve come a long way since then.
Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump will come to office already disgraced by his actions and character, and he has promised to continue that trend during his regime. He plans a barrage of executive orders for his first day in office, a sign of someone who knows very well his agenda couldn’t survive even a Congress theoretically controlled by his own party and who has little if any use for Constitutional government anyway.
He is, as many of his own former administration members including high-ranking military officers were screaming at the American people to understand before the election, an outright Fascist who plans to rule as an absolute dictator. He has openly vowed to be the worst president this country has ever seen, and 49.8% of the 64% of American voters who bothered to cast their ballots in November will no doubt be cheering him on.
I will not.
I will do whatever is in my power as an American citizen and an American patriot to block his reign of terror. I fully expect that, given long enough in power, his administration will eventually turn its attention even to small fry like me and I will not survive that. Fascists do not tolerate dissent. Perhaps I will simply outlast him, though. Perhaps we may even win in the end, though nothing is guaranteed. But here I stand. I can do no other.
During World War II the United States of America gave medals to my ancestors for shooting Fascists, and I will not disgrace their memory by supporting it here at home now.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Birthday Birds
The Eagles managed to hold on and beat the Rams today for the right to play at home next week in the NFC championship game. It was an ugly win in an occasionally blinding snowstorm, one that came down to the second-to-last play in large part because the Eagles kicker managed to miss not one but two extra points, but any win counts in the playoffs. It will look like a blowout in tomorrow’s papers.
Somewhere my dad is smiling.
My dad was a huge Eagles fan. They were his team the way the Phillies belonged to my grandfather and the Flyers belong to me. Whenever I hear people talking shit about Eagles fans I automatically think less of them, because he was the finest man I ever knew and they’re trying to talk shit about him. This does not fly with me, though today the Eagles did.
My dad would have been 86 today. The world has become a different place in many ways since he died in early 2016, some good and some not, but there are a lot of things have remained constant over that time.
I’m still an Eagles fan, just as he was.
And he is still the finest man I ever knew.
Happy birthday, Dad.
Somewhere my dad is smiling.
My dad was a huge Eagles fan. They were his team the way the Phillies belonged to my grandfather and the Flyers belong to me. Whenever I hear people talking shit about Eagles fans I automatically think less of them, because he was the finest man I ever knew and they’re trying to talk shit about him. This does not fly with me, though today the Eagles did.
My dad would have been 86 today. The world has become a different place in many ways since he died in early 2016, some good and some not, but there are a lot of things have remained constant over that time.
I’m still an Eagles fan, just as he was.
And he is still the finest man I ever knew.
Happy birthday, Dad.
Saturday, January 18, 2025
A Birthday on Ice
We had the last of my birthday celebrations for the current birthday cycle last night, and a good time it was.
My birthday present from Lauren was tickets to see the Madison Capitols, the minor-league hockey team that plays there. I looked it up and they’re roughly the equivalent of a top-tier Single-A team in baseball, which means that you have a lot of guys playing who are at the very beginning of their careers and still learning some of the basics but are capable of flashes of great play. They’re one notch above the team that plays here in Our Little Town. Lauren even got an extra ticket so Kim could come along with us and make it an evening. We had to schedule it for after all of the various holiday trips and travels were over – the Movable Feast Tradition in our family says that holidays happen when you have time for them, after all – and yesterday was the day.
But first there was dinner, because nothing in my world happens on an empty stomach. Wouldn’t be seemly. Probably wouldn’t end well. And since I got to choose and my tastes run toward the “order at the counter and go sit down” end of the restaurant spectrum, we went to a place called Stadium Takeout which has the best cheesesteaks in Wisconsin.
This is, of course, a relative term.
By Philadelphia standards these rise to the level of “acceptable,” but here in Wisconsin that is high praise indeed. I don’t know why, in a state full of beef and cheese, you can’t find a good cheesesteak, but there it is. I tried this place last summer and liked it enough to come back when my cheesesteak yen got big enough, and they were tasty enough to satisfy that craving and thus a good way to start a birthday celebration, especially when in good company.
My birthday present from Lauren was tickets to see the Madison Capitols, the minor-league hockey team that plays there. I looked it up and they’re roughly the equivalent of a top-tier Single-A team in baseball, which means that you have a lot of guys playing who are at the very beginning of their careers and still learning some of the basics but are capable of flashes of great play. They’re one notch above the team that plays here in Our Little Town. Lauren even got an extra ticket so Kim could come along with us and make it an evening. We had to schedule it for after all of the various holiday trips and travels were over – the Movable Feast Tradition in our family says that holidays happen when you have time for them, after all – and yesterday was the day.
But first there was dinner, because nothing in my world happens on an empty stomach. Wouldn’t be seemly. Probably wouldn’t end well. And since I got to choose and my tastes run toward the “order at the counter and go sit down” end of the restaurant spectrum, we went to a place called Stadium Takeout which has the best cheesesteaks in Wisconsin.
This is, of course, a relative term.
By Philadelphia standards these rise to the level of “acceptable,” but here in Wisconsin that is high praise indeed. I don’t know why, in a state full of beef and cheese, you can’t find a good cheesesteak, but there it is. I tried this place last summer and liked it enough to come back when my cheesesteak yen got big enough, and they were tasty enough to satisfy that craving and thus a good way to start a birthday celebration, especially when in good company.
The birthday card made it even better, as Lauren had gotten a number of friends to send birthday greetings and then combined them all into a short video. It was an astonishingly lovely thing, really.
After dinner we headed over to the ice rink, which is technically outside of the city by a small bit and thus has actual parking. It’s the little things!
The joy of minor league sports is that you can almost always get good seats right up on the action, and we certainly did. We were in the second row, maybe four feet from the ice, and right up on the action.
If I turned to my right, I was staring directly into the opposing team’s bench. Their backup goalie was maybe an arm’s length from me, though the chain link fence between me and him kept us both honest, I suppose. This seating meant I couldn’t really see the near corner of the ice to my right, but then very little of the game seemed to happen down at that end anyway. It also meant that when the opposing team pulled their goalie at the end of the game he came over and stood more or less next to me and I could read the back of his helmet – “My goal is to deny yours” it said, and I hope that kid makes it to the NHL someday just for that.
It was a pretty good game. The home team led 1-0 after the first period and 3-0 after two, and Lauren and I agreed that this was a good margin to be ahead by since less than that was worrying and more than that was kind of rude. And then the third period started and suddenly goals were everywhere – there were three goals scored in the first two minutes of the period – and when it was all over the Capitols had won 6-3 thus preserving the three-goal margin after all.
After the game we met up with Maxim at the cocktail bar where Lauren works and sampled some of the roughly three thousand different kinds of martinis that they make there. I can personally attest to the fact that the Chocolate Cherry Martini was wonderful. Since we were, technically, celebrating my birthday, they also threw in a half-size vanilla martini for me and it was similarly tasty. Add in a plate of mixed stuffed olives, a chicken pesto flatbread, and a lovely evening of conversation and it was a fine birthday celebration indeed.
Happy birthday to me, once again!
Friday, January 17, 2025
News and Updates
1. I’m enjoying the last few days of the American republic. I suspect I’ll come back to these memories a lot in the coming years.
2. Why is it that every trip to Costco requires an entire shopping cart and costs $400 even if all you initially wanted to buy were cheese puffs? They didn’t even have the cheese puffs this time. We made up for this by purchasing a lifetime supply of shredded cheddar and citrus fruit, and a package of the world’s longest beef sticks. Please note that I am not complaining about any of this, just observing.
3. We now have a new sofa, which Kim has been wanting for years. Our old sofa was a maroon leather Sam’s Club model that we got because we figured it would be easier to clean when the kids were little and in fairness a) we were right about that and b) it held up pretty well for over two decades. But now we are old and wanted something we could sit on for more than an hour at a time without back pain, so last month Kim asked me to go look at sofas at a local furniture store – “just to look!” – and we ended up buying one, as I knew very well we would. It’s grey and comfortable and three much younger people delivered it last week and set it up and so far it’s really nice. Oliver and I took the old one down to the Gamer Nook in the basement where it will likely be passed on to whomever buys this house from us because that thing is heavier than it looks and we’re not bringing it back up. He says it’s nice to have it there.
4. Midgie has decided that the new sofa is acceptable, which is good of her.
5. It is a strange in-between time down at Home Campus, where I am mostly working from home because there is precious little for me to do on campus until the big campus retreats start up next week and the students return the following week. I can do pretty much everything I need to do here while not having to leave the house – three cheers for remote meetings, I suppose – and the few students who need to see me I can handle by going in one or two days a week. That counts as a win in my book.
6. Anniversaries come and anniversaries go and what are you going to do about them, that’s what I want to know.
7. Our tollway transponders are being phased out in favor of stickers, and I am sure someone can explain how that works even if I don’t particularly want them to do so. I’m not convinced about this at all and I expect that I will get nastygrams from the toll agency about that, but so it goes. We’ll have that conversation as needed.
8. Having now picked up three different people from two separate airports in the last three weeks, I think I am done with that for a while. It’s nice to see people and hear their stories, though. Lauren had a good time visiting Arden and that is a lovely thing.
9. I need to get my next class up and running for the spring, which means putting it all into Canvas and deciding how much of it I want to change. There are at least two discussion assignments I want to replace and if I can get about four years further in lectures then I will arrive at a good stopping point. So, work to be done. At least it’s fun work.
10. I also have several long-term personal projects that I need to work on, some of which involve other people and outlays of money and some of which just require me to sit in front of a computer and move things around into files. Also, tea.
2. Why is it that every trip to Costco requires an entire shopping cart and costs $400 even if all you initially wanted to buy were cheese puffs? They didn’t even have the cheese puffs this time. We made up for this by purchasing a lifetime supply of shredded cheddar and citrus fruit, and a package of the world’s longest beef sticks. Please note that I am not complaining about any of this, just observing.
3. We now have a new sofa, which Kim has been wanting for years. Our old sofa was a maroon leather Sam’s Club model that we got because we figured it would be easier to clean when the kids were little and in fairness a) we were right about that and b) it held up pretty well for over two decades. But now we are old and wanted something we could sit on for more than an hour at a time without back pain, so last month Kim asked me to go look at sofas at a local furniture store – “just to look!” – and we ended up buying one, as I knew very well we would. It’s grey and comfortable and three much younger people delivered it last week and set it up and so far it’s really nice. Oliver and I took the old one down to the Gamer Nook in the basement where it will likely be passed on to whomever buys this house from us because that thing is heavier than it looks and we’re not bringing it back up. He says it’s nice to have it there.
4. Midgie has decided that the new sofa is acceptable, which is good of her.
5. It is a strange in-between time down at Home Campus, where I am mostly working from home because there is precious little for me to do on campus until the big campus retreats start up next week and the students return the following week. I can do pretty much everything I need to do here while not having to leave the house – three cheers for remote meetings, I suppose – and the few students who need to see me I can handle by going in one or two days a week. That counts as a win in my book.
6. Anniversaries come and anniversaries go and what are you going to do about them, that’s what I want to know.
7. Our tollway transponders are being phased out in favor of stickers, and I am sure someone can explain how that works even if I don’t particularly want them to do so. I’m not convinced about this at all and I expect that I will get nastygrams from the toll agency about that, but so it goes. We’ll have that conversation as needed.
8. Having now picked up three different people from two separate airports in the last three weeks, I think I am done with that for a while. It’s nice to see people and hear their stories, though. Lauren had a good time visiting Arden and that is a lovely thing.
9. I need to get my next class up and running for the spring, which means putting it all into Canvas and deciding how much of it I want to change. There are at least two discussion assignments I want to replace and if I can get about four years further in lectures then I will arrive at a good stopping point. So, work to be done. At least it’s fun work.
10. I also have several long-term personal projects that I need to work on, some of which involve other people and outlays of money and some of which just require me to sit in front of a computer and move things around into files. Also, tea.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Christmas II: This Time It's Ukrainian
We completed our annual round of Family Christmases this past weekend in style, with a day of good food, good company, and a fair bit of driving because this is America and that’s just how we roll.
There was much baking in the run-up to this, of course. There always is. Kim made bread and a poppyseed cake, and I figured out why my pizzelles were coming out too thick and fixed that so this batch of pizzelles was nice and crisp. Pizzelles are my entry ticket to this otherwise Ukrainian festival. I’m the DEI baker that way. There is a certain “coals to Newcastle” quality about bringing all of this food along with us, but in a tasty way.
We arrived not long before dinner, and there was much preparation in the works. Many cookies. Borscht. Sausages. Pierogies. Halupchi. Potato pancakes. And so on. If a sudden blizzard were to strand us there, we’d have been in good shape. We might not have even noticed. Honestly, we might have cheered.
There was much baking in the run-up to this, of course. There always is. Kim made bread and a poppyseed cake, and I figured out why my pizzelles were coming out too thick and fixed that so this batch of pizzelles was nice and crisp. Pizzelles are my entry ticket to this otherwise Ukrainian festival. I’m the DEI baker that way. There is a certain “coals to Newcastle” quality about bringing all of this food along with us, but in a tasty way.
We arrived not long before dinner, and there was much preparation in the works. Many cookies. Borscht. Sausages. Pierogies. Halupchi. Potato pancakes. And so on. If a sudden blizzard were to strand us there, we’d have been in good shape. We might not have even noticed. Honestly, we might have cheered.
There was a certain amount of hanging out while everyone filtered in. Naturally we – being the furthest away – arrived first, because that’s how it always is with any group. You have to plan ahead when you live a bit away and take into account possible delays along the route. When you’re right there, you can just roll out and head on over. But the hanging out is the point, really – holidays are meant for gatherings and conversations.
And eating. There is always the eating part. That’s important too.
We are professionals that way, and we endeavored to live up to those standards. You can’t get everyone around the same table for these holidays so there were two tables and even then there was a certain amount of hot-seating as people finished and got up and were replaced by other people. It is a constant swirl of motion with new seatmates to talk with on a regular basis. It keeps things interesting.
There are enough small people on this side of the family that we still do the traditional Christmas gift time, though it’s a fairly informal thing. When enough people have finished eating and the little ones can wait no more the gifts come out and then there is a Festival Of Unwrapping And Exclamations and all is right with the world.
Of course, for the rest of us there is the Dice Game, a tradition on both sides of my family now. In the wake of last year’s results we implemented a new rule for this year: no kitchen items. It was mostly obeyed, which meant that there was a wider variety of things in the mix, the most fought over being a calendar of pictures of things found in nature that look like penises because who would object to that on their office wall? Nobody, that’s who.
The dice went around and around and eventually we all had our gifts. I don’t remember who ended up with the four-foot-tall Santa but I suspect we’ll see that again in a future year.
And so our Christmas is mostly done now. All we have left to do is our Christmas card, which might get out by Valentine’s Day this year if we focus on it. Might not. Never a bad time for a card, really.
To all a good night.
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