NYE

Our planet Earth has done it again – passed another orbital milestone. For approximately the 4.5 billionth time, it has completed a circle around its central star – our Sun. All over the world, people use this orbital completion as an excuse to party and celebrate. Sure and begorrah, I’ll drink to that. Par-tay!

The New Year has already arrived in some places. Its passage has been celebrated in Christmas Island and Samoa, in New Zealand and Australia, in China and Japan, in India and Sri Lanka, in Iran and Iraq, in Russia and western Europe. Now, it is hurtling west across the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour. In a while it will touch Venezuela. It will hit the east coast of Canada and America. The New Year will finally arrive in my small burg. It will keep on going, headed west across mountains, prairies, and deserts. It will continue on to Mexico and California, past Alaska and Hawaii, past French Polynesia and Midway Atoll.

I went to bed at 12:30 AM this morning. I slept until 3 AM, at which point I got out of bed. I knew I wouldn’t sleep again. Two and a half hours of sleep – not a lot, but I’ll take what I can get.

Now it’s a half hour from midnight. I’ll still be up at midnight. Not because I have a reason to be up, but because – that’s just the way it is. I’ll be up to see the New Year arrive. I’m sure some locals with their primitive fireworks will make sure I hear the New Year arrive – they always do.

Through today’s near-miraculous electronics technology, it’s possible for me to watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop amongst revelers in Times Square from right here in my living room, should I choose to do that. I don’t know if I will, though. I’ll probably be watching an old episode of Perry Mason and forget about the ball dropping. Or maybe I’ll think about watching the ball drop, and then think, “Meh. This TV show is better.”

I mean, after all, it’s not something special. It’s just the New Year. It’s an arbitrary point in a planetary orbit about the Sun. It’s a jot on the calendar.

Thirty minutes to midnight. I’ll switch on the TV. That old Perry Mason is starting, and I don’t want to miss the beginning. When it ends, I’ll see if I can get another two and a half hours of sleep.

Happy New Year.

Trains In The Night

I am lying down. I don’t know the time, but it is dark outside. I hear the distant drone of train wheels on steel rails. I hear the moan of the train’s air horn. It whistles a warning at every road crossing the train encounters as it travels through my small city. Sometimes the engineer gives the air horn a short blast or two; sometimes a longer blast; sometimes a combination of short and long. Sometimes it sounds as though the engineer is sending Morse code. Then no more air horn, but I can still hear the rumble of steel wheels on steel track. The sound fades slowly, slowly, slowly. Then it is gone. There is silence.

Train engineers use the whistle not only as a warning to humans and animals to get off the track, but also for communication with railroad employees such as yard workers and employees on the train itself when voice communication is not available. Various blasts of the air horn have meaning. For example, the engineer will announce the train’s approach to a road crossing by sounding two long, one short, and one long whistle. One short whistle means applying air brakes while standing. Two long whistles mean releasing brakes and proceeding. And so on. If you’re curious, you can find a list of train whistle codes on Wikipedia.

I once lived in a “railroad town” – Roanoke, Virginia, where Norfolk Southern has maintenance shops. I lived near the rail yard, where every morning at 7AM a steam whistle announced the start of a new workday. However, I don’t recall ever hearing train air horns while I lived in Roanoke. At least, not routinely, as I do now.

Time passes and I hear another train coming through my city. I hear the rumble of the wheels. I hear short and long blasts of the whistle.

I don’t know why I like hearing trains come through town. Maybe it has something to do with the trains I rode when I was a kid, starting when I was a baby. Whatever the reason, a distant train whistle in the night is reassuringly familiar.

Below: part of the Norfolk Southern rail yard in Roanoke, Virginia. The Roanoke Roundtable is top, right. Tracks run east-west. North is to the right. 

It’s Unnatural

In the news:

Ten piglets born this year in a laboratory in China look like normal piglets when the lights are on, but in the dark, they glow florescent green thanks to a genetic alteration that incorporates a protein transferred from jellyfish DNA.

I see where this is going. We’ll soon have pork barbeque that glows green in the dark. There’s no reason scientists can’t also modify a wheat plant’s DNA to make flour glow red. Then we could have glowing green barbeque on a glowing red bun – a sandwich both tasty and Christmas-y.

More to the point, does anyone not think it’s just a matter of time before some researcher uses bird DNA to create pigs with wings? Then we won’t be able to say, “When pigs fly!” any more.

Scientists may use DNA swapping to create fish that taste like chicken or chicken that tastes like chateaubriand. And with sufficient research dollars, scientists may one day create a soybean-burger that tastes like food instead of cardboard. Just kidding – that last one will never happen. It’s too big a leap. But all that other stuff is possible.

The news article goes on to say:

Glowing animals have been developed in laboratories since the 1980s… In April of this year scientists in Uruguay created a flock of glow-in-the-dark sheep. Other experiments done around the world have produced glowing monkeys, puppies and kittens.

I’m just getting accustomed to compact fluorescent light bulbs. Please don’t tell Congress there are glow-in-the-dark monkeys. There’s no telling what those noodle-heads will make us light our homes with next.

Christmas 2013

It is Christmas Day, 2013. The time is 12:30 AM. It has been Christmas for half an hour in my house. I just finished watching an old Perry Mason episode on TV. I enjoy the old Perry Mason shows … the TV series that was filmed from 1957 through 1966. It’s like having a time machine to view late ‘50s American culture. The women “ladies” of the era wore hats, sometimes veils, and always white cotton gloves. At least, they did when they “dressed up.” Of course, fashions come and go, and while hats and veils and gloves are now quaint, there was nothing wrong with wearing them back in the day. But watching how women were generally portrayed on the show demonstrates how much our culture has changed since that time. I shake my head and think, “No wonder there was a feminist movement.”

I like the old cars on the show, too. Okay, old is a relative term. I think that somewhere around the mid- to late-50s, American-made automobiles began losing their personalities. By 1960 they were long and wide and heavy and on their way to becoming indistinctive.

I owned a ‘55 Chevy. It had a Blue Flame inline 6 that burned a ridiculous amount of motor oil. I always carried a couple of 2 gallon cans of oil in the trunk. It had a solid steel dashboard – none of your fancy cushioned stuff, thank you. It also lacked seat belts. It was a manly car. In an accident, your soft body would hit the steel dashboard and you’d be dead. Or you’d be skewered by the solid, non-telescoping steering shaft. And we liked it! Apparently, because we sure bought a lot of them. But what it lacked in safety it made up for by being distinctive. When you saw a ‘55 Chevy you knew what it was. You wouldn’t mistake another car for a ‘55 Chevy. Well, you might mistake a ‘56 Chevy for a ‘55, but not if you had owned either one. I don’t remember the model, whether it was a One-Fifty, a Two-Ten, or a Bel Air. But more Two-Tens were produced than the other models, so that’s probably what it was. If you want a ‘55 Chevy today, you can still get one. A collector will sell you one for around $40,000.

I traded the ‘55 Chevy for a ‘60 Plymouth. The Plymouth had giant tail fins and a pushbutton transmission – the buttons selected vacuum lines to the transmission. The transmission on my Plymouth had no Park position – you used the parking brake and hoped it held. The steering wheel wasn’t round; it was shaped like an ellipse. When you were driving straight down the road, the steering wheel was wider than it was tall. My particular Plymouth had manual steering; no power steering, except for muscle power.

I traded the ‘60 Plymouth for a ‘68 Dodge Charger. You may remember a TV show called “The Dukes of Hazzard.” The car the boys called “The General Lee” was a ‘69 Charger, one year newer than my Charger. I always liked the ‘68 better. I thought it was prettier. The power steering had almost no feedback. It felt almost like the steering wheel was connected to nothing. You could steer around a corner using one pinky finger. I don’t remember much about that car except that I wrecked it, and some yoyos who shouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of an automobile did the repair work, which they screwed up every way possible, plus several ways I had thought not possible. Live and learn.

So yeah, watching the old Perry Mason shows does take me back to that time, in certain ways. Early episodes captured a time before the turmoil started, before drugs, before the summer of love, before Haight-Ashbury, before the Beatles, before Vietnam, before civil rights, before the women’s movement, before race riots and police riots. It evokes an era when all was right with the world, or so it appeared if you didn’t look too closely, and we were sitting on top of that world. Tons of shit was about to hit the fan, but on the old Perry Mason shows women wear white cotton gloves and defer to men, cars are huge with big V8 engines, and the phrases “gas guzzler” and “Arab oil” are yet to come into our consciousness. Looking back, it seems a simpler time, a more innocent time. It was a different world.

The world is faster now, with smart phones, tablet computers, social networking, instant communication, and with our own government spying on us (because how do they know who is good and who is bad unless they spy – excuse me, I meant to say “collect metadata” – on all of us?). I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in Perry Mason’s world again – after all, I’ve been there and done that – but it’s nice to visit for an hour.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve

I got out of bed and instantly realized the house was too cold. I checked the thermostat. It was set at 68° but the temperature in the house was 64°. As Dorothy Parker famously asked when someone knocked on her door, “What fresh hell can this be?” (For the book title, her biographer, Marion Meade, changed it to “What fresh hell is this?”, and that was the version of the quote that found its way into the American vernacular.)

So, the central heat wasn’t working. I trudged down the stairwell to the cellar where the boiler is located. I saw immediately that the red “breaker” button on the controller unit had popped up. I pushed the button down to reset the controller, and the blower motor turned on, but there was no ignition – the combustion chamber remained dark. In 40 seconds the controller, sensing no flame, would break the circuit again, but I didn’t wait. I went to the breaker box and switched off the boiler. Because if the fuel pump was working, running the system would result in more unburned oil accumulating inside the combustion chamber.

I ran through possibilities in my head. Bad ignition transformer. Bad fuel pump. Water in the fuel line. Debris in the fuel nozzle.

I phoned the oil company. The service manager told me there was one job ahead of me. Of course, that one job might take all day. Meanwhile, the outside temperature was 40° and the house was getting colder.

Three hours later the HVAC technician arrived. We went to the cellar and I flipped the breaker on. The blower motor ran and this time ignition occurred. There was fire in the combustion chamber. Sometimes it only takes the presence of a qualified technician to make the problem go away. Then, when the technician is gone, the problem returns. Intermittent problems are the worst. How many people have taken their cars to the auto shop, only to see the problem disappear. “I swear it was making a funny noise when I applied the brakes … really, it was.”

The HVAC technician replaced the filter-nozzle assembly, mainly because replacing it was easy, quick, and relatively cheap to do. It’s like looking under the street light on a dark night for the key you dropped – not because that’s where you dropped your key, but because that’s where the light is. But if the heat goes off again, at least we’ll know one thing that isn’t the problem.

Next, I went to the grocery store for victuals. How crowded was it? It was so crowded that I had to wait in a line just to get into the parking lot. I wasted no time rounding up what I wanted to buy. While I was at the self-checkout, I thought I saw Stephani Germanotta walk past me to the next checkout machine. She had blonde hair and was nicely dressed in a black skirt, dark stockings, and gray blazer. She was with some dude in a suit. I briefly wondered why Lady Gaga was shopping in my little central Virginia city. Perhaps she was passing through on the way to her next concert when she developed a sudden craving for an ‘apple – pepper jelly – cheddar’ grilled cheese sandwich. Discovering she was out of cheese, she ordered the driver of her tour bus to veer off the Interstate and locate the nearest Martin’s store. (Martin’s does have a great selection of cheeses. No wonder she shops here.) I admit I only saw her from behind, so there’s a slim possibility it wasn’t Lady Gaga. But I believe it was Gaga. Some things you just know. You don’t need evidence. You don’t need proof. You just know. You know?

It’s exciting times. And if the heat stays on tonight and I don’t die of hypothermia in my sleep, I may blog again tomorrow.

Festivus Day

It’s December 23rd. I guess you know what that means. It’s Festivus Day. Yes, Festivus – it’s a festival for the rest of us. And right now, I need a festival.

The day started with a short chat with my Skype amigo CyberDave. Then I saw the mailman walk through my yard, so I went out and brought in the mail. The mail was just one item: a medical bill. It said my account was “overdue.” I recognized the bill as one I had already paid. I really hate getting billed when I’ve already paid the bill. So I fired off an email to the billing company, letting them know I had already paid the bill and should have a zero balance. I asked them what they needed in the way of proof. There was no immediate auto-reply, so I didn’t know if they received the email. Time would tell.

It rained all night and into the morning, but now the rain had stopped. There was a prescription waiting for me at the Walmart pharmacy and I was debating whether the rain would hold off long enough to allow me to pick up the prescription without getting soaked. At that point, I received a phone invitation to have lunch in a restaurant an hour away with a group of people I mostly do not know. I haven’t been to that particular restaurant in so long I wasn’t sure I could still find the place. I thanked my caller and said I had some things to do. My caller muttered something about excuses.

I showered, shaved, dressed, and prepared to go to Walmart. The rain was still holding off as I drove to the pharmacy. The traffic was ridiculous, with long lines at every stop light. In other words, it was just what I expected two days before Christmas. Finally I got into the parking lot, where I circled round and round and up and down the lanes looking for a parking spot. I almost gave up and went home before I finally found a place to park. The store was so crowded that, even though I had other things I wanted to buy, I chose to bail. I had to get out of the store, away from the crowd.

I decided to drive to another store – a Martin’s grocery store in a small shopping center. Traffic was backed up in lines a half mile long at traffic lights. Even when the lights were green, I sometimes couldn’t move because the cars across the intersection from me were not moving.

I got to the grocery store, but again there was no place to park. No, I take that back. There was a parking spot, it just happened to be in the next county. Ordinarily, I don’t mind a long walk between car and store, but a mist of rain was in the air, and the clouds were ominously dark. The sky looked like it was ready to let go, so I swung my Jeep back onto the highway and motored on home. I’ll try again – after Christmas.

Back at home, I checked my email. I had a reply to the email I had sent to the billing company. They wanted a copy of the payment check, front and back. It was an e-banking check, and my bank doesn’t make copies of checks available online because sensitive information on the check could be intercepted and misused. I went to the bank’s online support page and had an e-chat with someone called Shari. Shari took a long time to respond to anything I typed, but assured me I should be patient because I was a valued customer. Ultimately, Shari gave me a phone number and said people at the number would help me.

I called the number and a computer voice asked me for my social security number. I punched it into the dial pad and the computer voice said, “That number doesn’t match our records” and asked me to enter the number again. For a second I was at a loss: all it knew about me was the social security number I had just entered, so how could it know the number wasn’t correct? Then I realized it was reading my phone number and comparing it to the number stored in my account, and I was using a different phone from that which the bank had on file. I got past that and into endless menus that never gave me what I wanted: an answer to the question, “How do I get a copy of a check?” In frustration I started tapping the “0” button. Shortly afterward, I made contact with a real human being.

I was interrogated: social security number, driver’s license number, date of birth, address, and so on. Finally the woman I was speaking with agreed that I was the real me, and she asked how she could help me. I told her I needed a copy of an e-banking check. She indicated that was beyond her pay grade, but if I was patient, someone in a another department would help me.

The new person was indeed helpful. He explained that the bank couldn’t email me a copy of the check, but they could fax me a copy. I don’t have a fax machine, so I asked them to mail it. I asked if they could also fax a copy to the company billing me, and they said yes. But first I had to verify with the billing company that their fax was secure. So I wrote down my case number and sent another email to the billing company. After a while I received a reply. My contact there said to send the fax.

I called the bank back. I went through the computer verification (“that number doesn’t match our records”) again, then got into the menus, hit “0” on the dial pad, got a human again, went through the interrogation again, and finally got to the “How can we help?” question. I explained I wanted to fax the check images to the billing company, which once again was beyond the person’s pay grade, so they had to get another department involved, and another person got on the line. I gave him the case number and my request to fax the check to the billing company, and he said he would handle it.

That’s a summary of the process; in real time it took two and a half hours to get the copy of the check sent out. Now I only have to wait and see if I get another “overdue” invoice next month. If I do, maybe I’ll just pay the invoice again.

Happy Festivus, indeed.

(Below) A Festivus pole. It is unadorned and unlit. Why?" you ask. Because, that’s just the way it is. I don’t make the rules.

Copyright: Matthew Keefe,
license: creative commons

Winter Solstice

It’s here: the day of the 2013 winter solstice. Officially, today is the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day and the longest night. For that reason, I prefer to think of today not as the first day of winter, but as “mid-winter.” From today forward, days will get longer. The sun will rise earlier and set later. Each passing day will bring more daylight and less darkness.

Ancient Celts called this time of the year “Yule” and placed it at the top of the Wheel of the Year. Opposite Yule, at the bottom of the Wheel, is Midsummer, what we modern people call the first day of summer. Yule is Midwinter.

At the moment, the temperature in my central Virginia city is 75° (24° C). That may set a record for the warmest temperature for the date. Tomorrow’s temperatures may set new records for both the warmest high temperature and the warmest low temperature. Last month was globally the warmest November since record-keeping began, although most of the US and Canada had average to below-average temperatures for the month. November, 2013, was the 345th consecutive month with a global temperature higher than the 20th century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

To be sure, cold weather will return. Even now, somewhere – far north of my little city – I imagine people drinking hot buttered rum or apple toddies, sitting in view of crackling log fires, enjoying the warmth, mesmerized by dancing flames. As for me, on this Yule day, or Midwinter, or first day of winter – take your pick – I have a window open and I’m enjoying the breeze.

The Alternate Routes

The Alternate Routes are a rock band formed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 2002 by Tim Warren and Eric Donnelly. The old 8mm home movie footage in the video is of Tim’s sister Katie. This song, “Nothing More”, was played on the NCIS episode Homesick which aired Dec 17, 2013.

Links of interest:
    The Alternate Routes 
    Newtown Kindness

A Thought Experiment

Let’s do a thought experiment. In this experiment we’ll do to our education system what the Affordable Care Act has done to our health care system.

We begin this experiment by imagining our country without a public education system for grades K - 12. Instead, all schools are privately owned and operated. Families pay a considerable amount of money to enroll their children in these private schools. People below a certain income level cannot afford to educate their children.

Other countries around the world have solved the problem of educating their citizens by creating public schools. In these public school systems, every child can attend school and their education is paid for by taxes. Everyone is taxed to help pay for the education system, including those who have no children and will never have children. Imposing an education tax on everyone regardless of whether they have children is supported by a belief that an educated populace benefits all people in society. Because the government pays for everyone’s education, this system is called a single-payer system.

But American conservatives criticize these public education programs in other countries as being socialist. Indeed, they are socialist, but they do provide the opportunity for all their citizens to receive at least a minimal level of education. In the U.S., tens of millions of children receive no education, while every year millions of American families incur crushing amounts of debt while trying to help their children escape a bleak future because they lack an education.

Responding to pleas to open up the education system so all children can get an education, a controversial American president offers a solution. He knows he can’t get support for public schools, because there are enough conservatives in both parties to block a single-payer system. But he manages to get through Congress a new law called the Affordable Education Act.

Under this new law, every family is required to send their children to a private school. All schools will offer five levels of education, with course material defined and regulated for each level of education. The levels, from most to least expensive, are Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Barely Literate. All families must participate in the AEA system or pay a tax penalty which grows larger with each passing year. Low income families receive a tax credit to help them pay for their children’s education.

Almost no one is satisfied with the new law. Conservatives bash it as socialist and an unwanted government intrusion into the education system. Progressives bash it because it doesn’t go far enough in helping the poorest families. Conservatives promise to repeal the new law and go back to the old system. Progressives point out that under the old system, 50 million children received no education, and say that even flawed as it is, the new law will allow many of those 50 million to receive at least a minimal education.

What do you think? Should we:

A. Return to a system of all private schools.

B. Keep the new law and see what happens.

C. Adopt the European system of public schools funded by taxes.

Aubrey

This is Aubrey Peters, age 16, of Noblesville, Indiana. You can tell she’s a happy person. Her high school principal described her as a “great student”, a “quality student”, who always has a smile on her face. One more thing: Aubrey is also a hero.

She’s a hero because on March 10, 2010, she helped rescue two small children who fell through the ice on a frozen pond. She didn’t see it happen but she heard them screaming and ran to help. The Red Cross recognized her heroism with a Hall of Fame Award.

This is Jacob McDaniel, a graduate of Noblesville High School. According to police, on December 9, 2013, Aubrey and two friends were visiting Jacob at his house. Jacob wanted to show Aubrey his gun. He wanted her to hold it, but she refused. Believing the gun was not loaded, Jacob pointed the gun at Aubrey and pulled the trigger. The gun fired a bullet into Aubrey’s chest. She died at a local hospital. Allegedly, Jacob told his friends to tell police the gun “fell off a table and went off.” Jacob is in jail and may spend years in prison. One day he’ll be out of prison, and then he’ll have a chance at a life – a chance Aubrey will never have.

Aubrey has plenty of company. From 2000 to 2010 75,944 children in the U.S. died from gun violence. If you pick 75,944 people at random, how many would be doctors and nurses? How many would be inventors? How many would be celebrities … singers, dancers, actors, athletes? How many would discover how to treat an incurable disease, design the tallest building, start a company? How many would write a best-seller, explore a new world, establish a charity? Because when we kill, or allow to be killed, 75,944 children, we’re also killing 75,944 adults – the adults those children never had a chance to become.

Be Here Now

You know what it is about people that annoys me? Okay, lots of things about people annoy me. Like, the fact they’re destroying the planet I happen to call home. But that’s more of a theoretical annoyance than an immediate, practical annoyance. The thing that annoys me right now is when people put their lives into my hands and depend upon my aging peepers and reflexes to keep them alive.

Case in point: I was at the grocery store tonight. The sun had set and the day had become dusky dark. I put my groceries in the car and started the engine. I shifted the transmission from Park to Reverse. I started backing out of my parking spot, unable to see very clearly because of the darkness and, let’s face it, backup lights really aren’t all that bright. I couldn’t back up far enough so I had to stop and pull forward while turning, and then stop and backup again. Suddenly out of nowhere I see silhouettes of people walking right behind my Jeep. I hit the brake. If I didn’t, I would have backed right over them. I wanted to say, “What is the matter with you people? Can’t you see I’m backing up here? Are you trying to get run over?” But I didn’t. I hit the brake and gave them the opportunity to do something dumb on another day.

Oh, but if I hadn’t seen them in time, there would be no end to the blaming, the finger-pointing, and the lawsuits. Why would someone walk directly behind a vehicle that is backing up, especially while they are wearing dark clothes in the twilight of evening? I guess it comes down to people not thinking and being in a hurry. Their minds are elsewhere. They are thinking of shopping, thinking of where they want to be, thinking of what they have to do before the holidays arrive. Their bodies are on autopilot while their brains are somewhere else. Good thing one of us was in the present moment.

If I could, I would say to those people, “Look, I know it’s hard, but you have to try to be here now. It’s a busy world and you have places to go and things to do, but be here now. Don’t be some place your body isn’t. Don’t be some time your body isn’t.  Don’t be in yesterday, don’t be in tomorrow or next week. Don’t assume the driver will see you, don’t assume the car will stop. Please stop making me save you from being hurt.

Teeth Checkup

I went to my dentist this morning to have my teeth inspected and my gums probed and prodded by sharp-pointed instruments of dental torture. The dentist had moved to a new location and today was only the fifth day that he and his staff had been in the new building. I had no trouble finding the building; his staff had mailed me a postcard advising me of the new address. However, they neglected to put the suite number on the postcard, and this building has many medical suites. I ended up pulling out my phone and calling them for directions. A minute later I was parking in front of their new office.

The old office had a cuspidor beside the dentist’s chair – also called a “spit bowl” by ordinary pilgrims such as myself. Apparently spit bowls are now considered curiosities more suitable for museum display than for use in a dentist’s office. The hygienist told me that when a substitute dental assistant came into the old office, she (the sub) would take a photo of the cuspidor to show the gals back at her office, many of whom had never seen such a thing. In lieu of “rinse and spit”, now the hygienist hoses down your teeth with a squirt of mouthwash and then has you wrap your lips around a suction pipe which sucks the liquid out of your mouth.

My first ten minutes in the dentist’s chair were spent listening to the hygienist and another gal grapple with data entry on a computer screen. All patient information is stored on a computer now, and judging from the amount of time they had to spend waiting for a response to each mouse click, they’re using a machine from the Dark Ages powered by a small rodent running inside an exercise wheel.

After entering data into the world’s slowest computer, the hygienist got down to business, and for 40 minutes she poked, probed, scraped, and polished. Then the dentist entered the room to conduct his own inspection of the ivories. He immediately asked if I had a “nice Thanksgiving.” I said, “No.” He took it in stride. It turns out that when people ask if you had a nice Thanksgiving, a nice Christmas, a nice Whatever, they don’t really care. Why maintain the pretense?

Finally, I paid the ransom they requested and was allowed to escape with my teeth for another six months. I always hate to eat after a dental cleaning. My teeth feel so clean and pristine, it seems wrong to get them “dirty” by chewing food. But I stopped by the food store and assembled a salad at the salad bar, and took it home, and used my newly polished choppers on it. Then I used them on leftover pizza. They don’t feel pristine now, but they do feel comfortably broken-in, so it’s all good.