January 2023

I’m trying to decide whether last year ended badly or this year started off on the wrong foot. I got covid for Christmas, so when I was sick on New Year’s Day, it wasn’t from over-indulging the night before. Nope. That would be from when I over-indulged about a week ago, with some friends. What are friends for?
On the bright side: So far this year, every day has been better than the last one.
How long can this keep up?

I went out of my way this year to make sure that all my ciders spent zero time un-refrigerated, because – um – that’s been a problem in the past. And it’s worked pretty good so far. But once you open it, you gotta drink it, because Bam! It’ll go bad on you in no time.
Last week, I cracked open a new bottle, enjoyed a glass, and put the rest back in the fridge.
A couple days later, I poured myself another glass, went to drink it, and got myself a nose full of sulfur fumes. Not just a whiff of fermenting sugar, mind you, but straight out of the sewer.
Well there’s more where that one came from, so I dumped it down the drain and cracked open a new bottle.
Aaahh.

There’s been enough family drama to fill a book, but of course, we have no comment in this space. The good news is that we have BZ’s thyroid under control, and he is fat and happy again.  The bad news is that Mary’s been in Boston for a couple weeks helping with hospice.
That leaves me and the cat. Home Alone.

For Christmas, I gave Mary a Murphy bed.
Meaning: I told her I’d make her one.
Meaning: Her office has the perfect wall for a raft of built-in cabinetry. And since the bed that’s in there now is In The Way, why not just get carried away and make the most complicated Murphy bed ever? Is there a law against that?
What can go wrong?
And now that Mary’s away, it’s the perfect time to make it.
I’d been reading up on murphy mechanisms, so I bought a kit and some plywood, picked out the finest boards in the barn, moved the old bed aside, and got started.
No major fuck-ups to report. Yet.

For Christmas, Mary gave me a gift card to Barnes and Noble.
I’ve got 279 books on my kindle, and I’ve been struggling, lately, to find good books to read. (OK. Define good.)
Shopping for an ebook is not like shopping for a paperback. I feel like the Algorithm wants me to buy certain books, and those are the ones it puts in front of me.
So I went to Barnes and Noble and I stumbled upon a biography of Benedict Arnold’s wife. AI still has some catching up to do.

I don’t know what it is about coding and blogging, but when I blog, I don’t code. And when I code, I don’t blog.  And lately, I’ve been doing a lotta coding, so there’s notta lotta blog.

Now, I’m not saying that losing all my data and a lot of my code 2 months ago was a good thing. I don’t recommend it! But crawling back from the abyss has given me a chance to purge a lot of clutter, look critically at how I do things,  and to finally do certain things right.
Does that sound familiar? Tune in next month for the same old story.

Comments are closed.