Starting The New Year
Today was the kick-off of another New year. It was uneventful on the whole, and most things were positive in nature. The only thing that occurred that caused me to speak unkindly to God was apparently insignificant since I don't really recall what brought that on. Other than that, things went very well, I think. Kathy went to the annual New Year's Mass at church this morning. Since she was gone, I decided to go up to the museum to drop off an item at the museum. It's a ceramic model of the coal miner leading a mule pulling a coal wagon from a mine. It was a gift from a very generous friend in Cincinnati who found it in a thrift store and thought that I might want to place it in our coal mine museum. And she was right about that. It's perfect for our museum. Our coal mines closed nearly a hundred years ago (1927) and had no electricity at that time. So, mules had to be used to pull the fully loaded coal wagons from the mines. It'll be a great addition to the museum.
Before I went up there, I called Gary to let him know that I was going up. He came to the park as well (I knew that he would) to gather the money from the donation boxes and take it to the bank. He likes for there to be another person to be there when he gets the cash so that there's no question about accounting of the funds. He's a good man and strives to preserve his integrity. They don't come any better than Gary, for sure.
When I got back home, I wanted to sit back and watch the college football bowl games that are a tradition on New Years Day. Unfortunately, there was a terrorist act of some sort in New Orleans that ended with fifteen deaths and another couple of dozen injured. Of course, the news media thrives on this kind of thing and so they saturated the entire afternoon with braking news and continuous news stories. All the bowl games scheduled for the day were preempted and not a single game was broadcast. Needless to say, none of my pepperoni, cheese, crackers and beer were consumed. It was a day, frankly, wasted, except for the nice afternoon nap, followed by my weekly ice cream at Dairy Queen. As for football, Maybe I'll have better luck over the weekend.
On the whole my entry into the New Year was not great, but not all bad either. I'll call it a good start for the year.