Father Dad and other recent snippets
I have a lot of little blurbs to discuss, so let's get to it.
Father Dad
When I took out last week's Trib from its bag, I got a shock--my father's name on the front page, above the fold, as part of a caption to a picture. Better, he was listed as being the priest at a particular church. Uh...dad...is there something you want to tell us? Yeah, that some guy with the same name is a priest, heh. He said he's seen the guy's name before; I wonder if he's a go-to quotable person. It was still kind of funny. I keep telling people I'll have my father pray for them. I mean, it's not too far off; he *was* an altar boy at one point. (The story had to do with covid and church attendance, I believe, how it was picking up just before Christmas and then fell off again.)
(Better was sending a picture of it to Laura last night and her going, wait, your father's not Lori Lightfoot...What can I say, I wanted to include the Trib header in the pic and there was a Lightfoot story in between.)
Handwritten letters are not obsolete
I was really late in getting my Christmas cards out this year. I mean, okay, it's kind of par for the course, but at least typically I make an effort to send them *before* the 25th. One family I send one to is my former boss at the bookstore and his wife. They're like me; they send a whole letter out along with the card. They were one of the rare recipients to get a handwritten note back, and the wife was so excited that she sent me a full-on letter this week. Wow, that was so nice! I'll need to reply to them at some point but it'll probably be typed so I can go faster. I think they'll still appreciate it. I haven't seen them in years, and they're not getting out right now during the pandemic, but she said we should have pizza at some point; that used to be our thing. I'd like that. It would be nice to catch up in person. Also, it's so hard to believe, but it's been almost 15 years since the bookstore closed. I kind of want to dig up my pictures from that. I have a great one where I'm lying across the roughly 400 boxes we packed up.
My phone, it has a deadline; it's F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y (and that's no bologna)
However, something soon to be obsolete is my phone. I got a text the other day about it. I do already have a replacement phone, but I haven't pulled the trigger on it. I was working hard to save stuff off of it but got derailed by Christmas. Now at least I have a deadline so I can get back to working on it.
No finger pointing, this was on me
I managed to hurt my right index finger the other day. I was in the shower and tried to open up this nearly-empty bottle of facial scrub, but it's one of those containers that, like, doesn't want to unscrew. I tried, it wouldn't open, and then ever since that my finger has hurt. Oddly enough, the one time it didn't hurt? Friday morning after my 3-hour rehearsal. Go figure. I don't know if it's arthritis that got triggered, or someone suggested it was maybe ligament damage, which can take a while to heal. I was saying something to BBC about it and he was looking at my hand and wondering, what's wrong with your middle finger? Yeah, that's where my pen rests when I write. It does look sort of pushed over, especially by the nail. That's been like that a long time.
Cider soft or hard?
For the longest time, I only drank water. It was rare if I had anything else. Then, for whatever reason, I relaxed on that last year, and this past fall found myself drinking Cosmic Crisp cider. There were gallons of it on an end cap at the store for a while. (I think there was a Pink Lady one; yeah, we'll skip that one. It's bad enough eating an apple variety that tastes like perfume to me; I don't want to drink it, too.) It was pretty good and something nice to have a change of pace. However, the last jug has been in the fridge since before Christmas, and I thought to look at it yesterday--best by three weeks ago. Yikes, better finish it...and I hope it hasn't turned hard by this time! I was a little concerned, given that I don't drink at all, but it seemed fine and I had no ill effects that I'm aware of.
Ice skating on the driveway
We got a coating of ice yesterday, starting in the afternoon. This was actually a concern since mom had to go to a memorial yesterday; one of her friend Mary's sisters died recently. Poor mom got lost somehow and ended up in the parking lot of a roller rink, and her friend Maria came and found her after the services to pick her up and take her to the luncheon after. I think it started precipitating on her way home, but she didn't hit anything bad, and we were grateful she made it home early enough to avoid it all. This morning, in looking for the paper, we didn't see it outside, but I was like, I kind of don't care today; everything's slippery. Dad got brave and checked; the paper slid all the way up the driveway and ended up behind my car. Okay, good, we got it, but I wasn't going to fuss about it today. As it's not going to get above freezing, leaving for work could get interesting tomorrow. At least it's sunny so it might thaw some of it out, and I saw a city truck salting the street a little bit ago.
The ghost in the Christmas lights
Finally, I took down our decorations yesterday. There wasn't much, which was kind of nice, and mom had already gone around and picked up the few things that weren't in the living room and put them there. That made life easier. No more tree, but that might be a good thing. Back on the 11th, my parents had gone to a party and I had the house to myself for the night. I'd been upstairs for a while and went down to turn off the lights...and the little tree was already off. o.0 That's not scary. And periodically, I'd go down to turn the lights off and the tree would already be off, and dad would say that he hadn't touched them. His theory was that perhaps another remote affected them, since we had the lights plugged into a box so we could use a remote to turn them on and off (super convenient when we'd have two trees plus lights on the bannister). Okay...possible...but then just this morning, he said he'd taken this strip of LED lights and plugged them in by the TV, and *they* were turning on by themselves. Um...weird... So we might have a ghost that likes to mess with our electronics. Or we need to stop using remotes in the house. Either way.
Father Dad
When I took out last week's Trib from its bag, I got a shock--my father's name on the front page, above the fold, as part of a caption to a picture. Better, he was listed as being the priest at a particular church. Uh...dad...is there something you want to tell us? Yeah, that some guy with the same name is a priest, heh. He said he's seen the guy's name before; I wonder if he's a go-to quotable person. It was still kind of funny. I keep telling people I'll have my father pray for them. I mean, it's not too far off; he *was* an altar boy at one point. (The story had to do with covid and church attendance, I believe, how it was picking up just before Christmas and then fell off again.)
(Better was sending a picture of it to Laura last night and her going, wait, your father's not Lori Lightfoot...What can I say, I wanted to include the Trib header in the pic and there was a Lightfoot story in between.)
Handwritten letters are not obsolete
I was really late in getting my Christmas cards out this year. I mean, okay, it's kind of par for the course, but at least typically I make an effort to send them *before* the 25th. One family I send one to is my former boss at the bookstore and his wife. They're like me; they send a whole letter out along with the card. They were one of the rare recipients to get a handwritten note back, and the wife was so excited that she sent me a full-on letter this week. Wow, that was so nice! I'll need to reply to them at some point but it'll probably be typed so I can go faster. I think they'll still appreciate it. I haven't seen them in years, and they're not getting out right now during the pandemic, but she said we should have pizza at some point; that used to be our thing. I'd like that. It would be nice to catch up in person. Also, it's so hard to believe, but it's been almost 15 years since the bookstore closed. I kind of want to dig up my pictures from that. I have a great one where I'm lying across the roughly 400 boxes we packed up.
My phone, it has a deadline; it's F-E-B-R-U-A-R-Y (and that's no bologna)
However, something soon to be obsolete is my phone. I got a text the other day about it. I do already have a replacement phone, but I haven't pulled the trigger on it. I was working hard to save stuff off of it but got derailed by Christmas. Now at least I have a deadline so I can get back to working on it.
No finger pointing, this was on me
I managed to hurt my right index finger the other day. I was in the shower and tried to open up this nearly-empty bottle of facial scrub, but it's one of those containers that, like, doesn't want to unscrew. I tried, it wouldn't open, and then ever since that my finger has hurt. Oddly enough, the one time it didn't hurt? Friday morning after my 3-hour rehearsal. Go figure. I don't know if it's arthritis that got triggered, or someone suggested it was maybe ligament damage, which can take a while to heal. I was saying something to BBC about it and he was looking at my hand and wondering, what's wrong with your middle finger? Yeah, that's where my pen rests when I write. It does look sort of pushed over, especially by the nail. That's been like that a long time.
Cider soft or hard?
For the longest time, I only drank water. It was rare if I had anything else. Then, for whatever reason, I relaxed on that last year, and this past fall found myself drinking Cosmic Crisp cider. There were gallons of it on an end cap at the store for a while. (I think there was a Pink Lady one; yeah, we'll skip that one. It's bad enough eating an apple variety that tastes like perfume to me; I don't want to drink it, too.) It was pretty good and something nice to have a change of pace. However, the last jug has been in the fridge since before Christmas, and I thought to look at it yesterday--best by three weeks ago. Yikes, better finish it...and I hope it hasn't turned hard by this time! I was a little concerned, given that I don't drink at all, but it seemed fine and I had no ill effects that I'm aware of.
Ice skating on the driveway
We got a coating of ice yesterday, starting in the afternoon. This was actually a concern since mom had to go to a memorial yesterday; one of her friend Mary's sisters died recently. Poor mom got lost somehow and ended up in the parking lot of a roller rink, and her friend Maria came and found her after the services to pick her up and take her to the luncheon after. I think it started precipitating on her way home, but she didn't hit anything bad, and we were grateful she made it home early enough to avoid it all. This morning, in looking for the paper, we didn't see it outside, but I was like, I kind of don't care today; everything's slippery. Dad got brave and checked; the paper slid all the way up the driveway and ended up behind my car. Okay, good, we got it, but I wasn't going to fuss about it today. As it's not going to get above freezing, leaving for work could get interesting tomorrow. At least it's sunny so it might thaw some of it out, and I saw a city truck salting the street a little bit ago.
The ghost in the Christmas lights
Finally, I took down our decorations yesterday. There wasn't much, which was kind of nice, and mom had already gone around and picked up the few things that weren't in the living room and put them there. That made life easier. No more tree, but that might be a good thing. Back on the 11th, my parents had gone to a party and I had the house to myself for the night. I'd been upstairs for a while and went down to turn off the lights...and the little tree was already off. o.0 That's not scary. And periodically, I'd go down to turn the lights off and the tree would already be off, and dad would say that he hadn't touched them. His theory was that perhaps another remote affected them, since we had the lights plugged into a box so we could use a remote to turn them on and off (super convenient when we'd have two trees plus lights on the bannister). Okay...possible...but then just this morning, he said he'd taken this strip of LED lights and plugged them in by the TV, and *they* were turning on by themselves. Um...weird... So we might have a ghost that likes to mess with our electronics. Or we need to stop using remotes in the house. Either way.