It's Snnnnoooowing

Snow was forecast for Sunday and Monday. This was the front walk on Sunday afternoon. More snow should come overnight, but it will clear up by the Monday commute.

  

This is us on Monday. It snowed overnight and kept snowing until

close to noon. On the left is Eric shoveling the walk so he could get the paper. Bailey loves to crunch ice cubes. Who know that she loved to catch the snow in her mouth as well. 

Cindy worked from home. She has the best view in 

the NorthEast. I did not go into work. My job involves a lot of staring at walls.  I thought I'd take this moment to stare at the snow.

Here we have Katie  shoveling out the driveway and sidewalks. The snow had pretty much stopped

 so people were moving around. The neighbor was walking her dog around the block. He was very happy to see her hard at work. Look at the pond on our side of the fence. There isn't much water in there or the frogs would be ice skating

 

The last picture is of my snowed in car. So much for not much more snow, as we imagined last night.  The snow falling was really beautiful. I'm glad I didn't have to drive in it.

I've Been Working

Let me just start with this Oldie But Goodie picture of Suresh and Fred. Even though the arrival of Suresh and Teena signaled the beginning of the end of our tightly knit group, they became very dear to us. It also signaled the beginning of a whole new life for me. A trip to India? Who would have thought of that a year before this picture was taken. Fred is still at The Times and I think that his life has not changed all that much. He is still programming quietly at his desk. I know the people who used to rely on his help have missed him. He was wonderfully soothing. Do those folks in Orlando do what Fred did? 

I am in the middle of a four week temp assignment. The woman I'm helping has been overwhelmed by work and I haven't helped her main problem. The first week she gave me a couple of mind-numbing jobs that took the week to complete.  One job was to enter all the contacts from her boss's old contact list into Outlook. Seems the boss just brought a hard copy with her, not a computer file. I listened to a book while I did this. I know, so unprofessional. But I was in an office with 95 pages of names. I found that I couldn't listen to anything that I really wanted to hear, or rather, remember what I was reading. So instead I listened to one of the Cat Who books, The Cat Who Wasn't There. I think this was the perfect book for entering contacts by. In other words, I just remember there was a cat in it and a man with a mustache. Perfect 

She went in to work on Saturday to get her act together and make a list of projects for me to complete. I am looking forward to going into work tomorrow. The second week was mind-numbing. I browsed the Internet a lot and wrote emails to friends. That is not as much fun as it might sound.


I have been reading other books in the past two weeks. Some I'd started long before and just decided that it was time to wrap it up. One of thease was Dead I Well May Be. I think this took a long time because it is very violent. It is about a young man from Ireland who enters the US illegally and leads a life of crime. Two things made this enjoyable. First, he is a very smart kid who reads a lot of interesting stuff. He is surrounded by people who are less clever than he and his interactions with them are enjoyable. Second, the reader has a wonderful Irish accent. I keep hearing "we'uns" in my head. I would listen to this book again, just for the joy of hearing the way Irish people talk. Fortunately, the author has written more books, so I will not have to relive this violence.

Another book I finished recently is Ghost. This was a pretty funny book, even though the author didn't suspect that it would be. The author used to work for the government in the Counter terrorism unit. He was not a spy. He was one of those guys who read the stacks of paper that comes into our government to be analyzed. He does get to leave the office now and again, but he is not a field agent by any stretch of the imagination. And his writing is very pedestrian. Someone told him he should use descriptive words, so he identifies every object he sees by brand name. If I cared, I would know the make of his watch, shoes, notebook, pen and cell phone. But I really didn't care. This one was not bad enough to throw across a room, it wasn't hateful. Just B O R I N G. 

 

Jack Reacher is never boring. This book, The Enemy, is a prequel. He is still in the military and from this we know why he hits the road to be the prototypical loner. Lee Child writes about a lot of events that don't move the plot, but help us to understand Reacher better. That could have been distracting, but as a fan I liked that. Funny, I hadn't thought about this being called The Enemy. I guess it refers to the old line "I've met the enemey and he is us." Reacher does have an issue in the book trying to figure out who the real bad guys are and why. I liked it.

And now the Civil War is truely over. Battle Cry of Freedom is an excellent book. That's not just my opinion. It did win the Pulitzer Prize, after all. McPherson starts with a long ramp up to the war, explaining all the factors that were involved with the disagreements between the North and the South. He covers much of the same information that I had read in The Waking Giant. Only this is better written. Points like the super-religiosity of the era are not belabored. But you can see how this whole fundamentalist streak has plagued us for more than a century. Battles are mentioned but not written about in the detail of the Foote books. That is actually a good thing. My suggestion is that you read this book if you want to know about that period.    

Just Thinking

I listened to The Stranger as I was driving across the country. Have you ever thought that nobody could come up with the same number of random thoughts as you do?  My drive was filled with random thoughts. It seems to me that Meursault had a very random mind (thank you, Wikipedia, for that spelling.) My brain seems to wander over a million thoughts - "When you drive on highway 40 from the East to the West, the mile signs count down how far you have to drive to leave a state. When you drive in the other direction, it's like getting old. You see the numbers add up, but you don't know when it will be over. Is that like Benjamin Button's experience? Should I see that movie? Hummm." "Oh, there's a sign that shows the way to a tornado shelter. Is it tornado season? How do those clouds look? What is a sign of trouble? Oh oh, what is that cloud doing over there?" (Note: Oklahoma City was struck by an unseasonable tornado two days after I spent the night by there.)

And on it goes. Besides enjoying Meursault's thoughts, I liked how the book was written.  It is very brief. I don't know why I wasn't required to read it in high school or college. I would have hated writing an essay about it, but would have loved discussing it. His mother dies and people are perplexed by his attitude toward that. I would not have had enough life experience when I was in school to understand how he could have seemed so unfeeling. Then he shoots a guy because of too many things, but he blames the unbearable heat and light. Again, I would have had too little life experience to understand that. I guess this means that we should reread all those horrible books we were assigned way back when. They might actually be very thought-provoking.

My friend, Per, recommended The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Because of his recommendation, I ordered the book - twice. Adrian brought one of the books with him at Thanksgiving. It was ripped off by a visitor to the house. Fortunately, Adrian had not lent out the other copy. This is a fascinating book. Thanks, Per. It's a mystery. There is much violence and, for once, I was glad that I was reading a paper copy, not listening. It was very easy to skip the violent stuff. And it was well written. The author died mysteriously of a massive heart attack at 50. Maybe it wasn't mysterious, but he was a lot like the main character in this book. It seems like a lot of people might want to kill him. Or sleep with him.

There will be more books (2) by this author once they are translated from Swedish to English. Get on with it, fellows. I want to read them all. My sister was less thrilled. Be aware, there is violence against women. If that's a deal-killer (in books, I know it is in life) don't read this.
The party who ripped off my Dragon Girl recommended the Outlander book and series. The book is very long, so after listening to a quarter of it, I listened to the end. Not impressed. Oh sure, it does have in intriguing time travel element, which is telegraphed for several chapters. It also has extreme violence and perversion. Our blue-eyed hero of the 1700's is constantly having unthinkable things done to him. And wait, there's more. More in the form of many more books in the series. I can understand how people looking for their own blue-eyed hero can become enamoured with these books.  I'm not, I didn't.

A Short Stop in California

One of the reasons that I flew out of Virginia on inauguration day was because I wanted to visit with my friends at their monthly confab. I used to be a part of this group, but it is too difficult to visit when you are a continent away.  I wanted to surprise them and just show up, but I did let Tom and John know. They Gchat with me, so it was easier to let this slip. They were meeting at Phillipe's, one of my favorite dives. The waiter took this picture. Let me tell you who they are. Jackson is at the left rear. He left The Times when he was 75. Still doing well. He travels to Japan twice a year for over a month each time. Go Jackson. Next is me, then Jim, who was a supervisor of the Helpdesk with me at one time . Tom is next to him.  I saw Tom 3 times on this trip. I also went to The Times twice to visit with friends and have lunch. Russ is next. His wife, Toni, is front left. He worked for Jim, then me and left to get a job at Long Beach State. John is on the far right. Banjo man. He gave us a concert in the parking lot after dinner, using Russ's banjo. Idalia is in front with her husband Guillermo. It was great fun.

It took no time at all to get my car registered. The DMV was very efficient, my total time in the office must have been 45 minutes max. That means that the rest of the time was spent visiting. Marilyn, Peggy and I met at The Farmer's Market. While we were getting our lunch, Marilyn was telling us about this fabulous doughnut place, Bob's. She said "everything in the world revolves around Bob's" quoting a favorite TV personality. It just happens that Bob was standing next to us at the time. He was getting his lunch too.  What a sweetie. He treated us to coffee and doughnuts to go with our lunch. So, if you are ever by the Farmer's Market next to The Grove, stop by to get something from Bob.  And think about the benefit of always saying nice things.

Later in the week I ate with Peggy again. This time we had breakfast with Maggie. I call us the Margaret Derivitives. Maggie and I would have breakfast every now and then before I left for Virginia this spring. She is one of my many conservative friends. Our last talk before I left was how the conservatives were left without a dog in the current fight. Obviously that was before Sarie was selected as veep candidate. Now that was a dog.

Adrian and I drove up to Albany for the, hopefully, annual German Potato Salad festival. We stayed with Karen and Peter. Peter has been building their back deck for some time. Talk about an adventure fraught with inspectors and unforeseen issues. It is coming along very well. Karen doesn't just add support by eating her lunch while Peter slaves. In fact, this is a rare moment of quiet for her.

I got no pictures of the event at Natalie and Kevin's. Besides the salad, we had a wonderful time. Almost everyone was there, including Jeff and Sandi. That was a treat. The ham and salad dinner used to always follow Thanksgiving. This year, people celebrated Tday all over the U.S. I'm glad the Northern Cal group decided to move the second get-together of that holiday to a later date. It was a beautiful day, we had a ton of food and got to celebrate the togetherness of our family.

The next day we celebrated the togetherness of the National and American Football Leagues. That was an exciting game. Maggie came over dressed as a cheerleader, but during the very long game switched to bride. Go team.