Blue-Footed Musings

• I am reading Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline. So far I’m not enjoying it. If the book were a ravioli and the filling were pop culture references, dinner would be a big mess of exploded pasta. Meanwhile, nothing happens for the first 120 pages except the main character being a jerk and wallowing in self-pity. I hope it will get better, but I’m keeping my expectations low.
• I like cold and snowy weather, but I think I’m ready for our annual 3-season vacation from winter. It was -1.4 degrees last night when I went to bed. That is too cold. Negative temps are just so . . . negative.
• Livia opened a new art store. This store specializes in dragon art. The prices are monstrously high. When I was a kid, me and my buddy Jason R, who lived across the street, used to sell our works of art at a nearby retirement community for 10 cents each. I know that there’s this thing called inflation, and I realize that Livia is at a disadvantage, because she has only 3 potential buyers at the moment, so higher prices are to be expected. But $8-$10 per dragon? Egads! I’m a sucker, though, and I bought two dragons (one was on sale, so I got a better deal on it). The dragons have names: Falcon and Ferabotus.
• This weekend’s goal was to put any lingering Christmas stuff away. There was a great deal of Christmas still loitering about. Yesterday I reluctantly stowed away my books of Christmas music, but first I photocopied the songs that I enjoyed playing. I’ll put them in a binder so that next year I won’t have to sight-read all of the music again just to find the ones I like. Today I will attempt to undecorate (dedecorate? disornament? reunadorn?) the Christmas tree and take down my Christmas card display. Blah. This is the least wonderful time of the year.

• The last theme I handled at work today was “Talk Like a Pirate,” and I did my evening walk to the tune of “Drunken Sailor,” which had gotten stuck in my head. Alas, mateys, me landlubberly brain be lacking in lyrics! Eight laps later I was no closer to the answer of what to do with a drunken sailor early in the morning.
• I said something to my husband and daughter today and capped it with an evil laugh, proving that parenting is a two-way street. Yes, the kids learn a lot from us, but we pick up some of their idiosyncrasies, too. Or as Marshall would say, “Mwa-ha-ha!”
• I happened to take note of the time as I was managing my Daily Minimum today and, excepting my salaried work and the creative (optional) part of the list, it took me less than an hour to finish. This verified what I had already begun to suspect: the minimum is too minimal. I really oughta up my game.

• It snowed again today, just a flurry. That’s three days in a row now. It’s exactly how snow ought to be–frequent and light.
• My husband fixed the heat. It’s a temporary fix, but one that we will have to live with for a few months while we figure out the permanent solution. For now, there’s a red plastic pipe arching over our front door. It looks sort of ridiculous but also cheerful. We call it “The Rainbow of Heat.”
• We played our first game of Azul. The theme of this board game is based on a style of painted Portuguese and Spanish tiles, called “azulejos.” Though the theme is not essential to the gameplay, it’s very colorful, and we have nicknamed the five tile designs “Icy,” “Lava,” “Blueboi,” “Sharpy,” and “Goldy.” There are elements of the gameplay that individually remind me of Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Bingo, but as a whole it’s like nothing I’ve ever played before. You can read a little more about it here. I would definitely recommend Azul, and I think my husband and kids would, too.

Today I was tired, grouchy, and cold. The last thing I wanted to do was go outside, where it was even colder than our partially unheated house. But I needed to do my daily walk, so outside I went.

As I walked the first lap, I thought about how much I missed having snow. We’d came close to having a White Christmas last year, but the same storm that almost flooded us on Christmas Day also washed away all the snow. This less than cheerful memory wasn’t helping, and I felt even more tired and dispirited. I paused to rest at the top of the driveway.

As I was standing there, staring off into the dark of evening, I saw a tiny snowflake drift by. Then another, and another, until the air was all a-flurry.

I’m not so arrogant as to believe that the snow was a special gift for me, but it was a gift. I accepted it as such and said a thank-you to the sky. Then, with the snow as my encouragement, I powered through the rest of my walk.

My husband thinks that our heating system has a leak. The system is pulling in fresh water, which it would only need to do if water were leaving the system. We don’t see any puddles or water stains on the walls. That suggests that the leak is in a section of pipe that runs under or through the foundation. There used to be several sections like that, but my husband fixed all but the one that lies below our front entrance. We knew it would need to be fixed eventually. I guess the day has finally arrived to deal with it. It’s just a nuisance in many ways, the most obvious and immediate being that for the moment we cannot run the heat in that zone (which encompasses all of the downstairs except the great room). We do, however, have two working zones plus two electric space heaters and a fireplace, so we will not freeze to death. Any problem that doesn’t result in death seems like a very manageable thing to me these days.

• Today I was awoken early by the heating system. It was making loud knocking sounds, presumable because there’s air trapped somewhere in there. It was not a good way to wake up.
• Livia and her father made homemade blueberry pancakes today using a recipe from Livia’s new cookbook. The book was a birthday gift for Livia. The pancakes were a gift for the rest of us, and they were delicious.
• I am not feeling motivated today, and knowing that I have the day off from work tomorrow makes it easy to say, “Eh. I’ll do it all tomorrow.”