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Monday, December 27, 2004

You wouldn’t want to visit me just now. The entire length of the driveway is under water, and the toilet is running slowly. (Quite inconveniently, as it turns out, since I had Trader Joe’s Tuscan Bean Medley for dinner last night.) Whenever the ground out here gets saturated, I have water problems. The toilet is just the most prominent (and aggravating).

My new sunlight lamp came in handy today. I’ve been moving it around the house, trying to find the best place for it, to get the maximum advantage. On a day like this, all dark and dreary, there wasn’t even a question. I had it beaming onto my desk, where I was sorting mail and writing checks (including a bonus for myself, thank you very much).

Fortunately, I didn’t lose use of the phone, the way I did the last time it was this wet out. I wasn’t sure about that until I remembered to check it out. I didn’t realize until about 10 am that the phone hadn’t rung all day, so I lifted the receiver and listened for the dial tone. It was working just fine, so either nobody wanted to talk to me or nobody wanted to bother me. Either way, I was satisfied.

For as long as I could this afternoon, I put off traipsing out to the end of the drive to pick up the mail. I was hoping for a break in the weather, but none came. It might have been tempting just to leave it for a better day, but my battered mailbox doesn’t close all the way, so I knew the longer I left my mail, the wetter it would be.

And sure enough, the door to the box was left wide open and the grocery ads were soaked through. So was I, by the time I made it back to the house. None of my other bills or ads was damaged, nor was the Winter Fiction Issue of The New Yorker, so it could have been worse. As for me, I got out of my wet shoes and changed into sweats, because there was nothing else that was going to draw me out into the storm tonight.




24 December 2004

Aiden loves the attention, but doesn't much care for the Ritz crackers.



In the context of worldwide events, this minor complaint about a little rainstorm shouldn’t even register. An earthquake and tsunami have killed tens of thousands in south Asia, and at least half of my own country is paralyzed by ice and snow (or so it would seem from the news reports). If I tried to complain about that kind of weather-related devastation in appropriate proportion, I’d fall far short in the attempt. Best not to overreach, I suppose. Keep it in context.




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Actually, it is possible to shut up my mailbox, but it requires a small effort which is too much for some people to bother with. I wouldn’t think letter carriers would be included in that group, but obviously they are, at least a subset of a subset.

Recent recommendations can always be found on the links page.


One year ago: Hibernate
"It's a good thing the days are getting longer now, because I have a hard time seeing well enough to work after the sun starts to go down."

Two years ago: Evil Mary and Uncle Bob
"If we can get a little perverse pleasure out of it, maybe we can stand to live with it a little longer."


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