We briefly glance in on a random bi-cultural couple shortly before Christmas:

Miguel: You in an autoaggressive mood or what? Just tell me where the Christmas tree place is.
Alpha: “Auto aggressive”? Big words, little man.
Miguel: Grrr.
Alpha: Same place it is every year.
Miguel: Where. Is. It.

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They’re persistent.
Trying to get me to join.
Not the Witnesses. If it were them, I could just strike up a conversation about anal sex until they abandoned my porch.
The rowers.
At first, I thought if I gave them my first-born they would leave me alone.
But they need an old guy for their masters’ team.
“Monday we do circle training,” I was told. “Thirty seconds at one station, then thirty seconds rest, then thirty more at the next.”
“Mmm.”
“And so on.”
“Mmn hmm. Well, Mondays, I have cello, theoretically.”
“Wednesdays we have weight training here.”
We were at the club, eating fondue and drinking beer or mulled wine. The fire in the fireplace was roaring. The place was quite warm.
“Thursdays we have a less intensive training at the school. Saturday is more weights or something here, we haven’t worked that out exactly yet.”
“That’s at two.”
“Something like that.”
“This is for the four-man team. Sculls.”
“Yes. Although our ultimate goal is to get eight old guys for the single-oar thing whatever the hell that’s called in English.”
“I tried that once and thought I’d broken my arm.”
“We’d explain better how to do it exactly.”
“Hrm.”
“Get you another beer?”
“Sure.”
And so on.
They’re also planning a week-long trip rowing through Hungary someplace this summer. Every time they try that they seem to get rained out or sink a boat or something.
Today a kid fell through the ice on the creek next to the club, but only part-way.

I had dinner first, Alpha made something with wide noodles in three different colors, with zucchini and bits of ham, it was tasty so I calculated exactly how long it would take me to get where I needed to go and ate until the last possible minute. When I did my final Bat-Turn and parked in front of the dermatologist’s office it was exactly time for my appointment. Then I went into the waiting room and read a dog-eared women’s health and beauty magazine for the next quarter of an hour – “Affairs at the Company Christmas Party!” (two main points to the story, basically, “they’re bound to happen” and “if you tell it’s your own fault” which makes me consider sending one of the kids to Alpha’s office Christmas party this weekend) – until a mother came out with her pimply-faced teenage son and the doctor came out and summoned me inside.

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Happy birthday, kd.

A koan:
Three-lane freeway parallel to the river. From right to left, slow, medium and passing lanes. Today’s morning commuter traffic results in the following estimated speeds (official speed limit on freeway = 130 kmH): Slow lane = about 100 kmH. Medium lane = about 120 kmH. Fast lane = the sky’s the limit, right now about 130 kmH.

A man is tootling along the middle lane in a Dobl

Bread: Some sort of tangy whole wheat, fresh, two of three ununiform slices self-sliced with large, serrated breadknife. Gave wife middle slice to ensure that she didn’t get an end piece that had been sort of dessicated by exposure to air, which she does not like.
Butter: Still hard from the fridge, thickly sliced. Thick in the way that used to horrify me after I’d first come here, thinking, I’ll never eat butter that way, my heart hurts just looking at it. Thick like cheese. The things you get used to.
Honey: Large jar from Carinthia. Dipped out and spread on the butter with butter knife.
Coffee: with some milk that was past expiration date but still good, I checked.
Pear: shared with her – I cored, she sliced.
Miscellaneous: one multiple vitamin pill, for the hell of it.

Afterwards: tossed out compostable garbage. Garbage can was frozen shut, but opened after brief fight. That’s still better than the way it can be in mid-summer. Car started up, but sounds like battery might not make it through the winter.

Home today with Gamma, who’s ill. Basically your dry cough and elevated body temperature. I jokingly promised to read a hundred stories to her today. Have about half a dozen to go. More tomorrow.

Very cold again today, but mink oil is keeping the car doors from freezing so far.