The rock.

I've been watching some of the Winter Olympics this year. My wife had them on, and we like to see some of the amazing things people can do. I swear, freestyle ski jumps, skeleton sledding, speed skating, and so on -- if you'd never seen anything like it until you were an adult, you wouldn't believe the human body could perform such actions. 

Of course, cheating -- anyone above the age of three could believe that. 

 

It's tempting to pile on Canada because of the apparent dishonor their men's curling team has brought to the nation. Once thou hast let go of thy rock, thou cans't touch it no longer! The Eleventh Commandment, at least in the Olympics. 

One commenter said that in practical play, curling is like golf, in which honor is expected and demonstrated in friendly matches. I play neither sport, but I have always heard that golfers are notoriously untrustworthy. There's more to a lie in golf than the spot of the ball.

For some, the real scandal of curling is that it is an Olympic sport at all. To them, it is like having darts or bowling at the Olympics. 

I don't know. Archery has been a regular Olympic sport since 1972, and what is darts but fun-size archery? Bowling requires more effort than darts, but bowling does not allow sweepers as in curling -- and those sweepers are always out there working like the boss's boss just walked in. In any event, golf has been back in the Olympics since 2016 (after a 112-year absence), so you tell me what counts as a sport.

I still like the pancake test, heard a few years back on a Wall Street Journal podcast: If you can eat a stack of pancakes and go out and not have it affect your play, you are playing a game, not a sport. Golfers, curlers, bowlers, and so on may ask themselves that deep question. 

As for me, a stack of pancakes would make me want to nap, so it would even affect me playing Clue or some Pop-O-Matic game. I guess in the shape I'm in, everything is a sport. 

Cellar dweller.

It's been very cold for several weeks now -- really, since winter began. Usually we get a few warm spells in the winter here in the Hudson Valley. We'll have a couple of wind-blasted days of misery, ice and snow, the usual, but then a few days in the forties to kind of reset, melt some of the snirt, and wash off some salt with a little rain, before it's back to the cooler. Not this winter. One below-freezing day after another. Regularly colder here than in Anchorage. 

So my basement, which I never finished nor cared to, remains chilly. 

Unfortunately I have a lot to do down there. 

Artist's depiction of my cellar

As the Great Lileks is doing, we are aiming to get the house ready to show. This has meant a number of steps, all challenging, like:

• Paint the porch -- a frantic job done in late October before winter hit
• Spray wash the siding -- reluctantly accepted this recommendation, but it made the house look like new
• Dumpster rental -- frantic tossing of decades of old stuff
• Large item removal -- old fridge in cellar, book shelves
• New carpeting -- another great idea, painfully expensive, and made for one exceptionally stressful day for us and the dog
• Professional deep clean -- this also was nice, but I'm not used to strangers cleaning up after me
• Prepare for real estate photographer -- frantic removal of all personal effects and making rooms look like hotel rooms

And now:

YOU ARE HERE →🞋←

And here means getting ready for showtime. 

The problem is that all those other steps resulted in box after box of things going into the cellar, with no time to arrange them. That was okay to this point, as the photographer wasn't going to bother with pictures of the basement or garage. But NOW, we have to make the clutter neat. And this is where I am today. 

It's all for the good, but man, I am tired, and I am cold down in the cellar. I hear it's warmer down south, and they don't bother putting cellars in houses. I think that's where we'll go. Any suggestions? 

A small light.

The smallest window in the house is in the laundry room, which faces the side and does not provide much visibility for anything. However, I still stick a light-up angel there every year, because you can see it from the street as you come down the hill. The front windows are accounted for; the east side of the house has no windows at all. On the west side is just the one tiny window, and it has an angel in it. 

One of the oddest memories of Christmas I have is sitting in the backseat of the family's car on the way home. It was a few days after the holiday itself, and we'd been to see family friends -- and stayed out late, much later than we normally did, hours after midnight. I remember it was cold, maybe cold enough for Mom to recommend the blanket that we kept in the back of the car, which was made of rubberized plastic and had frozen and was not much help.

It seemed like the whole town, the whole city was asleep as we pulled away. Houses were dark; if anyone still had Christmas lights up, they had unplugged them. It was all just black, bleak, cold winter to look forward to now. 

I recall seeing one light, though, in the window of a large house before we got to the main road. I used to think it was a Santa Claus face, outlined in green lights, but as time goes on I am not certain. What I do know is how it made me feel -- some joy, some peace, but mostly longing for that one holiday light in that one small window of that dark house in that whole dark town. I have forgotten what it looked like, but I have never forgotten its effect on me. 

Christmas was not over, it said; in fact, in a crucial way, Christmas is never over. Sometimes the smallest things have the largest greatest strength; no amount of darkness can dim the smallest light. The tiny miracle of Christmas opens the door to all the others, and it is Christmas every day. 

So I wish you a very happy, peaceful Christmas, today and all of your days. Thank you for reading, and best of all things to you. 

Christmas roundup.

The thermometer says it is no degrees outside -- yes, friends, we are at Absolute Zero -- so it's winter! And that means Christmas is coming. It's practically here! 

Today I offer a brief roundup of some memes and candy that have popped up on my radar lately. Sweetness abounds. 

I thought this was hilarious, but I had to explain it to a couple of people. It took me a moment also, to be fair. 

I love this one because I never liked the movie and I hated the book. 

Chico had the Man's number, I think.

Next up, further proof that one day all the memes will join together into one Mega Meme. 

Guess what I found in my local supermarket on Saturday, December 20? That's right -- Valentine's Day Candy!

TV listing from Sunday -- tell me you've never see the special without telling me. 

I think AI is writing them now. 

And that brings us to a visit with longtime friend of this blog: PEEPS

Yes, we've reviewed Peeps and Peep Accessories many times on this page -- even other Christmas-themed Peeps, a decade ago. But we've never seen Gingerbread (or, as the yellow box notes, "Gingerbread FLAVORED") Peeps before. I'm a fan of the plucky little Just Born company of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but I am cautious. Can these possibly be any good?

Verdict: Yes, if you like marshmallow and you like the flavor of gingerbread and you think they'd work well together. Unbelievably sweet, of course, as the outer flavoring is also sugared, much as so many pumpkin spice treats in the fall include sugar. I think you need it; lightly melted sugar helps other flavorings stick, first of all, and second, sugar has a lovely and underrated texture all its own. But man, this is sweet. 

You might drop one of these dudes in a cup of (mostly unsweetened) cocoa and let him melt; I think that would taste good, although you hate to see a friendly face get the Wicked Witch treatment. 

So there's some hot and cold takes for this last Monday before Christmas. Hope to post tomorrow, but definitely on Christmas Day. 

Kaboom!

Sorry I have not been around. When I say everything blew up at once workwise, I'm not kidding. While overcommitting to other things, I agreed to a rush job for extra pay that turned out to have some hidden issues. I felt like a cartoon antagonist (say, Wile E. Coyote) whose tunnel got diverted to a fireworks warehouse by the hero (one Bugs Bunny, perhaps); rising from the tunnel in the darkness, I struck a match, then realized I was surrounded by gunpowder-laden rockets, their fuses lolling my way; shocked, I dropped the match, but before it went out, it caught a fuse and -- 

You've seen that cartoon before. 

As a coworker once told me on a particularly annoying afternoon, "If it was fun they'd call it play." 

Well, nothing for it but to shove everything aside that was shoveable and get the thing done. Which I did, yesterday, and was ready for a nap afterward, at which time of course I got a phone call from someone who almost never calls me. I will leave my phone on in case my wife needs me, thinketh I, because the only other person who might call is Claymore, and he never calls at this time because he's at work, and of course Claymore had taken the day off. 

Nice to be popular, but please, my public, let a guy rest! 

Meanwhile, here's a couple of other thoughts that have popped up for you:

ROOSTERS 

Chicken and eggs are good to eat, but sadly, roosters are part of the deal. When we moved from the city to the exurbs, there was someone in the area who kept a few, and I'd hear the idiot chicken known as the rooster scream from time to time. They don't just crow at dawn, as in the movies; they keep it up all the livelong day. 

As the town demographics have changed, it seems that keeping chickens is now more of a thing to do. These seem to be more hyperactive, possible meth-addicted roosters, who don't wait for sunup at 7 but start around 5:30. When one goes off to the east, another, miles away in the west, says to himself, "I'm not going to stand for that!" and blurts out his cheery tune. None of them have the nice, clear "cock-a-doodle-doo!" cry, but rather sound like kazoo-based kaiju being strangled. They used to say that children should be seen and not heard, but I think that better applies to chickens. 

WINTER

A haiku for you:

Chapped lips, chapped hands, feet

Where can I go to buy a

Full-body ChapStick?

See you tomorrow, unless more stuff blows up, or I get arrested for first-degree rooster assault. 

Electric heels.

One of the things I miss least about working in an office is getting to the office and getting home from same. Since most of my career was spent commuting via public transportation and shoe leather, the winter was the worst. Heavy coat, heavy boots, sloppy streets, grumpy New Yorkers. A regular winter wonderland. 

In those days I would keep a cheap pair of loafers in my desk -- one of those Payless pairs or the like that seemed to be made of compressed Hefty bags. That way I wouldn't be clomping around the place all day in my boots. The downside was that the plastic shoes, combined with winter air so lacking in humidity that it actually sucked water out of our skin, plus industrial carpeting, made the static electricity awful. I would carry a quarter in my pocket to tap against door handles to avoid getting shocked. The sparks between quarter and handle were often quite visible. I'd think, Isn't this how the Electric Eel on Underdog got his powers?

Believe me when I say how happy I was to not have a job that required working outdoors on such days. The reward of working outside on lovely days instead of being stuck in an office did not make up for having to labor in the freezing cold and rain and snow on tough days. But still, the static electricity was annoying. I think you could have stuck balloons on the wall without even rubbing them on your hair. Just carry one around for a while. 

Of course, my imagination and lack of scientific rigor expected more spectacular effects -- people's hair on end like they were hugging Van de Graaff generators; laptops shorting out at desks in a shower of sparks; the network being brought down by massive power surges; the combination of shocks and polyester clothes and negative humidity causing spontaneous human combustion. Fortunately real-world science is a little more forgiving than that. 

Winter still has lots of perils, so be careful out there, especially if you live in a land of ice and snow as I do. And if you work in an office, be careful in there. I'm not saying spontaneous human combustion is an actual danger, but the odds may be a titch north of zero. 

Cold heart, hot dog.

Springtime is on my mind

Flowers blooming, all the time

Smell the roses

Smell the grass

Old man winter can kiss my ass

                            --Spinal Tap, "Springtime"

Yay, winter.

The people who dig the snow
Are usually not those who dig the snow

Yesterday was fairly nice, mostly sunny, high in the forties, so global warming will kill us before the year is out. All the snow we'd had earlier in the week had melted but for some piles here and there. 

Unfortunately that left Winter's sickly child, Mud, all over the joint. And the dog had just gotten a pro grooming for the first time in two months. 

He's a hairy beast, and we never let him go that long normally. His fuzz gets matted and clumped, and that's no good for him. We ought to brush him out daily, but none of us would like that, least of all him. We're lucky to have a great groomer who has a knack with the hairy dudes like him. 

But in December, we skipped his usual monthly groom. Why? Because it would have been close to Christmas, and a lot of people who wouldn't normally get a dog groomed by a pro do so when company is coming or when cute pictures with Santa are going to be posted. Also, they might want to board the dog for a few days, or take advantage of doggie daycare (a service our groomer also provides), and that's where the rub is. Because we were a little nervous about this new and mysterious respiratory disease that's going after the dogs. 

The disease is dangerous and disconcerting. It's similar to kennel cough, but the cause is unknown thus far. I have heard of no cases diagnosed here in New York yet. Of course, the usual warnings apply, to keep your dog away from places where lots of other dogs congregate -- like the groomer or the boarder or the dog park. Since you can expect a lot of dogs in these places around the holidays, my wife suggested we skip a month. 

So we skipped December. Izzy was not a huge mess when the time came for January's cleaning, but yeah, he was ready, all right. Off we went yesterday for his early-morning appointment.

He dealt with it with his usual combination of love and panic -- I think he loves the groomer but hates the grooming. I picked him up a few hours later and he looked and smelled awesome. Having him riding in the backseat was like having an seventy-pound air freshener. 

Aaaand then there was the mud. 

The mud was neither very deep nor very squishy, but I have one strongly enforced rule: Stay clean for ONE DAMN DAY after I drop serious lettuce on your bath. It meant keeping pup away from the muddy edge of the sidewalk. The advantage I had was that he was too exhausted from the grooming to need a lot of exercise in the afternoon. 

So he's clean; apparently disease-free; my wallet is lighter; and there are no blizzards in the forecast. If you're in the Hudson Valley and your car is musty, I will rent out the fuzzy air freshener at cheap rates. He will even leave dog hair behind to keep the odor alive. 

Act fast: It rained last night and he could get muddy at any moment.

Crypto hunker!

We're expecting our first "plowable" snowstorm here this upcoming weekend, which has the weather whackos on the news acting like it's a free Rolling Stones / Taylor Swift concert in Central Park. "It's been 298 days since our last measurable snow event!" Yeah, you know why? It’s not that thing that rhymes with Lowball Dorming. It’s because that was when March happened. We don't usually get big snowfalls in April or May.

Now it's early January. We didn't get any snow in December. Which is completely normal for New York's lower Hudson Valley. And it's exceptionally normal for New York City not to get snow in December. I grew up there and never saw a White Christmas. Lots of rain. (No one dreams of a Clear Christmas.) 

People should not be getting their dresses up over their heads over the weather. 

They need instead to be hysterical about something important: Money! 

Yes, friends, it's time again to remind you that Fredcoin is the world's most awesome cryptocurrency, the kind that has seen no arrests or indictments, the kind that has an amazing track record of retaining its value. Worried about the winter? Afraid that a blizzard will cave in your roof, avalanche your car, rip off your porch, insult your mom? Wherever will you find the money to deal with all that? (Especially Mom, who will be so upset she'll want to buy shoes.) Well, it's Fredcoin to the rescue! 

Ask yourself: Self! Doesn't money get you through rough times better than rough times get you through money? And of course the answer is: Yes! So you need a safe way to invest your currency. Don't just leave it hanging around. The US government makes your dollar worth less every day. But it can't affect the United State of Fred! Fredcoin will hold your cash against the determined amount of Fredcoin, which will be there when YOU need it, when YOU want it! Not when the punks in Washington say you can have it! 

So thumb your nose at Old Man Winter. Thumb, I say, thumb! And send a bundle of your annoying money to me. You will immediately receive an e-certificate stating your investment in Fredcoin. Then watch the magic happen! Laugh at blizzards! Chuckle at storms! Give yourself a hernia over squalls! Tell sleet to kiss your fartin’ behind! With Fredcoin in your corner, you can't go wrong! 

Fredcoin! The Crypto for All Seasons!  

Snowman pickup lines.

☃ "Wanna rub our sticks together, baby?"

☃ "Frosty? He's my dad. Very connected."

☃ "I'd stop the world and melt with you."

☃ "I got two eyes made outta coal and they are burning for you."

☃ "So, er, you like snow cones?"

☃ "Come on over to my Frigidaire."

☃ "Wanna make snow angels on my face?"

☃ "Yeah, you've probably seen these guns on Tinder."

☃ "There may be snow all over, but there's fire in the furnace."

☃ "You ain't seen snowballs until you've seen my snowballs."

The daylights outta me.

Everyone here in New York considers summer over because the kids went back to school. They are aware that summer has officially has 17 more days, but they're thinking of closing the pools and getting the leaf and snow blowers ready for What Lies Ahead. 

My main concern is the lack of daylight. When we hit that first day of fall, the daylight and night darkness will--supposedly--even out. Half and half, Even Steven, Igual Pasquale. Actually, according to Time and Date's invaluable Sun Graph feature, I see that even on the first day of autumn we will have more daylight than darkness, not even counting the twilight. But that won't last long, and soon it will be months of depressing darkness again. Seasonal affective disorder? Moi? Yeah, maybe. 

You can get a good idea of what daylight hours in southern New York look like thanks to the Time and Date sun graph:

It's like a snake that swallowed a big meal in January and is digesting it between May and August. The static bit is of course the daylight savings interruptions in spring and fall. 

Now, let's compare this to the sun graph for a Quito, Ecuador, the Middle of the World City, the city that boasts a monument showing where the Equator runs, and you can stand with one foot in either hemisphere. 

Just as you'd expect -- pretty much straight stripes, the days never getting longer or shorter. I had a friend who lived there for a while, who said he got bored with the perfect weather all the time. I say: Try me.

For the complete opposite, and for alarming comparison purposes, here is the yearly sun graph for the Amundsen-Scott station in Antarctica: 

Isn't that nuts? They say that down there, as at the North Pole, the sun goes down one day and doesn't show up again for six months. This graph shows what a weird thing that is. Look at those huge gray vertical bands--those are sunset and sunrise!

So I see my best options as Quito or running back and forth between the Poles twice a year. Or maybe I should just turn on more lights starting in October. That might be good. 

Can't work, must meme.

Too lazy to work on Labor Day, our annual day of rest from our labors. I'm sure lots of dads will be enjoying it. All they have to do is buy the beer, set up everything outside, clean the pool, grill all the food, and then relax for ten minutes before it's time to put everything away and go to sleep for work on Tuesday. 

All I'm doing is resorting to some more memes. 

Not mine, obviously, but a good reminder.

Puff, the magic jacket.

I know I'm getting to be an old fart, but I'm not sure I understand the modern take on the puffer jacket.

Is it really helpful to have no use of your hands? I guess the collar part is useful for when you come home from the vet and they don't want you biting at the stitches. 

The classic down jacket was a great innovation, a lightweight garment that used the insulating power of air to provide better protection against the wind and cold than wool, all in a water-resistant outer layer. Add the faux-fur collar that zipped into a hood, completely covering the head but for a fist-sized front viewport, and you had a snorkel. A friend of mine went to college in Buffalo and swore that the snorkel was the only way he survived the winter.

The disadvantage of the down jacket was that it was only a jacket -- as with so much cold-weather gear, the upper body was kept nice and toasty but the legs had to fend for themselves. I might leave the house with an undershirt, shirt, sweater or sweatshirt, and coat, while between the waist and the boots all I had were tighty whities and a layer of cotton or denim. Poor legs! 

Down jackets got longer, becoming down coats, but I don't know what the hell this is:

For only $3,075 at Bergdorf Goodman you too can own this padded circus tent. Such a bargain! And this isn't even the biggest one I've seen.

I guess there's an advantage, as if you're cold enough and tired enough you can just tuck yourself in at the ends and have a cozy place to nap wherever you are. Good luck sitting in any kind of chair with that thing on, though.

No man winter.

I don't want to jinx us, but except for a couple of nasty cold snaps, this has been the easiest winter I remember, and I remember a few. The worst weather we have had so far in New York actually started on the first day of winter. It was no joke -- Buffalo got it horribly, and with a body count. But since then it's been very light. When we have had precipitation, it's been warm, so it's been rain. And, Mr. Snow Miser, for the record I am just fine with that. Why, it's like living in the south!

Usually when the winter is warm in this neck of the woods you hear a lot of wailing about global warming, but not this year. No one wants steady, freezing cold, with back-breaking car-wrecking ice and snow measured by the yard. Maybe the big-time climate chaos enthusiasts are thinking, Well, Miami, sucks to be you, but I'm digging this. And I think they can probably relax about Miami too. (Remember the #1 rule of Climatology: If it fits the Narrative™, it's climate; if it contradicts the Narrative™, it's weather.)

Having said all this, I do seem to recall Januarys and Februarys that were deceptively mild, followed by Marches that were -- to put it mildly -- bastards. The worst is when we make it to March 21, or whatever day the vernal equinox falls on that year, and think we're home free, and BLAM! Blizzard. 

So you can bet I'll be keeping a weather eye on things here, and if we do get smacked late in the season, you can bet I'll be linking back to this page. Heat Miser is at his weakest early in the spring, and Snow Miser thinks it's funny to drop a bomb on us just when we think we're safe. Keep watching the skies!

Sign of the times.

Well, it certainly was windy in New York yesterday. 

[Audience: HOW WINDY WAS IT?]

It was so windy you could hear the air whistling through our governor's head, playing Billy Preston's immortal "Nothing from Nothing."

As I knock these words out it's a little after six p.m. on Friday. The temperature is dropping to below zero, bringing the ruinous winds, and there are 57 power outrages posted on the local utility company Web site. We've been lucky -- so far. If the electricity goes out our gas furnace can't go on. And we only have one dog to cuddle up to -- everyone knows you need at least three for a bad cold night. 

To show you just how bad the wind was on Friday, here's one of the big signs in our area as I saw it at eleven in the morning:

That sign's been up for over a decade and I don't remember it ever getting whipsawed so badly, not even when hurricanes have crawled up this far north. My wife thought some large projectile must have been flown right through it, but I don't think so. I am not sure if it's appropriate or ironic that the one fix-it store in the shopping plaza, Home Depot, had its sign completely blown out. 

Side view -- I don't know what those signs are made of but they were coming off like shredded cloth.

Mean as this cold snap is, it's not supposed to last. By Sunday we should have a high of 44. That'll feel like a day in Daytona by comparison. 

Stay warm out there, my friends. Human beings are only able to survive this kind of thing because God gave us the brains for it. It's our only natural defense against the elements. Regarding intelligence: I wonder sometimes why half the population of New York doesn't die when the weather gets rough. I've seen how they drive. 

SNOW!!!!

So we finally got a for-real snow event yesterday. 

OR DID WE?

Six to eight inches of snow were expected. The district decided to close the schools as of Tuesday night. At ten in the morning Wednesday, not a flake had fallen. At eleven, birds were chirping. At one p.m. my Windows system software said "Snowing now," but my actual windows told a different story. It was starting to look like a non-event. Not that our local bloated school administration cared. They hadn't had a snow day off yet this winter, and by God they were going to get one. 

We northerners like to make fun of how southerners panic when a little bitty snow squall shows up, but aren't we a lot wimpier than we used to be? I know it's our inner Yorkshiremen that make us look back and say how we trekked through five feet of snow during a storm that made the Children's Blizzard of 1888 look like a gentle dusting -- but when I was a kid I'm pretty sure the schools didn't close before the snow even started. 

There may be reasons for this. More children live in single-parent households now, and in houses where both parents work, and if there's no adult home to fetch the kid because the weather got bad fast, what can the school do? Better to leave them home in the first place. 

Also, at least in theory, weather forecasting is better now than it was when we were tots, what with the News 10 Dopplercast 5000 or whatever your local station advertises. So sure, it may be sunny and warm now, but you wait -- Dopplercast 5000 says blizzard by lunchtime, and blizzard it shall be. 

Well, at last, at 2:30: 

An hour or so later it had turned to rain. Some of the neighbors' kids got some sledding in:

And this morning:

It rained all night and the temperature got up over forty. In other words, not only was there barely any snow in this snow event, but the weather wiped out the snow we already had.

I can live with it. My back didn't have to brave the shovel, I didn't have to pay Piers Plowman who does the driveway, and the children got their vacation day. But I can't remember the last time a forecast was this far off. 

There's a local guy who does weather forecasting on Facebook, and I don't know what his story is, but he's good. He uses data from weather services all over the hemisphere, and knows how to do the math. Even he got rooked on this one. At three in the afternoon he wrote: 

This one I did not see coming. We are experiencing warm air advection which is warm air approaching and over riding the cold dense air in place. Typically this produces moisture in the midlevel atmosphere and would produce precipitation with upward forcing motion. In our case snowfall.

However, at this point it has plateaued and has created a dry slot bubble in the midlevel of the atmosphere as wintry precipitation is in the process of transforming to rainfall. I am not sure how long before the dry slot bubble fills back in with precipitation.

The end result is we may experience this dry slot in the weather for a couple of hours. Precipitation likely returns as a mix or rainfall.... Weather can be fickle.

You can say that again, brother!

Light in January.

I'm a morning guy, and my dog is a morning dog, and as I noted a couple of weeks ago, at this time of year that means darkness. Which is not great. Cars don't see us, teenagers sneak up on us, animals are out there and while Izzy may smell them, I can't see them. 

Well, my wife got me this. 

I seldom do product plugs on the page, except maybe for some foods that aren't good for me, but I will plug this. (It's electrical, get it? har) It's a rechargeable headband that has a flashlight on the temple and a glow band for general luminosity on the front (that yellow strip). And when I say it glows, I mean it glows like Rudolph. 

When we're out where there are no streetlights and no sidewalk, at the time of year when the sun doesn't rise until past seven and the sky is usually plastered with cloud cover anyway, it's nice to be able to press a button on the headband and get this aura to illuminate the darkness. It lights up everything within about 30-40 feet, I'd guess, and certainly warns any cars that we're out there far better than just reflecting tape or the like would do. A second press of the button sets the glow strip on a less-bright / less battery-sucking level. I've yet to run out of juice on one of our walks, though, maybe because the sun eventually does come up. 

What really interested me from a personal-history standpoint was the flashlight on the side. 

Why? Because like most red-blooded American boys, my entire function in life appeared to have been to hold the flashlight in the wrong spot and annoy my father. Car trouble, insulation work, electrical wiring, plumbing -- anytime there was a job that required working in a dark spot, you can be sure I would be there holding the light for hours. My attention would wander and so would the light, and I'd get rebuked. In my misty water-colored memory, this seems to have taken up approximately 37% of my childhood. 

Well, don't I wish my dad were still with us so that he could see this miracle! A mere headband, so much more compact than a miner's helmet but with the same power of light! Dad could have worked in peace and gotten things done faster, and I could have been doing something more fun, like homework or going to the dentist. I won't say Dad didn't try, with products like the Snake Light giving some relief, but even they had to be moved around as he worked and there was never a perfect spot to hang them from. 

The headband's flashlight also has two levels of power. Plus, when you have it set to whichever function you want, you can turn on the side sensor -- this allows you to turn the thing on or off with just a wave of your hand by the button. When wearing big bulky gloves, this is a helpful feature. 

Now the complaint: The thing is made in China, and it shows. The glow strip partly detached after a few weeks of use. But it was easy to superglue it back on, and it's stayed in place since.

If I have another quibble, and I really don't, it's that when out in the cold I like to keep the hood up on my coat. This is fine with the glow strip, but it blocks the flashlight. Nothing much to be done on that score. I only use the flashlight when out with the woofer to zero in on whatever he's left behind that I must pick up, and he usually waits until we get home to do that.

So if you're in town and driving around early, and you see a light in the darkness, don't worry. It's not an alien or a ghost. It's just ol' Fred and his fuzzy sidekick, getting our morning air at some insane hour where any smart person would be sleeping. Give us a wave -- we'll leave the light on for ya.

Wake-up juice.

Scandinavians and other northern types love their coffee. Charts of the top coffee-consuming nations vary from year to year, but among the top coffee drinkers you will always find Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and Canada. Why? Because A) it's cold and they want to drink something hot and B) there's no sun for six months out of the year and they need caffeine to stay awake. 

 

A long time ago I visited Norway, one of the nations in my ancestral mishmash, and I remember that people sucked down coffee like they would die without it, and also that the coffee was really good. My wife, having heard such tales, and being a coffee hound herself, got me a couple of bags of Norway's finest coffee for Christmas. Here's one: 

 

Kjeldsberg is a coffee roaster in Trondheim, Norway, and I don't think there's any more Norwegian-sounding city than Trondheim. You could say it all day. Trondheim Trondheim Trondheim. Anyway, Rasmus Kjeldsberg started the company in 1856, correctly predicting that coffee was going to be a big business. That makes Kjeldsberg older than venerable American brands like Maxwell House (1892), Chock Full o' Nuts (1926), Martinson's (1898), Chase & Sanborn (1874), and Hills Bros. (1900), but not quite Folgers (1854). However, most U.S. brands have been bought and sold by big companies over the years*, and the quality of the coffee has not stayed top-notch, dare I say. Kjeldsberg is, I believe, still its own business, and business is good.

I don't consider myself a coffee snob, but I have to say that the Kjeldsberg kids know what they're doing. The two varieties I tried were delicious--full-bodied without being acidic and nasty, rich without tasting burned. Honest injun, it was better than any major American brand I know. It even surprised my wife, who expected some kind of thick Eurotrash goop that could only be forced down with cigarettes and baguettes. Well done, my Norske friends!

Many moons ago, when the idea of quality coffee was sweeping the nation (and we could always use some more sweeping), the head of a small company at which I was employed came back from the Frankfurt Book Fair. We were in the business of importing foreign books and Americanizing them for the US trade. While in Germany she had been in a discussion with some of the shifty foreigners about coffee, and they were comparing the coffee found in Italy, Germany, and other nations. 

"What do you think of American coffee?" she asked. 

After a moment, one of the fellows said, "It, too, is a beverage."

She thought that was hilarious. I admire the remark as well -- it so perfectly combines the desire to appear polite with the desire to look down upon others that perhaps no other continent can do as the Europeans do. 

Oh, well. I'll give them credit for the joe. We'll take everything else on a case-by-case basis.

⛾⛾⛾⛾⛾

* For example, Chock Full o' Nuts, Chase and Sanborn, and Hills Bros. are currently owned by Massimo Zanetti Beverage USA, the American branch of Italian giant Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group; Maxwell House is owned by conglomerate Kraft Heinz; and Folgers is owned by J.M. Smucker Company, having broken free from America-hating Procter & Gamble in 2008, where it had been since 1963.

Horrors of January.

The problem isn't walking the dog. The problem isn't even the cold. The problem is, it's freaking dark out there. 

I'm a morning person, have been since I became a grown-up. No matter how tired I am, or desperate I may be for a nap later, I gotta get up early. And if I'm up, puppy Izzy iz too. And then we have to go explore. Surfin' Sniffari! 

This time of year is the worst. Strange things lurk in the darkness of the morning. Weird, grunting beasts with no name, no language, no tongue known to man. Of course, I'm referring to the teenagers stumbling out of the house for the early bus. On our walks during the day, every kid up to age 13 wants to say hi to the dog, or just look at him; teenagers are surly and don't want anything to do with anything. Black hoodies up, faces shrouded in gloom, they slump off to the corner. 

In the dark, everything looks like a potential menace. Or perhaps something weird, or perverse. Like, I'm pretty sure I saw these shrubs in the original Wicker Man movie: 

What foul monsters lie behind these suburban doors?

Fortunately I have my trusty guard dog with me. He's very brave. Pretty brave. Well, not that brave. Kind of brave. He stood by me through it all, and then got scared of the garbage can back at our own house.

(Note: Unlike our late friend Nipper, Izzy is not scared of all garbage cans; in fact, I have no idea why he panicked that morning upon seeing our recycling bin and nearly took my hand off, bolting for the porch. What goes on in their heads? Anything? HELLLLLO!)

So, what's to do? Well, I comfort myself with the knowledge that the days are getting longer, 30 seconds or so at a time. And I remind myself that the stuff out there really isn't too scary. I always have a flashlight for such dark excursions to ward off bears and the like, and so far all has been well. 

In fact, none of that was really too scary at all, compared to what was waiting for me INSIDE THE HOUSE . . .

Later that morning . . .

When I opened . . .

. . . THE GAS BILL!!!!!!!

😱😱😱😱😱😱

AAIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!

Crymate change.

Is the rooster facing the wrong way on this weathervane clip art? 

I'm not sure if I'm dealing with seasonal affective disorder or post-Christmas blahs or what, but our unseasonably warm temperatures haven't lifted my spirits. Maybe I like the fighting with the snow that usually comes in January. Takes my mind off things. I don't think I'd miss the snow much if I moved south and never ran into it again. But a good fight can bring a guy some pride.

As usual, most of our neighbors couldn't wait to get all their Christmas decorations down, as if the whole thing had been a big mistake and they wanted to forget it and move on. The rest have been taking them down one by one, or just not lighting up anymore. Not us. We're lit till Epiphany, boys! Technically that's today, but it's not celebrated until Mass on Sunday. Then we return to Ordinary Time. (I always hear the voice of Lili from Blazing Saddles: "Oh . . . how ordinawy.") 

If we're the last house with lights on through Sunday night, so be it. I'll clear the outdoor stuff Monday. There's no blizzard on the way. 

Work is starting to rev up again -- a little slow off the starting blocks this week with the freelance assignments, but we're getting there. Meanwhile there's always the sense that No One Likes Me Anymore and I'm Going to Have to Live in a Box. Not that I worry about things.

Fighting snow, fighting through a pile of editorial work, keeping body and soul together and house intact through the winter -- maybe it does give a man a sense of purpose. That's one way to fight the January blues. I don't know what people do in the south. Enjoy themselves, maybe. I don't know how to do that.

Escape from winter with Fredcoin!

Look at this illustration of happy natives enjoying themselves in the sun! Ah, wouldn't it be nice to be among them? 

But nooo, you had to stick your money in those crooked crypto-scams, the ones that get people arrested in the Bahamas before they have to testify in front on Congress. You should have put your dough in Fredcoin! 

Yes, friends, Fredcoin is the cryptocurrency for you! You know how that guy with the accordion above got his instrument? Did you guess Fredcoin? Well, no, but it could have been! And look at how the happy people frolic to the beautiful music of his theoretically-possible-Fredcoin-funded instrument!

Now, as we approach the end of 2022, you may be mulling it over. Mull mull mull. I can hear it now. Should I put my money in nice, safe Fredcoin, or should I set fire to it in the backyard? Which is virtually the same as any other investment these days. And I sympathize with your plight. You who have no Fredcoin are in a world of confusion, a world that for the investor is like being stuck in a room full of broken glass (inflation) and nails (overregulation) and a stupid, unhappy rhinoceros (the U.S. government). Any possible move the rhino makes is going to hurt and cause more damage to you, and none of them will get you out of this mess. But oh, if only you'd gotten some delightful Fredcoin!

Oh, sure, I know some of you have doubts. You hear that a thousand cryptocurrencies sank to Davy Jones's Locker just since January. You've heard that the market cap for cryptos has shrunk by 72% since November '21. You figure that putting money in Fredcoin is just another way to watch your cash disintegrate. At least if you burned it in the backyard you'd get some warmth for a while. 

Well, knock off that kind of defeatism! We don't believe it that here. What some people call "an inability to let go of anything" and "a hobgoblin of little minds" we call "loyalty." And we're not going to let our loyal investors down. 

So send your money to me, Fred, where it can be converted into the world's most up-and-coming cryptocurrency (according to me). Who knows? Next year maybe you'll find yourself wintering in some sunny spot instead of sinking into the ice and snow. It's worth a shot!