Is there a technical term for those over-crisped bits of french fries that come in the box but that aren’t full-fledged fries? Is there even a literary term? A term of endearment? A legal term or condition? If there is, I don’t know it. Or them.
But at this season, I know a reindeer’s face when I see one.
Merry Christmas!
Decades ago, when I was in school and also had children in school, I slogged through two courses that were new to me: calculus and accounting. Lots of people conflate mathematics and accounting but their newness to me was about all they had in common.
About all, but not quite all. They both taught me that memorizing techniques wasn’t enough: I had to actually understand what I was doing. Calculus was an especially effective teacher in this regard. After acing two mid-terms–one devoted to differentiation, one to integration–in which I happily applied the technique-du-test to implicitly labelled problems, I failed the final when I had to independently select a technique to solve deliberately unlabelled problems. I was, at least, consistent: I chose the wrong technique every time, or almost. Oops. A spectacular oops. (As a side note, why the professor passed me, I’ll never know. It looks like it was just a numbers game: I had enough points from the first two tests to pass and so I did, even though clearly I had no idea what I was doing.)
Who is this guy with the goofy grin?
He’s the cheery fellow who greeted me when I ripped the 30W USB-C charger out of his toothless mouth. Now this is a guy who’s happy in his work. At least he was happier than I was at that point, since the acquisition of this said 30W USB-C charger had required a second trip that day through snowy streets and weekend-before-Christmas traffic, since the 30W USB-USB charger I had for another brand of phone might work but only badly (even possibly dangerously, if I believed the online warnings).
Before we meet again, my Advent Calendar will have finished its meander through the gospel narratives of the birth of Jesus. Without making a big fuss, it will have skipped lightly over the key events: so lightly that it’s easy to miss their meaning, their force.
Then, as now, governments liked to tell people what to do and figured that their own administrative convenience was what mattered.
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world should be enrolled.
And all went to be enrolled,
each to his own city.
– Dec 06/o7, Luke 2:1 – 2:3
The standard photo-editing software bundled with Windows® includes something called “filters.” These are pre-set changes to photos that affect how they look: the only creative control I have is how intensely to apply the change.
When I’m editing photos this way (as opposed to selecting a set of individual changes) I don’t have a default setting, but if I did it would be “warm contrast” applied with a light hand. “Warm” because I don’t like being, or even looking at, cold. “Contrast” because adding just a smidge improves most of my photos to my eye in ways that I find hard to articulate. Thank goodness not everyone has the same problem.
Happy 37th birthday!
No, not for me: On the straightaway I can see a small cloud of dust that marks the approach of {37 x 2}. No, not for my children: even for them, 37 is so far in their rearview mirrors that they would need to squint to see its fast-disappearing tail.
Early training tells. “Tells what?” you might wonder. Tells me it’s not necessary to buy rain gear.
I didn’t need it for my decades in Alberta.
I shouldn’t need it anywhere else.
It’s an unreasonable position, for sure, but it’s mine. I have a workable umbrella or three, an adequate jacket-mit-hood, and hopeless footwear. In this season of unseasonable rain, that’s the bad news.
The good news is that rain offers me new vistas: in this case, drops and droplets gracing the hood of our Kia.
Don’t share your PIN number with anyone else. Or your SIN number, for that matter.
Unsure of the best route to your destination? Try our GPS system.
Are your teeth on edge yet? Only if you actively think about the expansion of these acronyms, I guess: personal identification number, social insurance number, and global positioning system. Our all-too-common parlance repeats their respective last words in an irritating but all-too-understandable redundancy.
Sometimes life intervenes in a schedule. Last year it was a demanding work project interrupting my exercises for several months. Last May it was a mild bout of Covid-19 handling the interruption chores for a few weeks. Last week it was a technical failure of some sort that sidelined my video-editing software.
The challenge with any interruption is to not get derailed permanently, but instead to re-rail myself as quickly as possible. This video sees me back on track, marking the nominal conclusion of my six-year Fit at 70 project.
Day-to-day, even week-to-week, progress can be imperceptible, much like aging. In this regard, having a video record from six years ago is a mixed blessing. So it goes: The best is yet to be, eh?
Posted: 2025 may 03
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
