2014 — 26 February: Wednesday
Were I the sort of introspective chap who ever ponders the rich whichness of the ineffable why1 as I stumble, bleary-eyed, along the next stretch of Life's little highway, I might remark at either (or both) of the morning's thoughts:
- That bright star within a moon's diameter of the crescent moon itself in this frosty, clear pre-dawn sky might just be Venus
- These 2,672 (or so) days of ¬blog jottings have already exceeded (by a prolixity factor of three) the volume of my 30-year plus set of email exchanges with Carol
Not to mention that I should by now really know better than to leave the crockpot in an unwashed state overnight. Still, at least I had had the gumption to fill it with cold water, so I had no need of a chisel. Time for tea coffee, for a change.
It really is...
... the case that I wake six hours after going to sleep. But the pre-breakfast second movement of Schubert's D.929 Trio for piano and strings in E flat major is fine by me. There are far worse things to contend with, some days.
Two cultures
It's not often that I find myself reading an entire article hosted on a "Christian" web site. This was an interesting exception. Not least for the snippet of Stoppard. And I have the Loren Eiseley essay mentioned as the 'best' response, too, in my copy of "The Star Thrower" — his final collection. (Link.)
As recently noted:
There are four Laws. The third of them, the Second Law, was recognised first; the first, the Zeroth Law, was formulated last, the First Law was second; the Third Law might not even be a law in the same sense as the others. Happily, the content of the laws is simpler than their chronology, which represents the difficulty of establishing properties of intangibles.
It's the Second Law that CP Snow liked to quiz people on :-)
The Fifth Law...
... is that cleaning windows is harder than it looks — as far as I can see, which is not very far given the state of the windows here in Technology Towers. They all too easily fail the sunshine test. Speaking of which, I was thinking again about life as a parent. Here's a bit I wrote to dear Mama quite some while ago:
Our little pickle is currently off somewhere near Basingstoke (finally) on one of his much longed-for paintball exercises (shooting other participants with paint guns for a whole day). The facts that he has a cold, and it was pouring with rain again this morning, and that he had to be out of the house to rendezvous for his lift by 8 o'clock, all failed to dampen his enthusiasm, though I expect he'll be pretty moist by the time he drags himself back this evening. He was probably just very glad to get away as we'd been lecturing him yesterday for about an hour on the need to work somewhat harder (not that his results strictly call for him to but, as he's now aiming for Oxbridge, I felt obliged to point out that he will face some real competition from youngsters every bit as intelligent as him for almost the first time in his life). Christa, too, helped me straighten him out on a few of Life's verities... Where's that 'How to be a parent' instruction manual when you need it?
Lunch waits...
... for no man, so it's just about time I wasn't here any longer. It's a bright, sunny day now that the frost has melted away, too. I shall be joining Len and our mutual friend 'Bri the plumber' to show him the capabilities of the kitchen at the Plough in Sparsholt.
A little birdy...
... has just popped up, shedding light on the problem Junior had on Sunday when he tried to connect his Android smartphone to BlackBeast to hoover up a video file, because the USB stick (mine, incidentally, that he'd half-inched on a prior visit) he'd brought along was then overflowing:
I don't think I'll be bothering, somehow.2 Meanwhile — having called on next-door-but-one neighbour when I returned from lunch and a chatter, to get him to disgorge a parcel delivery made in my absence — I now have plenty to catch up on in the next few days.
"I may be gone a while."