There is a King Cake in the office. It is delicious.
I broke my sugar fast for this, and for that I can thank the lack of a walk-away door arming on the car. I have to press a spot on the door handle, and sometimes I forget. Since I am in the city, where the possibility of people who just walk around testing car doors is not zero, I walked back from the office after I remembered that I hadn’t locked the doors. It’s nine minutes, and at a brisk pace, the entire day’s trips will burn the amount of calories contained in the King Cake slice. And thus am I assured my pants will fit in a week.
It was so, so good. It did not contain The Baby, so I’m not on the hook. I don’t know if it does contain The Baby, since it was locally made and the tradition may not be observed. The colors are traditional: “purple for justice, green for faith, and gold for power.”
Only the last one makes sense, really. Then again, the entire Wikipedia article is crap:
The origin of the cake tradition was popularly believed to be related to the Roman Saturnalia. These were festivals dedicated to the god Saturn so that the Roman people, in general could celebrate the longer days that began to come after the winter solstice.
What are you talking about
For this reason, Margaret Hasluck disputed as well the Greek tradition commemorating St. Basil's feast day with vasilopita, saying both customs had a common origin in the Saturnalia and Kronia.
What do you even mean by “for this reason”
In the Middle Ages, it was said that the king who was chosen had to pay the assembly a general round of drinks. To prevent cheating, the edible bean was replaced by a porcelain bean.
You can tell no one’s looked at this for a long time because “it was said” does not have [who?] or [citation needed] after it.
Okay, enough throat-clearing. My brother-in-law died.
Everyone’s absolutely stunned. We are the same age, one day difference in birthday.
It is with great sadness and the heaviest hearts that we announce the sudden passing of of our dear friend and partner, Dr. Greg DeSanto. Dr. DeSanto was one of the founders of Camelback Women's Health and was a caring, devoted physician who loved his patients and always put their care first. Dr. DeSanto was a consummate professional and beloved colleague, but above all, he was a loving and dedicated father to his three beautiful children. His loss is a great blow to all of us who depended on his brilliance and dedication. He will be greatly missed.
More on all this later, come the time of the service.
I'm doing the video for the memorial service, so I'm assembling photos from all sources and polling kids for his favorite songs. My wife said the last time they were in the car, he made her listen to a song he just loved. "It was an 80s female singer," she said, "but she went solo. Her name started with A." Very dramatic and emotional and serious, she said. And I could hear the song. I never knew he liked it. I'm not surprised he did.
Later I was texting with Daughter about something, and she mentioned that she was listening to some old music. From my era. she finds it appealing and more authentic compared to modern pop, although she has great taste in some contemporary artists. We started trading songs and observations; she shared a song that just laid me low. First time I've been interested in something new in a long time. First time I've listened to something new - for that matter, listened to music intently in a long time. My ears have been deaf from the high whine of existential agita for the last couple months. Don't give me something upbeat because I'm not in the mood, pal. And don't give me something downbeat, because I'm 100 measures ahead of you. But I really enjoyed the chat and the music, AND while we're doing it I'm on the treadmill listening to Rick Beato on YouTube count down 20 one-hit wonders from the 70s and nodding along to all the old familiar riffs, AND messaging with niece about photos AND giving technical troubleshooting to niece's fiance about the scanner AND thumping along until I'm sweaty and done and ready for the gentle press of a thumb on my forehead, aka, a good bourbon.
Which I just poured. My point here is this: let everyone know in advance what songs you want for your last hurrah. Sometimes you're blessed by people who love you dearly but never shared your musical tastes or felt a particular era of music as keenly as you did, and hence have No Idea! you have been besotted for years by a particular passage from a particular artist. Maybe sometimes you sing a song you really don't like at all, because you're making a sarcastic point. Oh Dad loved "In the Summertime," he'd always sing that at barbeques. No Dad was being ironic.
Think about it, is all I'm saying.
Me, I'm leaning towards Jupiter, by Holst. And then "That'll be the Day" by Buddy Holly.
A sky-flivver fell from the heavens. Perilous times for flight:
If there wasn't one story on the front page about an air accident, there were two.
The cost of progress. I've never run actoss an editorial demanding that something be done. Car accidents, yes. Plane accidents? As I said, I've never seen it.
On the other hand, how these great craft must have stirred the imagination:
USS Los Angeles was a rigid airship, designated ZR-3, which was built in 1923–1924 by the Zeppelin company in Friedrichshafen, Germany, as war reparations. It was delivered to the United States Navy in October 1924 and after being used mainly for experimental work, particularly in the development of the American parasite fighter program, was decommissioned in 1932.
The parasite fighters were smaller aircraft attacked to the big zeps, like aircraft carriers in the sky. A terrifying concept, when you think about it. Giant airships floating overhead with 20 fighters nestled like grubs, waiting to detach and zoom down and sow death and destruction.
BTW: “Unlike Shenandoah, R38, Akron, and Macon, the German-built Los Angeles was the only Navy rigid airship which did not meet a disastrous end."
Physicist Lester Hendershot created generators with no visible source of energy and he was immediately accused of quackery.
Lester took the public's reaction into account and by 1960, in addition to two new generators, he produced 56 pages of documentation explaining to humanitarians that the Earth is a giant magnet, which every day is capable of giving mankind hundreds of billions of volts.
More:
After the public documentation of the devices, explaining how to use the "power of the Earth" for free and efficiently, a beautiful thing begins: Dr. Hochstetter bought the invention and died suddenly in a train wreck. The only passenger who died during the accident.
A couple of years later, Hendershot is found dead in his house and it is impossible to say whether it was suicide or something else, because for some reason the investigation into the cause of death was never carried out.