2024 July 31 Summer 41. Rfkill froze while starting Trisquel 11. And the volume control no longer functions after a general update. Getting tired of this or that desktop. Glad to see a post by nm03 yesterday. July 21 An interesting discussion on BSD today by dmadhatr. In the wake of the CrowdStrike event, GhostBSD might be just the thing for easy entrance into BSD world. July 17 GhostBSD is worth a try. Straightforward installation of FreeBSD for newbies. July 15 Town has nearly doubled in population overnight. Nearby town threatened by natural processes required evacuation, hopefully temporarily. June 18 No heat waves yet, but tomorrow might be the day to start one. Lilac coming up fast. Grass less responsive. January 15 Cold and sunny. Big old house for sale. Large property. January 7 Not many posts last year. Perhaps this year will be more interesting 2023 September 6 The CME last night has passed and moods around here are better. September 5 Overcast and gloomy. A cheerful mind seems impossible at the moment. August 23 Summer is plodding along. Rather chilly last night. Mowed the lawn yesterday. July 11 Installed Triskel yesterday on an old Dell and ended up with no desktop and a black screen with a prompt. Installed lynx, openssh and ed. Tomorrow will look for a file manager and a desktop. Always a learning curve with updated distributions. May 5 Corrected video links and edited a number of posts. Picked up sticks in the grove. Very little snow left. May 4 Did some gardening. Wind NE 10 knots. Still too cold for sailing. April 27 Messiaen died on this date in 1992. April 21 Opened the shed today. Put the snow shovel away. Got out the rakes. Town announces Spring Cleanup date as June 21. April 20 Grass appearing. No daffodils yet. April 19 Neighbours haved moved: house for sale. Not many buyers this time of year. February 8 Running TinyCore 10 just for fun. Not much snow. Minus 48 C windchill last week. Coldest so far. Brr. Today we enjoyed a mild -6 but tonight: -20. Thoughts of green grass and summer. January 12 Hardly any snow this winter. Bitter cold reigns supreme. Which is worse? Swarms of blackflies, or a windchill of minus forty? 2022 December 16 Beethoven was born today in 1770. He is 252 years old. Here is a 2018 video of his popular fifth symphony: Richard Tognetti 34:48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKFLH-y6Ao0 December 15 Many of Messiaen's early works were unpublished or lost. At age 20, he composed 'The Celestial Banquet', a short piece for organ. Here are two videos of it: 1. In this video you can see the score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3KEKwRHLoc 2. In this video you can watch Daniel Ficarri perform in a very large church. Included are brief inserts of religious art and architecture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfTH-VTBgQE December 14 When he was 17 Messiaen entered a contest. He composed a fugue based on a subject by Henri Rabaud. He won first prize. Here it is played on the organ and animated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbEwFqAvFw December 13 Messiaen's Opus 1 for piano tells the story of the lady of Shalott. Messiaen was born in 1908 and composed the piece in 1917. He was nine years old. You can watch the notation while listening on viewpure.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxRLRDe-vmY December 12 Frigid today, moderate tomorrow. Dress warmly, or stay in with a hot drink. August 1 Running OpenBSD. Easy if you read carefully the initial mail sent, and do the afterboot. July 27 Drizzle. 14C. Still waiting for summer. July 26 7:30 PM he sat in his LazyBoy for the last time. Years ago. Time flies. Universe ponders on. July 9 Rain. Northeast wind. Gophermap still a mystery. July 7 Sunny again, windy, rain forecast for the next seven days. I expect the neighbours will mow their lawns in the afternoon. July 6 Sunny out, for a change. Expecting a high of 20 C: pleasant. Breezy too. July 5 Received help on the gophermap. This was helpful and I will try it out soon. Only 13 C here today, on the low end of normal. July 4 I am still trying to work out how to use the gophermap. It seems to function as the index page in html. I hope to have it going by the end of the week. June 26 The decade of the 2020s is nearing 25% completion. July 1 will mark the day. Then only 7.5 years will remain. May 26 Collected five bags of sand from the lawn. In winter they spread sand on the streets, then they plow the streets. Then they snowblow the snowbanks onto the lawns. Then we collect bags of sand in May. Annual routine. May 25 Sunny day. Not that warm. Picking up sticks in the grove. April 9 At this rate I will not have many posts in 2022. Once a quarter is not too prolific. Today I am running tinycorelinux in the commandline. Pretty basic, but pleasantly unencumbered. January 13 Already a couple of weeks into the new year. Time to add a post here. The weather is cold. It's winter. Lots of snow. Sunny today. Days are getting a little longer in the afternoon. 2021 December 31 Next new moon is calculated to occur on January 2 at 18:34 UTC. We might see the crescent around sunset on January 3. December 28 It will be more convenient this week to have temperatures consistently below the freezing point. The sun is unexpectedly shining today. December 20 The solstice will occur tomorrow Dec 21 at 15:59 UTC. It is already freezing cold where I live. Winter. People have been enduring it for centuries. December 16 Beethoven is 251 years old today. December 12 15 cm snow overnight. Snowblower worked well today. The chute turned easily because it was not so cold, around -6 C. The snow was light and we were able to get down to the asphalt. One of the windshield wipers broke off. I have a spare one to put on tomorrow. November 17 Snowblower action today. Widened the driveway a little on each side. Colder tonight. October 30 Running TinyCore on a laptop today. Very easy to connect to SDF.org and add a gopher entry. Sunny today at 15 C. October 28 -4 C last night. Sunny and +18 today. No snow. Next week looks sunny too. October 26 Expecting -2 C tonight and colder each night until the weekend: -3 -5 -6 ... fortunately no snow, and sunny days above zero. OpenBSD requires a careful reading of the manual pages after first boot. If one is looking for a time-consuming hobby, here it is. No sense asking for help without prior personal effort. October 14 Last sunny day for a while. Rain in the forecast. If the temperature dips any further, we'll have snow. People change to snow tires November 1. October 11 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z The distribution of vowels is not haphazard. October 9 Sunny. 10 C. Trees turning yellow. Leaves falling. Pleasant time of year. October 7 The sun appeared for an hour around noon. It was chilly and overcast in the morning. Eight stanzas before supper. October 2 Rain and cold. Hot tea at home. October 1 Drizzly and cool. Definitely autumn. Yesterday we raked leaves and spread lime. There were a few flurries in the morning. September 15 Minus 1 Celcius last night, first frost. Forecast to be +23 on the 17th, welcome change. One more lawn mowing will do it until June. September 14 Car repairs. Walked 2 miles while waiting. It was raining a little. Got a bit wet. Fresh air. August 30 Normal temperatures are 8 C to 18 C. Comfortable but sometimes chilly. Fresh air is always welcome. August 29 I had the same experience with a Bach violin concerto. It was quite lovely and I stopped listening in the middle. With Messiaen it is easy to dislike the music because it is strange at first hearing. With Bach the music is good and expectedly competent. Both men are dead. More of us have heard of Bach, though. August 23 25 C: probably the last hot day this summer Normal high at this time of year is 19 C. Nights are cool now, we had 6 C recently. One more grass cutting this season in September. Then snow will arrive in October, usually around Halloween. Every winter is different. The snowiest month is February, but the coldest is January. Everyone looks forward to May and grass again. August 1 19 C. Risk of a thundershower. Joan Chamorro and Andrea Motis: Summertime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxIPVAPRBi4 July 28 11 C. Drizzle. Messiaen Symphony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOnZ1-sOCwo July 13 Sunny. 27 C. Apricots, mango, figs. Messiaen's symphony with Dudamel is good if one is in the mood. Strenuous, not suitable for moonlight reverie. July 12 Rain. Green grass. July 3 21 C. Sunny. Lilacs. Ravens. June 28 Hot. Narcissus and tulip done. Grass doing well. Mowing every week. Getting out old modem to try sdf.org dialup. June 19 Sunny morning. Cloudy afternoon. Grass growing fast. Mowed on the 14th: have to mow again. Once a week might do. June 9 The lawn will need a first mowing soon. Some patches are doing well, others not so much. We were going to transplant a tree in the morning but it was too cold and windy. June 6 Rain, sun, rain, sun. 15 degrees C. Raked the lawn. Some sticks fell from the tree last night during high winds. Noodles for lunch today. June 3 Finally some warm weather: tulip, narcissus, hosta, and long bright nights. Snow persisted into May, but all that is forgotten now. Trees are budding; grass is growing. May 1 A few snowflakes today at suppertime. Chilly wind. Dull skies. Gray days all week. The last patch of snow melted on the deck yesterday. Some of the lawn is showing. Waiting for some sun. April 8 Spring slightly apparent. Snow evaporating day by day. Sky overcast, gloomy. Driveway mostly bare now. Dreams of green grass and hot days. March 18 Winter persists but the sun is getting higher in the sky day by day: inevitably the snow will evaporate in the warmer air and grass will appear again. February 15 Morse code easy. Learn to receive complete words at 30 words per minute. Persistence required. January 31 It has been a cold month with lots of snow so far. Since a new month begins tomorrow, we will have to wait a few days to compare. Groundhog Day has little application here because we are a long way from the official location of repute. Our snow usually lasts well beyond the predictions of more southerly latitude people. Our short and lovely summers are all the more spectacular and welcome. January 18 We listened to Mozart's first violin concerto last night. I doubt we will listen to it again. Every movement was in the major key, cheerful. We prefer the minor key, sad and troubled. It seems more realistic. Like reading Samuel Beckett. I am still working on his Trilogy. Once I had WATT, but I gave it away. It seems to be unavailable now. Imagine that. January 15 It turned out that one sister got wine on Dec 31 in the Gregorian calendar and another sister got wine on Dec 31 of the Julian calendar. This was not planned. January 10 I let J know that if I knew red or white preference a FEDEX delivery would soon take place. She likely heard from her sister about the New Years surprise. Snowblower exercise this morning. Sure was a big dump, as forecasted. January 3 Approximately 3 days and 16 hours equals 1% of a year. So tomorrow at 4 pm we will have achieved 1% of the year. 99% to go. January 2 Very sunny but cold. Cleared some snow from the driveway, enough to get out tomorrow. Warmed the car up a bit. Nice lunch. Already the late afternoon sun heads for the horizon. 2020 November 6 Twelfth Zoo: the word 'twelfth' has seven letters and only one of them is a vowel. The 'lfth' has three distinct sounds and ought to be pronounced carefully and accurately. Then the word will come alive and mean what it says. November 5 I listened again to the Messiaen composition mentioned months ago. Now I cannot find in it anything strange at all. November 4 My sister is writing a short story. I am in it. Something about time zones. November 2 Wore a black hat all day to keep my head warm. Colder now. Earth tilts. The sun rises two minutes later each day. Relentless march to December 21. October 31 Once in a blue moon there is a blue moon. Tonight there was a blue moon. Did I mention there was a blue moon tonight? October 15 Overcast. Tomorrow sunny. Sunrise today at 7:40. Dark mornings, one quarter way into autumn. Cool. Received pic of handwritten letter from nephew. Fusion of old and new communication tech. October 10. Yesterday's snow has disappeared. Autumn has resumed. October 6 Parcel arrived from a distance. One bottle broken. Refund requested. Granted. Thank you, Bruno. It really is a wonderful thing to live on a mountain. October 3 Autumn day: rainy, cool, wet leaves on the grass. Quiet Saturday as usual, no one on the streets except a girl and her dog. We bought potatoes and gumdrop cake. Spaghetti and tuna for lunch with a hot pepper and cold brocoli. Time passes, writes Beckett. Jane likes Beckett, he makes her laugh. October 1 Even a new month takes some typing practice to spell correctly. September 27 The sun was out earlier but the clouds have dulled the day. This is not surprising. It was forecasted by experts. Sometimes they are right. A stopped clock is right twice a day. A standard of excellence to be desired. September 15 Found a book on a shelf I had forgotten. '50 Trees'. It gives Latin names as well as English names. Why did they never teach us these in Latin class all those years ago? No, Caesar was always ordering his troops to cross a river and erect a rampart. August 28 A speaker speaks: emotions emote. Word elicits reaction. Waves expand. Who can wait until all is still once more? Stir up mud in a pool. Wait, it will clear again. August 27 Two ravens on the grass walk north. A grey truck drives away. We watch videos. Ketchup on spaghetti with cheese: lunch comes and goes without fanfare. Rinse. August 22 Cool 12 Celcius today. Jacket, sweatshirt, T-shirt, hat. Impossible last week. Clouds help lower the temperature. August 20 When software limits what can be done, be satisfied and work within the constraints. Eight crayons a box might be enough. August 19 Core 6.1 five years old is adequate for command line installation of openssh and logging into SDF.org: what I did today. Boot Core, type at the prompt: tce-load -wi openssh After a minute, ready to go. The weather has turned. Temperature has dropped to the teens, set for a week of overcast skies and periodic rain. Normal for this time of year: relief. Farther north, snow has settled on the mountains. August 18 Trisquel 9 is out now. Where would we be without the FSF? Still, SDF.org is foundational. That and CORE fill most of my requirements. August 2 I need to get some blank CDs to copy some ISOs and experiment with up to date distributions. I want to try Trisquel 8, and Arch. August 1 Running SLAX 9.4 on the Thinkpad. Working OK so far. We tried installing Dragora but it did not go well. And Core 10 did not overwrite 6.1 - many conundrums to be solved. July 29 Running Core 6.1 on a ThinkPad. I will upgrade to 11.1 later this week. It is still running Firefox 38, antiquated, hopelessly outdated. June 15 The Magna Carta was signed on this date in the year 1215. One could memorize it in Latin and travel around the country giving lectures about it. Focusing on the Latin grammar might give new insights into its meaning, some of which may have been lost in the translation to English. June 8 Forecast for tomorrow: snow. What? That's late for snow here. I don't expect any accumulation. I was planning to get out the lawn mower. I'll wait until a sunny and warmer day. June 7 A couple of sunny days in a row. Saw the waning gibbous moon this morning. Barley soup for lunch. No news from distant family members. Lawns are a little greener now than they used to be. May 19 Cold outside. Like November. Go inside. Have tea. Warm up. May 18 TSX closed today. Dull skies again and cold. Summer a distant hope. 9646 days until Doug is vindicated. They say. Waiting for Godot, wrote Samuel Beckett. There is a good version of the play on YouTube. Another one is 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'. Eugene O'Neill. Domestic quarrels are trivial compared to the one night. May 17 Grass is appearing, snow all but gone in most places. Dull days. Have not seen the moon for a week. Holiday weekend. Another year gone by. May 13 Even more snow, all day, big wet flakes, steady accumulation. Not necessary to clear the driveway. Above freezing next week, and sunny. May 9 More snow this week. Slushy. Waiting for the sun to come out one of these days to send it packing. Time plods. Cloudy skies. No moon. May 1 Rain. Dull grey. Not too cold. Not warm either. Gloves in the morning. Raisin cake. Tea. Markets down today. Friday. Everyone tired. Arctic char, mushrooms, quinoa. Zzz. Apr 30 End of month. Rain tomorrow. Time passes. 9665 days until 2046. October 14 that year there will be a full moon. Two days later it will be Tuesday. All the stars in the universe, including ours, will nova for three weeks. 12068 year cycle. Our poles will reverse. The earth will stop turning for 8 hours. Inertia will drive the oceans and atmosphere eastward over the continents. The earth will begin to turn the other way. To view the event, climb Pikes Peak on the Monday. Stay on the east side. Keep out of the wind. Good luck. cf Doug Vogt, The Diehold Foundation. Apr 27 A nice crescent moon appeared directly under a shiny planet the other night. Earlier in the evening it had been cloudy. Apr 19 I wrote a long paragraph about Messiaen with ed about prime numbers and how he liked them. Many do not like Messiaen's pieces and many have never heard of him. Apr 7 Big surprise in the morning: more snow. I don't remember reading about it in the forecast. It stopped in the afternoon and the sun peeked through the clouds briefly. More tomorrow. We usually see the last of it in May. Apr 5 Sitting in the sun on the deck on a rocking chair for ten minutes can get the vitamin D going after a long winter inside a lot of the time. A big mound of snow takes up most of the deck. Should I remove it or let it melt over the next few weeks? At the moment, I am thinking Let it evaporate naturally. Apr 4 After a while we return to gopher and continue where we left off. Later we will fill in the blanks. The dates missing below, that is, all of March and some of April, were composed on another platform. Some will appear in due course. TinyCore has been a lifebuoy and inspiration. Simplicity frees the mind and words appear almost of themselves. Mar 20 A big dump of snow coming this afternoon. First day of Spring. Theoretically. Astronomically. No first rose of summer for while. Mar 19 Joseph's Day. I wonder what he would think of the stock market's shenanigans. It's like poker. Some are losing, some are winning. Mar 18 Only three months until June 18. Sounds like a warmer time of year. Nothing special about the date that I recall. Mar 17 Patrick's Day. Nobody around here mentioned Ireland all day. He was from Scotland anyway. Pirates took him as a youth. He escaped, grew up and went to Ireland to work. Mar 16 I was reading about bees. They are important to plants' thriving but are endangered these days. It would be good to let nature do its work and take what we need without force. Mar 15 The Ides of March. The Ides used to identify the full moon day. When the Romans switched to the solar calendar the significance was lost. Mar 14 At one time I had to teach a Grade 4 boy to write sentences. He learned how to do it and wrote some good ones. Robert Frost wrote, 'A sentence is a sound upon which words are strung.' Mar 13 Friday the 13th was supposed to be unlucky when I was little. Nowadays almost every day is unlucky. Mar 12 Apple. Orange. Eat. Drink. Only the verbs 'eat' and 'drink' form complete sentences there. There is something logical about a complete sentence. Mar 11 After the snowstorm, life must have returned to normal because I don't remember anything else until July. Mar 10 There was no snow, none at all, and then around noon snow began to fall. They let us out of school early so we could get home before dark. My streetcar never showed up. Off the tracks. Classmates took me to the next street up and I got home by a different route. Mar 9 My first day in the new school. I didn't have my own locker and I had to hang my coat in another classroom full of little kids. They all looked at me when I went to get my coat. Mar 8 They brought me to the new school for a grand tour. The principal showed us around. There was a spooky closet in the basement. He took a small black book from it and said I could have it. It had a lot of songs in it. I wrote my name in the book. I still have it. Mar 7 On this date they brought me to a boarding school. Mid-year. I don't recommend it. Feb 29 Scheduled power outage 6 AM to 10 AM. The back-up generator could not handle the demand and conked out about 6:30. Power back on at 10:10. Feb 28 We heard a bird singing atop a tamarack this morning at seven o'clock. Sun is up at that time now. Feb 27 The dentist phoned. I made an appointment for next week. Feb 26 A little snow overnight. Drifting. Snowblower on the job. Feb 25 Messiaen was organist in Paris for 61 years. He died in 1992. Feb 24 Like last year I left for work today without the outdoor lights on. Sun is up earlier each day. Long bright nights of summer are on the way. Feb 23 A new moon is said to occur a hour and a half from now. The crescent will not be seen here until tomorrow evening at the earliest. Usually it is cloudy but these few weeks have had clear skies most of the time. Feb 22 When one thing winds down another begins. If it's not one thing, it's another. Feb 21 Gertrude Stein wrote a book 'How to Write'. It is as strange as her other books. Most of it is incomprehensible. Some sentences stand out clearly. This seems to be the lesson. Write sentences. Feb 20 2020-02-20. How long will it be until 3030-03-30? Past my bedtime. Feb 19 We ordered Black Forest Cake a week ago and it did not arrive. We got a Red Velvet Cake at a discount instead. Today four Black Forest Cakes appeared on the shelves. Feb 18 I skipped internet today and read books instead. Late night catch-up. Books are printed websites. Feb 17 I won another prize from the town for keeping a nearby hydrant free of snow. Pre-paid card for Home Hardware. New shovel! Feb 16 If you stand at the North Pole, every direction you face is south. If you take a step to the right, are you facing East or West? Feb 15 Fresh air today. Minus 39 degrees wind chill. The actual temperature is minus 24. Sunny. Looking forward to hearing a live piano recital on YouTube. Feb 14 Booting TinyCore this morning (command line only) to see if the backspace key will allow the correction of typos when replying to mail. No. All I get is ^? so without extreme care my email messages look careless. I tried mutt instead but it is not available at the moment. Update: mutt appeared as usual in the afternoon. Feb 13 I wanted to see the Andromeda Galaxy after supper. I found a webpage that shows how to find it. Something to do with the Big Dipper, Polaris, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, Mirach and Mu Andromeae. https://www.wikihow.com/Find-the-Andromeda-Galaxy Feb 12 Oil change today. Went to Tim Hortons for a coffee while waiting. Feb 11 Town snowblower widened the street today. By moving the snowbank to my lawn. Wide street: mountain on lawn. Feb 10 Day 41 of the year. I read page 41 of 'Molloy'. A page in the middle of a multi-page monologue. He mutters of thunder, the moon, his window, muck, a butterfly, a mountain. Typical Beckett. Feb 9 Minus 39 wind-chill this morning. House a bit chilly. Hot coffee and grilled cheese. Up early, around 4:30. Moon brighter than usual. Feb 8 Internet conked out last night. Wake up call #3 this week. Systems we rely on everyday can disappear without notice. Fortunately it was back in the morning. Feb 7 Minus 20 Celcius today. According to the weather stats, it's normal. Feb 6 Pound cake arrived by courier. Delicious. Feb 5 I saw the moon. I think it's 12 days old. Lost track of the count. Not that it matters. Feb 4 I went to the Post Office. Noodles. Feb 3 A little snow overnight. Enough to get the snowblower out. Feb 2 Once I was assigned to teach a basic English high school class. We read Basho's 'Narrow Road to the Deep North'. Brief descriptions of the places he visited, with a haiku at the end of each little chapter. Feb 1 A new month. Jan 31 Every '31' date ought to be a national holiday. Jan Mar May Jul Aug Oct Dec. Seven new holidays. Jan 30 Another sunny day. This makes four weeks without a major snowfall. Three months of snow left. The last of it is usually gone in May. Jan 29 Frescobaldi organ pieces are not that exciting but they are fun to play. 500 years ago they must have been all the rage. Jan 28 I haven't seen the new moon yet. I was napping before supper and missed it. Jan 27 We had 2 inches of snow, nothing to complain about this time of year. Temperatures normal. Days pass, each a little longer. Jan 26 The Z of January: 26 days into the New Year. Not so new anymore. Lots of things going on, much like last year. Jan 25 Burns Day in Scotland. Haggis, neeps & tatties on the menu. The Procession of The Haggis, led by a piper. A long poem is recited. The Haggis is poked with a sword. Then we eat. Jan 24 We found a photographer to create a color photo 2 x 2 inches for $1.75 - all we have to do is email the photo and it will be ready for pickup on Tuesday. Jan 23 What is it when a famous author's short poem cannot be found online? Protective of a treasure? Copyright? Samuel Beckett. 'Sans'. Jan 22 People are looking forward to tomorrow when it will warm up to minus 4 Celcius. The usual January deep freeze has visited us for two weeks now. Sunrise is a couple of minutes earlier each day. Jan 21 It is one thing to make a brief gopher comment each day but to maintain the same minimal activity in HTML is another. Jan 20 Twenty days done of a year, or of a decade "the 20s". Hope to get through another 20. Jan 19 Learning 'Fugue in F minor' from the Well Termpered Clavier. Fairly awkward fingering in places. Most performers on YouTube play too fast. Glenn Gould ought to get a speeding ticket. Jan 18 They had snow there but not too much. It is not as cold there as it is here. Bright and sunny here and we went shopping. Salt fish. Jan 17 I booted directly to the command line, input: tce-load -wi sshpass.tcz That was easy. Jan 16 I managed to load sshpass.tcz, move to prompt, and sign in to sdf.org - all on TinyCore. Pleasant to type on a full black screen with white letters. Jan 15 In 2003 Edinburgh had an editor called ECCE which every student had to learn. It gradually fell out of use until nostalgia kicked in and it was brought back by popular demand. Jan 14 Minimal Linux Live is fun to play with. 7 MB OS with only ed and vi for editors. After a few hours on it after supper yesterday, I was dreaming about it all night. Jan 13 Temperature = 250 Kelvin. Moon is 18 days, 7 hours old. Car started OK this morning. Have to go to town hall today to pick up a prize from the Friday Draw. Jan 12 Nowhere does the gibbous moon have such an effect at 5 AM than in a snowy district. All we need now is a wolf howling in the distance. Jan 11 I was working out how to use the Kelvin temperatures in daily conversation. Water freezes at 273 K and boils at 373 K, so the size of the degrees equal those of the Celcius degrees. So, a minus 20 C would equal 253 K. That is what we have today. Jan 10 For some reason I was writing an email and I thought of something interesting, but now I have forgotten what it was. Jan 9 Already nearly a third of the first month has passed and I have kept my New Year's Resolution. I had decided not to have one this year and I have managed to banish the tendency to come up with one. Jan 8 The calendar is often written as a table of seven days to a week. For example, the dates are lined up in seven columns. Here is part of a month: 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Jan 7 My niece's birthday arrives again. Years pass by and the little girl I once knew has kids of her own. Jan 6 Gold, frankincense and myrrh: not ordinary presents. I am still waiting. Jan 5 Sometime ago I knew two people whose birthdays were today and I always said 'Happy birthday' to them. I wonder where they are now. Jan 4 It does not take much to alarm our imaginations. We do not know the future or what someone might do. We hope for the best. Jan 3 I wonder why Messiaen's music is usually slow. There are very short notes, of course, but the overall feeling is slow. Slow. It trudges. I don't listen to it all that often. Jan 2 More snow. Not very cold. Icicles forming. Jan 1 Another day for businesses to be closed on a perfectly good Wednesday. The ancient Romans did not mind the days of the week but organized their year around calendar dates. So fixed was the calendar that it was chisled into stone walls as if it were going to last forever. 2019 Dec 31 There are not many months with an extra day tacked on at the end of it. I think of the '31' days as holidays and try not to do too much, take it extra easy. Dec 30 I cleaned around the fire hydrant and submitted before & after pix to the town to qualify for a Friday draw for a $50 gift certificate. I am not likely to win anything but it's nice to know that the town workers can access the hydrant if they need to. Dec 29 A little more snow today. I cleared the driveway with a shovel. I will get gas for the snowblower tomorrow and clean up the edges. Supposed to be sunny then, not so dismal. Dec 28 No snowstorms recently, but we have had three days in a row of an inch a day. This is easily manageable. Dec 27 When no words come to mind it is impossible to write them. Dec 26 Letter Gaelic Name English Aa Ailm Elm Bb Beith Birch Cc Coll Hazel Dd Dair Oak Ee Eadha Aspen Ff Fearn Alder Gg Gort Ivy Hh Uath Hawthorn Ii Iogh Yew Ll Luis Rowan Mm Muin Vine Nn Nuin Ash Oo Oir/Onn Gorse Pp Peither Guelder Rose Rr Ruis Elder Ss Suil Willow Tt Teine Furze Uu Ur Heather In Gaelic the letters are named after trees. Dec 25 Sunny, minus 13 degrees, staying in today. Streets are quiet. The holiday spirit has kicked in and daily routine relaxes. Sent nieces and nephews a link to a brass octet performance. Asparagus for supper. Dec 24 How is it that meaning can come out of the rearrangement of 26 letters? In Greek there are only 24 letters. In Gaelic there are only 18 letters. Thoughts of a whole people can be expressed with economy. Dec 23 Bitter cold. Down 24 degrees from this date last year. Not much traffic on the street. People staying in if they can. Dec 22 Bright sunny morning. Hard to believe it is minus 29 degrees wind chill. Until you step outside. "Yes, I guess they're right." Big mug, hot steaming tea. Dec 21 Solstice: earth stops tilting one way and begins to tilt the other: days will grow longer and nights shorter. The effect will become noticeable in a few weeks. In February we will get up in the morning without fumbling in the dark. Dec 20 Potato and cauliflour for lunch. The 'BOLD' tea is rather strong even in the giant mug. Compared to Latin word order which allows words to be placed almost anywhere in a sentence, English word order seems restrictive. Dec 19 Zero degrees today. Pleasant for a change. I brought gifts to friends and received in return. That time of year. A carpenter came over to see what renovations we needed done. I was listening to music by Tournemire and dozed off. Dec 18 Still struggling with gopher. There are only a few hints how to go about creating files. I look at the posts of others and am amazed at the wonderful work they have done. At the moment I am putting everything in this one file 'messiaen', though Messiaen is not the topic. I have created other files in the gopher directory but they don't show up anywhere. Perhaps I need sub-directories? The longer I keep at it, the more I'll figure out. I was flummoxed yesterday when my phlog was posted without a file. Dec 17 The wind is at 17 knots. Snow is drifting. The snowblower chute is frozen in one direction. I have a strategy for that. Dec 16 Today is Beethoven's birthday. He is 249 years old. He was born in 1770 and spent his life composing music. He died in 1827. Dec 15 I listened to Messiaen for the third time and noticed some parts of the melody that were pleasing. Strange how the mind adapts to things. I learned that the piece in question was part of a larger work and that the melody which I have heard only on the violin was originally written for cello. Dec 14 Minus 28 today, really cold. The car started OK. Fortunately I had it plugged in all night. Funny, tomorrow it will be ZERO degrees. I think I'll listen to the Messiaen piece again. Maybe I'll like it this time. Dec 13, 2019 I can't remember minus 39 degrees wind chill this early in December. Starting the car at 7 AM, still dark out, braving the wind: not pleasant. The only solution is to dress appropriately and carry on with what we have to do. 48 hours from now the temperature is set to rise to the freezing point: freezing rain is forecast. Dec 12, 2019 I am reading The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett. This is not a page-turner. He expresses the dismal state of human affairs. We live with difficulties all our lives and then die. Bad luck from start to finish. No sunny days at the beach, no birthday cakes. In its own way, the book is hilarious. Yes, we are in a mess and we must make the most of it by carrying on with life until we don't. Dec 11, 2019 Yesterday morning I listened to a violin and piano piece by Messiaen performed at the New England Conservatory. It seemed so rich in melodic patterns that I found it difficult to listen to. Today I listened to the piece again while washing the lunch dishes. It was the same piece, but seemed not so strange.