Sunday Afternoon Stories

  Good (cold) morning everyone.   Even before I woke up this morning, I knew it was going to be cold. I knew this because I was curled up in bed trying to preserve heat when my eyes opened. I didn't need to check the thermometer to know it was cold, but sometimes it's nice to put a number with a feeling. It was confirmed with a reading of 5 degrees. The sun has come up, though, and now we are in a heat wave - it's all the way up to 8 degrees. I find as I grow older I have become less resistant to the cold, or the heat for that matter. During the winter I dream about living in the tropics and during the summer I dream about living in the high mountains of Montana. What I need is to be independently wealthy and have both, but I know that isn't going to happen so I deal with the extremes the best I can.   What's really silly, though, is that I'm complaining about the climate in New Mexico. Our colds aren't really cold and our hots aren't really...

  Hi everyone,   Welcome to Friday! Which means tomorrow is Saturday. Which means I have work to do. It used to be that weekends were a great time of fun and relaxation. However, once you buy a house and have kids, the schedule fills up with things that have to be done. Not only are there the normal chores that have to be done like laundry and washing the dishes, but now there are cars to keep running, shingles to reattach to the roof and grocery shopping to be done. (I've been slacking off on the grocery shopping lately and the cupboards are starting to look pretty bare.)   Honestly, sometimes I look forward to Monday where I can get to work and get a little rest. (Word for the day - "hyperbole".)   Here we are well into January and I hope everyone has their 2021 calendars. I went a little crazy this year when calendar buying and ended up with a regular wall calendar, a white board calendar and a daily "Did You Know?" desk calendar. It's one of t...

  Hi everyone, Today is supposed to be a nice day before the weather turns again. At least that's what some weather forecaster said this morning. I don't know that I really believe her or not, but I just discovered that Google's spell checker for emails considers "know't" as a word. I'm going have to look that one up in my handy Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which is never out of reach. Another word that I had to look up is "schadenfreude," but my copy of M-W didn't have it. I always have to look it up. (If you were to look around my home computer, and even at work, you would find scraps of paper with words that I usually have a difficult time spelling.) Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about schadenfreude lately. It is a German word that describes the emotion of, instead of feeling sympathy, you feel pleasure at someone else's misfortune. Watching television yesterday, I could sense a lot of it from some ...

 Hello Everyone, I'm trying out a new concept. Well, it's an old concept but it is newer to me. I don't post that often to Facebook anymore, not am I on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or any other social media except LinkedIn.  Over the past 10 months as I've worked from home, I've written a quick little greeting to my colleagues at work to keep our spirits up. Well, at least to keep my spirits up. The email list for those little things grew and grew and now I've been getting some people from outside the company who want my little writings. Honestly, I'm flattered that anyone would want to read what crazy shit I have to say. Someone pointed out that I should be saving these little essays and I pointed out that they are living right now in my sent folder in my email. But I suppose that isn't good enough. It almost implies that the company could argue it owns them - although I know the owners of the company would not do that. So while it's kind of a nebulo...