Author: Paul

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Imminence

A friend asked me, so, do you have all your Christmas preparation done?

Heh! The simple answer is no; the more complicated answer is, is ANYONE ever COMPLETELY done with Christmas prep? It reminds me of what Lorne Michaels once said about Saturday Night Live. He said the show doesn’t go on the air because it’s done. It goes on the air because it’s Saturday night at 11:30.

Same with Christmas. It arrives on its own schedule, regardless of how much (or little) of what we’d hoped to get done has actually happened.

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Rules of the game

When you’re playing hide-and-go-seek with a werewolf, it’s not fair if either of you changes form after the ‘seeking’ parties covers their eyes.

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Solstice story, 2019

The start of my Solstice Story, 2019:

Once upon a time there was a winter that arrived much too early, which pleased hardly anybody except for the snowmobilers, who had been waiting for more snow since last March.

Come the solstice, everyone else groaned and muttered that they were ready to see winter LEAVE by now. Or, at least, as soon as possible following a pleasantly white Christmas.

This made the Solstice sad, but then, the Solstice was used to it by now. It wasn’t the first year the Solstice had gotten this reception. Most everyone looked past the Solstice to the arrival of Christmas, and their big plans were for THAT.

Nobody left out a plate of milk and cookies for the Solstice.

(I don’t have the middle worked out, but it ends:]

And then everyone got puppies and kittens. Cute, fluffy kittens of every variety. And the lost socks were found.

The End

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Sunrise, sunset…

Don’t look now, but…

We’ve rounded the corner on sunsets. From December 5 through December 13, they were at 4:29 p.m. As of December 9, they are once again getting LATER, not earlier, and yesterday, sunset time advanced from 4:29 p.m. to 4:30.

The days continue to get shorter until December 22.

SUNRISES continue to get later until January 1. They’re the latest from 7:36 a.m. from then through January 6. They get earlier again (7:35 a.m.) on January 7.

(And yes. They lapse later, when we return to Daylight Saving Time: We’re back to 6:29 a.m. on March 7, only to ‘spring forward’ to 7:27 a.m. on March 8.)

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A surefire plan

I see the name Adam Driver, and I start imagining a Garden of Eden heist story and a surefire plan to get away that goes awry.

“What do you mean, we don’t have a getaway car?”
“THEY HAVEN’T BEEN INVENTED YET!”

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Wolf happens

The human body has so much that can go wrong with it, especially when under stress, for instance, some people are genetically predisposed from birth to become wolves.

— Maggie Stiefvater