Holiday Ramblings

Only the news:

One week into my holiday and I am starting to feel human again. Actually I picked up a cold about four days ago and am crawling back from the tissue box and checking out my red Christmas nose in the mirror. I survived until December 26 without sickness and finally contracted a severe runny nose the day after Christmas. I had planned to get a flu shot or two at my doctors on Monday but the deadline passed me by.

We had sixteen people at the house Christmas eve. Donna's dad is always a welcome visitor. Then old friends filled in the rest. Donna had the idea of using the ping pong table for Christmas dinner. Truckee feared that its imminent collapse would spoil Christmas dinner. We all survived a delicious dinner- mostly cooked by yours truly.

I am a master at sleeping in and then listening to the radio in the morning until about 10 AM or 11. I fear that this lazy lifestyle might become habit once I retire. And so Truckee and I have been taking about about starting a "Third Wave" coffee operation. As preparation he is ordering a high end grinder and myself an espresso machine. He gave me a four month supply of Bluebottle coffee for Christmas.

My friend Stuart sent me sad news of an old friend, Bruce Sherman, who died this past year. Bruce and I played on the street many a time and he was always great company. In the past twenty years I would only run into him maybe once a year. Then my friend Zoe mentioned in her blog that he had passed away. I couldn't believe it and thought that it must be a mistake. Now Stuart has confirmed it. He sent a nice article from the San Francisco Chronicle remembering Bruce.

Christmas day, our niece, Jenny drove up from Needles, California to join us for Christmas dinner- an extremely long drive. Jenny is the sole reporter for a weekly newspaper there. She wanted to hear nothing of my dire predictions for the newspaper business. She is very pleasant girl and seems to enjoy her job. But she had not yet spent a summer in that city where it reaches 120 degrees F on a regular basis in the summer- the hottest spot in California.

We are finally ready to send out our Holiday card this year- 2 days after Christmas. And yes, I have promised to put a bunch of photos up on this blog. And so I will. I spent four of my vacation days walking back to school to try and finish grading papers and putting in grades. It takes me about 2 hours to quickly read about 30 papers, then another hour to enter grades and put them on the web for my students. One of those days put me in a very foul mood. My aides are suppose to grade student journals by amount. Whichever incompetent lackey (almost wrote "slackey") marked these did not pay attention at all. So I must do it and inadvertently read some of what I said that I would not read. Not only did I have to spend an extra hour, some of the dreck in these book is mind boggling.

Part of my holiday I have been dreaming of the summer trip to Italy. My focus will be Rome and Naples. We have made some great friends- an old friend of Donna's reaquainted. They live in San Benedito in Marche on the Adriatic. I hope to catch a few new countries on the way- maybe Slovenia, Hungary and possibly Romania. I would also like to drop by Vienna to see the Hitler's favorite Vermeer.

Tomorrow we go to the Harmony Folk Music Camp - And I will take the last of my holiday among old and new musician friends- some of these people I have know for more than 30 years.