Readin', Writin' and 'Rithmetic....

I was out of town Friday, and spent a good chunk of it revising the two Big Projects from the end of last week. Both involved number crunching, organizing documents, and waiting for clients to get back to me before I can release the final products.  I ended the day at the belated office holiday party for the Rochester group.  The past few years, this has been done at the local Laser Tag chain, consisting of a round of "cyber sport" ("these are not bumper cars," although of course they are), then dinner, and finally the climb through the tag-team labyrinth where coworkers shoot at each other.  I left before that final go, but stayed for the foodage and the annual grab bag exchange. Since it was so far beyond Christmas, I wasn't sure if they were even doing this, and when I found out it was still on, I ran over to my go-to gifting garden at Record Archive. I really wanted to get these-



- but chickened out and went with a coffee mug (two-thirds of the exchanged gifts involved caffeine at one level or another, including the Timmy's/Dunkies gift cards I wound up receiving).

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The rest of the weekend has been,.... well, rest, mostly.  Yesterday we got maybe 4 inches of snow, the most we've seen in weeks, and still enough to turn many drivers into flaming idiots. I did one run to the office and bank, a second to Wegmans, and then we were in for the duration.  Today, just flurries, and again just two trips out, only replace "office and bank" with "dog park at 8 a.m."  At Wegmans, I picked up an elderberry extract supplement, which several people have tried or are trying to kill off their final remnants of this stupid persistent cough that for me is approaching its fourth month.  (My mother's already passed, so I don't have to worry about her turning into a hamster;)  We started a Math Nerd Movie the other night, and will finish it tonight before Doctor Who, which was silenced by the BBC's latest aliens last week (ExSpectrum-ate! ExSpectrum-ate!) but seems to be working today.

I'm also close to keeping my pace of finishing reading a book a week this year. Average, anyway.  After completing Lost Children Archive right after the New Year, I've been alternating Loose Balls, the nonfiction account of the weird old American Basketball Association, with this one from one of my longago Cornell English professors-



Robert Morgan is native to to the Carolinas where this 1850 journey of runaway slaves begins. At the point I reached this afternoon, the main character is hiding out in Roanoke, Virginia; this puts him not far from where tomorrow, in Richmond, ammosexuals and white supremacists are determined to desecrate the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. on his national holiday.

1850. 2020. The story’s the same. Only the digits change.