New Year's Eve Eve

Well here we are on the eve of the eve of another holiday. Rather, a so-called holiday, I don't really celebrate New Year's, usually. Probably won't this year either. At least not in any way to distinguish it from any other night of the week. But I'm sure, despite the fact that the world doesn't magically change with the turning of the calendar page, everyone will be happy to see this sorry excuse of a year put to rest. Remember how it started? Full of hope and promise? Neither do I. But it did, it did.

It's been a ridiculous ride.

But to pretend for a moment that I've spent this week celebrating the approach of the end of the year, I will note that I took another trip to San Francisco this past Sunday. Did a walk around the city, stopping at Amoeba Records to shop for CD's, and a New York style pizza joint for lunch, the Disney Store to buy some Christmas ornaments at half price, and finishing with a stroll down the Embarcadero. That's not an unusual trip for me, but we can pretend it was to honor the end of 2020. Why not?

The other night I took a stroll as the sun was setting to our local Starbucks for some hot cocoa. I've done a lot of walking to a lot of Starbucks this year, in-between all of the hours I spent not working or somewhat working from home. What a wild ride!

The sunset was nice at least, as clouds had been passing through the area, offering a nice canvas to reflect and define the rays of light as the colors slid from orange to pink to blue and violet, with every shade in between. And then, darkness. I actually started out a little late, so it was dark well before I made it to my cocoa destination.

But I made it to the Natomas Crossing Starbucks, one of three within reasonable walking distance of my home base apartment. And honestly it's the nicest and friendliest one in the area. They also make their cocoa somehow taste better. More...chocolatey. As if they added, well, more chocolate. In any case, I think I'll need to go to this one more often. That almost sounds like a resolution...but it's not. Just a promise to myself to acquire the best cocoa possible.

And tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and to treat myself and celebrate the fact that I survived this year relatively unscathed, I'm taking a little road trip up the hill to the Auburn area to explore some new hiking areas. New to me, that is. This one should be a 6.5 mile loop trail around Sugar Pine Peak, assuming I can find it okay. Adventure!

And that will round out 2020. I might watch a movie on Disney Plus tomorrow night, make some popcorn, drink some alcohol. I did in fact buy some Mike's Hard Strawberry Lemonade. Party on! That's about as much partying as I do on New Year's. Or any other day, really. Wild man! On Friday morning we will all awake into a new year, with new dreams and new possibilities, steeped in the reality that it's really not much different than the day before. Or the day before that. Or the day before that. And so on. 

Happy New Year! Or whatever. 

Twas the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

Well here we are, on Christmas Eve Eve. We made it nearly to the end of 2020. Only one more week of this train wreck left to go! Of course, the world doesn't magically regenerate ands reset just because we flip over a page in our calendar book. Does anyone even keep a calendar book anymore? It must be pretty empty, these days. And so it goes.

Tonight though, I took Connor to go see some Christmas lights in North Natomas, in a display that rivals the famed Fab 40's. It was quite nice, if not bitterly cold, and the neighbors out there really go all out for the holidays. 

It was an arranged outing actually, to meet up with his little girlfriend from school and recreate their holiday light trip from last year. That trip happened by random dumb luck, and was actually in the Fab 40's. But who can trust to luck on such things now? If we could, we probably wouldn't be wearing masks today.

This is actually probably one of the few photos I've taken of Connor with a mask on this year. Usually we're not around other folks, and don't don these atrocious pieces of fabric. I'm just glad I could get him centered on the camera screen, as I can't wear my glasses while wearing a mask. Well, I can wear them for about 10 seconds before they fog up.

But tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and then on to Christmas. I suddenly have found out that I will actually have Connor on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, so tomorrow I get to go in to "work" and find a gift from Santa. Oh, the trials of single parenthood. I wonder...are stores insanely crowded on Christmas Eve? Will they be crowded this year?? Well, after tomorrow I will know. I'm sure it will be fairly ridiculous out there. Technically we're still under a "stay at home" order due to Covid right now...but in reality it doesn't seem like people are paying much attention to that. Not like they did in March anyway. But that was a long time ago, and folks' patience has run thin it seems. 

Anyways, I will brave the crowds - or maybe lack thereof - tomorrow morning, as early as I can manage, and hopefully be in and out in a jiffy. I'm not entirely sure what to pick up for him. Though tonight he did tell me that I had to get him a Rubik's cube. But that's only because he happened to watch a YouTube video of people setting world records by solving them in 3.8 seconds. So now he thinks he can do that, too.  He's so impressionable! 

But who knows what still remains on the shelves right now, which honestly were already somewhat depleted from Covid. It might be like the mad dash at Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving for whatever gimmicky high priced item was being offered at a slight discount off of the MSRP. 

Pray for me, those of you who are so inclined.

Also today, we made cookies. Sugar cookies. With sparkly sprinkly decorations. It was actually the second year in a row I've done homemade decorated cookies with Connor. I suppose that's a new tradition of ours. It isn't easy, in an apartment with a kitchen the size of this one. Next year will be better. 

And next year, I'll do lights and perhaps some other exterior decor for the holidays. And not just because I was inspired by the extravagance on display tonight. But even the lesser-decorated homes outside of the magic neighborhood had some really cool looking displays.  So, if we survive Covid for another year, that's what I will do. 

And that's where things stand, more or less, on this the 2020 Night Before Night Before Christmas. And, well, to all a good night.

Bring It, Christmas

So here we are, on the eve of December, with fall in full swing. Leaves are falling, falling, and the ground becomes a canvas of oranges and reds and yellows. One of the few places that always demonstrates the changing of season in full grandeur is Sac State, a small forest of a campus. Which, now, is virtually abandoned. Again. We've been directed to forego our former plans of face to face education in the wake of the most recent surge of Covid-19. The worst surge yet, with numbers spiking far higher than they ever have. 

Sigh.

2020 has been such a train wreck. It started full of optimism and promise, as years so often do. The start of the 20s! Again! We barely made it half way through March and BAM! Our world, as we knew it, collapsed around us. Now it's clear that we are incapable of dealing with this pandemic. Our society just simply can't do it. Hopefully a vaccine will be just around the corner, as that's the only thing that will apparently stand a chance of getting up out of this mess.  And hopefully by then we won't have completely forgotten what "normal" was like.

And Christmas is just around the corner, and houses in the neighborhood are starting to sprout lights and statues and various baubles of the holiday season. Though, not that many. I went for a walk around the neighborhood this evening - and to be sure, there was some impressive displays of festivity - but it seems less than 10% of houses had decor. Well, it's still early, I suppose. I haven't put out anything myself, but I do still plan to erect my annual Disney-ornamented tree. So at least some things will be "normal" this season. 

And today, I did some Christmas shopping for my son, so that part of the holiday tradition is underway. I imagine this Christmas will be a challenge to many. I'm still not sure how it will be for me. I mean, in many ways I've been quite fortunate this year, despite the pandemic. I still get a paycheck at least, which means I can still pay rent, and other bills. Not everyone can say the same. This will be my first Christmas in many years spent in an apartment. Which brings its own challenges in getting inspired for the holidays. But it will hopefully be my last as well, which inspires hope. It's a superficial thing to be worried over, I know. But that doesn't make it less real.

And it occurred to me during my walk this night that in the last 25 years or so, I've lived at about 10 different places. That's an average of moving once every 2.5 years. And that's a lot, especially for someone who loathes change and moving in particular. Hard to build any sort of consistency of tradition, especially for the holidays, when your living arrangement varies so often. 

But it's okay, I will persevere. And next year, new traditions will begin. With any luck, pandemic free. And it will, with any luck, be the start of my longest tenure at any residence since the house I grew up in, back in North Highlands, over 40 years ago. And that one lasted all of what, 14 years or so?

But for now, it's nearly December, and we have to focus on this year's Christmas, laden with Covid restrictions and boarded up businesses and booming homeless populations.  And curfews and masks and social distancing.Oh my. I'm sure our society will survive, somehow, and be better in the end, someday. I mean we have to believe that, right? But for now, let's enjoy some well-deserved distraction. Bring on the Christmas season!

To Vote or Not To Vote

So, yesterday was election Tuesday in America, with Donald Trump running for re-election against Joe Biden. And even now, at 10am Pacific Time a day later, we still don't know who won. If we go with who currently has the lead in the states where it's still too close to call, Biden would win.  If we used that same logic last night, Trump would have won. As far as the popular vote goes, Biden is about 2.5 million votes in the lead.

Kind of looks like four years ago, except it's a bit closer of a race as far as electoral college votes go.

Four years ago, America elected someone whose sole qualification was that they were rich. They had no political experience, no military experience. Yet they were elected to the highest position in the land for both. It would be like me landing a job as the CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Crazy. Yet, amazingly, we survived. And he we are again, almost on the brink of repeating history. Well, at least he does have some political experience now.

I actually did vote, though it was back and forth there for awhile. Honestly, none of the candidates or issues really inspired me much. I should say none of the top candidates, since we are in effect only voting for the top two. And it saddens me that in this country, with all the potential candidates we have and all who were originally running before the primaries, that it's been whittled down to basically the two worst choices. Voting for the least objectionable candidate has become something of a motto around here.

Americans, for a long, long time, have been brainwashed to believe that only the top candidate from each of the top two parties has a chance of winning. And that's certainly true, as it now stands. Folks say that a vote for anyone else just "takes votes away" from these two candidates, and that you're throwing your vote away by not voting for one of them. But imagine if tens of millions of Americans decided to vote another way - any other way. That would certainly put a kink in the results. And even if it was not initially successful in getting someone else elected, perhaps it would turn the tide enough to convince this country that they can elect someone else. Of course, millions would have to eschew party lines for this to happen. But it could happen, it could.

Anyways, I wasn't really sure if I was going to actually vote until the morning of the election. I wasn't even really aware of what propositions or measures were on the ballot, save from the little info I could glean from the campaign signs plastered all over the city. But as is always the case, they offer no real details of substance.

So this year, I voted based simply on the little description of each item on the ballot. If it seemed reasonable, I voted yes. If it didn't, or if I was at least unsure, I voted no. Did my vote make any difference, sway any results? I seriously doubt it. 

I did no research, save for taking a quiz which asked your stance on various hot topics of the day, and then ran through all sorts of visually stimulating screen shots while it "calculated" my results to see which presidential candidate I was most in line with. And guess what? The winner, for me, was neither Biden nor Trump.

So I didn't vote for either of them.

As an aside, I would add that our political system is clearly broken. It is dysfunctional and corrupt, controlled only by money and special interests. Which is why our "top" two candidates are always the ones with the deepest pockets.  And the whole government seems locked in a never ending stalemate, on all of the most important issues.

Sigh. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered voting.

The Scientific Method

So the other day, some of the "adult" folks who play on the Minecraft server that my son and I play on noticed some of Connor's builds. Specifically, they noted the "redstone" creations he made - machines with pistons basically - which he frequently loves to invent. Some are quite elaborate, actually. All of them are above my head. 

One of the adults, who I suspect is secretly an engineer, is something of a master at the art of redstone mechanisms. I suspect her to be an engineer because, when she still proceeded under the assumption that Connor's builds were done by an adult, she gave little tips on how to improve them. She suggested he google "quasi connectivity" and continued on babbling about "rising monostable circuits".  That sounds like engineer speak to me. I laughed and laughed, and informed her that he couldn't likely even spell "google". He's only 6 after all. Well, almost 7.

After the shock among the general public of the server subsided, it was generally agreed upon that Connor was quite smart and quite advanced for his age.

I wasn't about to disagree. 

I will shamelessly and selfishly concede that he gets it from his father. After all, I used to be smart too! A nerd, if you will. I actually was awarded the Bank of America Award in Science in high school. I graduated in the top 10 in my class. Not the top 10 percent mind you, but the top 10 people. Granted, it was a relatively small high school graduating class. But still. I gave all that up, by and by, because...well, I suppose because I just wasn't inspired anymore. Maybe I was tired of it. I don't know.

In any case, the other night Connor fell asleep with tablet in hand as he was reading books about kitties on Epic. As the picture clearly illustrates. He's taken to reading more, which is a good thing. He was already pretty sharp in math. Today he was struggling a bit with double-digit addition. 24+13 and so on. He's only in First Grade after all. Meanwhile, in class, they slowly plod along working out the mental processes behind determining the answer to 5+1.

Science remains, at present, still a bit of mystery in the scope of his interests. Sometimes he asks lots of questions, like tonight in which I was interrogated about the phases of moon and their relation to the position and movement of the earth and sun.

I guess I need to brush up on my astronomy. Maybe I can find the paper I wrote in college on Seyfert Galaxies. Not that that would help much, but at least it would be in the right discipline.

Usually though, his thoughts are on more typical six-year-old topics. Farts, mostly. His inquisitive mind came up yesterday with this delightful mind twister: does the smell from farts follow you? Well. I don't know about that. They sure seem to. Sometimes.

I suppose I should have applied the scientific method on this one. Would have been a good way to exercise my mind again, after all these years. The problem was as stated. The background research...I imagine would be difficult. I don't imagine there's been lots of scholarly work done on flatulence. Excepting of course in the case of cows and methane production. The hypothesis is as simple as: Yes. Yes it does. As far as experimentation and recording and analyzing data...well, does anyone really want to go into that much detail on this topic?

I think perhaps this should be left to Connor to figure out. Or maybe such scientific dealings can wait until he's a little older...and picks a slightly more appropriate topic. We didn't get that far on this question, unfortunately, as he suddenly had a "loosy goosy" toot, and our attention was directed elsewhere. On second thought, maybe that was his Step 4 in action. He was attempting experimentation in order to prove his hypothesis and find an answer to his problem.

I guess he tried too hard. So much for The Scientific Method.

Perspective

I made a reference yesterday to watching a live OMD concert on YouTube, and how those guys were "old" now. I guess in my mind I still see them the way I saw them in my youth, when they were in their 20s and I was a little kid still in single digits. They seemed grown up, and I suppose event then they were "old" in comparison to me. And my mind's eye still visualizes them looking just like that today.

But they're not. They're old. Relatively speaking, of course. Everything is relative in regards to age, which is simply a function of the passage of time. And boy, a lot of time has passed. But I have to say, they've still got it. And oddly enough, they still sound vert much like they did...40 years ago. And what a life they must have had! Pop icons decades ago, to a different generation. Making music ever since, and still going strong with their own cult following. 

When I first started at Sac State, as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed freshman of 18 years, I would occasionally hear some of the "older" professors mention how they had been teaching there since the early 70s. To which I replied of course that I was not even born yet. Imagine that! That was back in the fall of 1993, to put a number on it. And now of course, today's freshmen were born around 2002 or so. I can now say to them that I've been working there since 1999, since the last century. And they can tell me that they weren't even born yet. The tables have turned! Now I'm the "old" one. 

Funny, I don't see myself as particularly old. But I am, I am. Relatively speaking of course. I certainly don't see myself as being as old now as those professors were in 1993. But you can tell I'm old. You can tell by all the grey hair. The hair that I still pretend is a lovely golden brown. And it is, in my imagination. And when did this happen? When did I get old? And where did all these years of youthfulness go??

So much happens in the passage of time. Yet looking back on it, it seems like it passed in the blink of an eye. Thank goodness for digital photography, so we now have mounds of photos at our fingertips to prove that we actually did stuff. That we existed. 

And I'm reminded now of my mathematical calculations, that have informed me that I will be 57 when my son graduates high school. 57! It's just a number, of course. But why is it such a high number! I could almost cry. 

I hope people at the ceremony don't assume that I'm his grandfather.

Well, I suppose in the grand scheme of things I'm just somewhere in the middle of it all. There's people younger out there. There's older people out there. They're all comparing themselves to others, who to them are "young" or "old". And, like me, they probably all see themselves as some other number than what the passage of time tells. I'll just go with what my gut tells me. With what I feel I am.

I'm 27. Why not? It's just a matter of perspective.