We’re nearly done with 1/12 of the new year, I hope everyone made good use of it. I’ll get my second vaccination this week. I guess it’s a booster shot, getting me that last little way to 95% effectiveness. I think that’s a fair contribution to the common good.

I swear. Sometimes I think my body holds a lottery every night to decide which part is going to hurt.

Being lost in space and time has its advantages, except when you want to get things done, and forget that Monday was a national holiday. So, no bank, no post office, no courthouse.

Call me Mr. Industrious. Yesterday. I got my car inspected. Pruned a peach tree and dug up a dead one. I spent three hours burning a pile of brush.

Information traveling at the speed of light is the blessing and the curse of the internet. Arcane scientific debates get played out in full view and people woefully ignorant of any facts get to have opinions.

I’m starting the fourth day of my vaccination vacation, although it’s not really a vacation, I just wanted to use two words that started with V. And now that I think about it, I should go with venture, as in a venture into the unknown, a vaccination venture. But enough with the alliteration.

My vaccination symptoms, such as they were, have abated. My shoulder is no longer sore. I did wake up last night with a fiery pain in one of my arthritic feet, but it too went away. Hard to know if it was a symptom of the shot, or just some random old guy nerve thing.

Vaccination day went off without a hitch yesterday. The Covid emptied highways made for easy traveling. The vaccination givers were all in place. I answered questions, had my temperature taken, was handed a sheaf of papers and got my shot.

Whenever I walk around the yard and the back lots, the cats follow me. I think they’re hoping I’ll kill a gazelle and there will be something to eat.

I remember two things about 1954. The New York Giants beat the Cleveland Indians in the world series; I was crushed. And I participated in the trials for the new Salk polio vaccine; we were living in Corpus Christi at the time.

I had a good day yesterday. Made the bed. Took down the Christmas decorations. Talked to my children. Talked to old friends. Watched a bit of TV. Bought some shoe polish. Checked the mail. Got a package. And my college team won a basketball game. Pretty ordinary stuff.

I have a small piece of brass plate, about 3.5 X 5 inches. There are several windows cut in it, holes drilled, and other pieces of brass attached to it.

I fixed my broken garden angels. Two had heads returned to their shoulders, and the other was mounted and made ready for cemetery duty. As for the third, there’s a story.

This is a little story about a friend who helped me in a pinch yesterday, and it was an odd pinch, and probably not much of a pinch at all, small actually.

Now starts the eighth year of these little missives. Last year was the most productive by far. I managed to sit down and write 330 times. I think most of it was in self-defense.

Here we are at the end of the year. Wow. For the first time in recent memory, I’ve heard no discussion from my friends as to evening plans, even though for the last eight years, at least, our evening plans consisted of going to bed, and discussions were basically a formality.

I like it when things work out, and they worked out yesterday. My daughter and her family came in from Houston. They bunked in at a friend’s ranch just down the road and came over to see me. Literally. We saw each other.

I watched a movie last night about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Actually, it was about two men key to the creation of the dictionary, but without the dictionary there would have been no story. So, for me the OED got the title role.

For a while last week, I thought I had a poignant Christmas essay in my sights, full of pathos. With then and now, youth and old age, family and loneliness. Then, it melted away.

Fasting labs used to be no big deal. But that was before the routine was a carefully mapped out journey from dawn to dusk. Now they’re a break in the schedule, I have to write it down on the white board to remember it, and I have to wrap my mind around the idea of no coffee no food before the blood draw.