I went to the Michener Museum on Wednesday. I had an appointment in Doylestown that morning so I figured I'd do something cultural while in town. A friend joined me for a second date and we spent a few hours touring all the rooms. I started reading about William Trego and the Pennsylvania Impressionists last year and focused my attention on their work. I even bought two books on both topics in the gift shop, both of which were marked half off. I went out walking with the dogs when I got home, pausing by the Trego house to snap a picture of the historical marker in front of it.

I spent the rainy Thursday afternoon working on a tooling project for managing blog media. That's a priority I set for the next few months so I was excited to make some progress there. I went back to boro hall that evening for this month's Shade Tree meeting where I conducted my first official business voting on a permit application. The Mega Millions jackpot was still bubbling then so I stopped for one more ticket on the walk home. I spent Friday running errands and cleaning the car then went out for a third date. He made us dinner from a TikTok recipe, baked shredded tofu tacos. We listened to music, chatted with his roommate and played some video games. The food was good but made mysterious for having apparently been prepared by a ghost. I heard that if you visit Bucks three times in one week you might meet such an apparition but the skeptic in me had to see firsthand to believe. I also didn't believe that tofu could be shredded but was happy to see the technique pan out and add it to my repertoire.

I went to a reptile exhibit with a friend yesterday. We saw geckos, iguanas, frogs, toads, rhino snakes, vipers, cobras, rattlesnakes, alligators, and a crocodile. I also met one vendor who happens to live a few blocks over from me. I was drawn to some of the rodents and insects before realizing they were intended as food for the others on display, though somebody tried to sell me on bringing home a cockroach as a pet. I was surprised and amused by the diversity of isopods and I thought I might build a terrarium to house some from the backyard as a spring project. We also saw a table of carnivorous plants, my favorite of which was probably the pitcher plants. My insect brain thought it wouldn't be so bad to drown in nectar, but I did feel some sympathy for the ants crawling across the table. I felt a sympathy for everybody in the room, of course, and wasn't naive to the fact I'd positioned myself there in the same way I had at the chili cook-off in October. One vendor chatted us up about a species of lizard from a small Australian island beset by wildfires. He said the government's plan was to let the ocean contain the fire since water doesn't burn, and I thought I heard distant laughter echoing from the Exxon offices.

We spent about two hours wandering the floor then I rambled about church and childhood on the drive back before we parted ways. He left for a party and I napped with the dogs then went to neighbors for a game night. They made pizzas, one with no meat or cheese, and supplied vegan cookies and brownies and wine and beer. We caught up on the last few weeks over a round of Ticket to Ride and watched the Jaguars win over the Chargers. I made it home after midnight and climbed into bed with the dogs after catching back up with them, too. The wind chill had been below freezing most of the day and dipped low as we were falling to sleep so we piled up close.

I slept in this morning and skipped church. I made corn bread from what I had on hand then went for a walk with the dogs. I thought it'd be too cold again but the sun came out and we were able to make a loop around the neighborhood. All the other dogs seemed to have a similar thought and shouted to us from behind their fences and storm doors.

Somebody wrote into the newspaper proposing a lottery arrangement that guarantees awards to multiple winners positing that 25 winners each winning $25M would be better for society than one person winning the entire pot. Even better might be to maintain some small but non-zero chance for one individual to earn a billion dollars overnight while simultaneously lowering taxes and granting Congress an even higher probability of funding some randomly chosen and unspecified portion of the government. An article in the newspaper suggested politics might interfere with the government's ability to pay its bills in the near future, and this system would simply re-codify and quantify that potential outcome with the benefit of amortizing the impact of such events rather than having the entire government shut down at less predictable times. A bank wrote into the paper today seemingly in support of my economics by augury. They advertised a one year certificate of deposit with a 4% APY plus an increase of basis points equal to the number of points scored by the Eagles in the next game they play. The team earned an average of 28 points per game during this regular season and ten in their lowest scoring game so the maximum deposit of $500k could have earned an extra $500 minimum and an average of $1400. Their highest score was 48 points against the Giants in December, which would have earned a bonus $2400. A 52-week Treasury Bill bought at the end of November could have earned a 4.57% return without all the hassle or the federal tax on interest earned, but that's less exciting. I didn't win the Mega Millions this week or any bonus kiss. A remorseful gambler might conclude that the cost of the tickets and the gum were lost, but I came out with a stronger sense of what I'd do with the money and relationship. I looked at catering prices in town and reasoned that even a thousand dollar prize is enough to throw a rager for the neighbors and plant a tree in town. For that amount I don't think I need to wait to win a billion to fund the affair or finally get around to deciding what I'd do with the jackpot.

I was up late binging TV Friday night after the Mega Millions drawing. I caught the episode of Wings where Antonio becomes a cable junkie. Somebody said that "you start experimenting with CNN then move to hard stuff like Nickelodeon and next thing you know it's 4AM and you're strung out watching that guy paint his head." I didn't get the reference to the guy with the painted head, and it was still considerably earlier than 4AM at that point, but it did make watching Shark Tank feel like watching somebody watch QVC.

I went out walking with the dogs on Saturday then met a friend at Peddler's Village. I'd read in the paper a few days before that they'd have ice sculptures on display and that it was the last weekend the lights would still be up so we thought to seize the opportunity, though one of the sculptures had fallen before we could see it. It was cold and crowded but we found a space to talk and I bought a round of beer. We spent two hours there then stopped at a Chipotle where he bought a round of food. I arrived there first and sat in the car thinking about those who might use such an opportunity to drive home without a word never to be heard from again. He mentioned thinking similarly on his way while we ate. We made it back to my place, talking late into the night and hanging with the dogs. He took a picture with Dany and left to drive his roommate home.

We went out walking some more on Sunday with a neighbor we haven't had a chance to catch up with recently. We rested up after then I went out to watch the Eagles game with neighbors. We talked about the lottery and what jobs we'd hire if we had the money. I thought I'd employ a housekeeper, a driver, a groundskeeper, a gardener, an historian, a clown, and personal assistants for each dog. Some years ago we met a representative from Dogfish Head at a local winery. We didn't exchange more than a few sentences with each other when she pulled an album of Music To Drink Beer To out of her swag bag to gift to us. Home after the Eagles win I poured a Victory Brotherly Love and listened to it while reflecting on the games I caught during the season.

Today I made it to the city to catch up with another friend. We had lunch and grabbed coffee on our walk back to his place. The server brought out complimentary tomato shooters, and I had a Beyond Burger with a Light Hearted Ale. We talked about all the places we'd travel if money weren't an issue. He wants to visit the animals of the world, and I thought I'd spend the most time around Japan and take tours through Antarctica, Africa, and Mesoamerica. I made it back to the boro in time to catch tonight's council meeting with two neighbors then stopped to buy more lottery tickets on my way home. I received my $14 share of the Equifax settlement in the mail yesterday and thought that'd be the best use for it. According to the FTC the settlement "includes up to $425M to help people affected by the data breach." That much money could buy 212.5M Mega Millions tickets, which is roughly 70.2% of the 302M possible tickets. Considering only a billion dollar jackpot prize that puts the expected winnings around $700M or roughly 1.8 times the total settlement in this more fun universe where every winning ticket wins the full pot. Assuming a proportionate distribution I could have possibly received over $30, which would have paid for lunch today, or zero dollars, which is just as helpful as fourteen.

Years after the breach I heard commercials that mentioned people buying and selling my personal data on the dark web, which sounded scarier than but not all that different from Equifax and friends selling my personal data in their own networks. I'm not paid either way, and the only distinction I could surmise is the claim of consent to share the data in the one case that doesn't formally exist in the other, though calling it consent in the first place when the alternative is an outright exclusion from society seems illusory at best. Discretization is part of my identity as both a writer and mathematician so for ethical consistency I feel I have to promote the abstractions of capital, but I think I could fairly dispense with the veneer of choice by adopting an economics by augury. For instance the next time a financial institution gifts data to resellers, rather than moralize about dark webs and stolen identities and issue $14 checks a better way to help people affected by such a breach could be to compel the President to call Congress to the Hill. There they could count the vultures passing overhead, with the Justices of the Supreme Court watching from a window to witness and verify the outcome. If the count numbers less than seven all members of the working class would be granted one year's non-expiring vacation transferable between employers to be taken as paid time off throughout the employee's lifetime or a cash equivalent of the remaining balance. If the count is seven or more then the workers would agree to burn a third of their food reserves and add one more schedule to Medicare. Anybody who raises "well actually" points about what constitutes a vulture or challenges the political processes used to determine the time when the count begins or ends would be legally labeled a witch and publicly ridiculed in the town square until such time as a replacement clown is discovered.

It's rained the last few nights but the afternoons have been sunny so we got out while we could. Wednesday was so warm I went out without a jacket then walked over to and down the Wissahickon. We brought back a puddle of mud in our shoes and hair so took an already overdue bath and nap. Yesterday we took an even longer walk but stuck to the pavement around town. The dogs slept the rest of the day while I took down the Christmas decorations and brought the tree over to the recycling pile.

Taylor Swift released Lover in the summer of 2019, and I was relentless that winter in mocking the idea that leaving Christmas lights up until January was a radical act of young love rebellion when "February" fits the meter just as well and exaggerates the point even more. This year I brought two other tree trunks to be recycled, from 2019 and 2020. I had taken them down late those years then left them to breakdown in the yard after missing the opportunity to toss them on the pile. Having finally recycled them this year I thought that I owed the lyric a reconsideration and an apology as it doesn't specify which January. As I unloaded my car a man pulled up in a truck behind me and as he tossed his tree said that it's too bad you can't replant them.

I circled the house enjoying the fresh undecorated feeling then spent the night channel surfing in bed. I watched an episode of The Jeffersons where George's ex Yvonne reappears in his life disgruntled about how hers turned out with her partner Kenny, who George derided as a "numbers runner". The commercial breaks included an ad featuring Jamie Foxx winning blackjack on his phone at a party attended by predominantly black guests and another for personal loans targeted at those with low credit scores. I watched ads on QVC for cable organizers, a universal charger, a speaker, a recliner, an external storage device, and a robot vacuum. I also discovered QVC2 and Shop LC, but those channels didn't produce the emotional charge that the others did so I didn't watch long.

Today I went out running errands stopping first to refuel the car and vacuum out the pine needles and dirt we collected over the week. I was slow to leave, drinking coffee and reading the paper on the couch then building a shopping list and asking a new friend on a first date tomorrow night. On my way to the grocery store a radio announcer mentioned a large Mega Millions jackpot. I bought a ticket and a pack of gum.

Spring has returned after the cold blast on Christmas so we've been walking through ice and mud all week. The neighbors next door invited me to Taco Tuesday at a local bar where they've established a weekly tradition that I was happy to participate in. The next day the dogs and I walked to the park and around the boro then returned to the couch for more snacking and more TV. I worried a little about all the things I could be doing instead so I wrote a list of ideas to get them out of my head and concluded that my idling these last few weeks has at last amounted to a vacation from this vacation.

I did return to work Thursday to help clean up the historical society building and pack up the decorations we put up for the open house last month. On my way out the member that recruited me gifted me the Marley doll that was setup in the same room as I and that has become one of my favorite seasonal pieces, now perched on my mantel next to this year's cards and above the stockings. I stopped at the car wash on my way home then stocked up on groceries. The wash was the most crowded I've seen it, and I lamented later that I didn't think to count the cars in line ahead of me. The sun was out and the air was warm so we walked some more after my errands.

I left the house early again Friday morning to drive up to visit Leo. I looped Challengers twice on the way there and Mass Romantic twice on the way back with no skips for either, though I did repeat Adventures in Solitude once. That was my number one play on Spotify in 2020, which had been a sort of anthem for the year of quarantine and grief-stricken isolation. I hadn't been streaming for the second half of 2022 but I logged in to check my wrapped list to reflect on the first half of the year. The top three songs were from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which I'd been playing the last time I went to see Leo in the summer, and the fourth was I Remember by bbno$, which I'd been playing on my way out of work. I stopped at his parents' on the way home then grabbed the dogs to meet friends for a hike around Prophecy Creek. We passed four or five dogs and splashed through the mud over an hour and change looping around the trails. The dogs and I hopped in the bath as soon as we got back then piled up for a nap on the couch. I went back out for a round with the same friends then visited another group to celebrate New Year's Eve Eve. We watched a recap of the year, offered toasts to our own reflections on it, played darts and Overcooked, and dished on our most and least favorite celebrities.

The rain returned Saturday so we spent the day inside preparing food and eating. I made nachos from the book I was gifted on Christmas with pickled onions, lettuce, tomatoes, black beans, walnut chorizo, queso, and sour cream. Everything was vegan and from scratch so the labor was an all day affair, but the result was decent and I've had leftovers for lunch since. I had the nachos that night with a bottle of Champagne friends had brought to the party two weeks prior. I used some of the winnings from the lottery tickets I was also gifted on Christmas to buy more tickets, one of which won another two dollars. I rolled a little fatty that I smoked while scratching the tickets then flipped through the network broadcasts. It was then I realized that it was the Illuminati who used their weather machine to send the rain to drive party goers inside onto sound stages to promote Paris Hilton on the meta-verse. We counted down to midnight and fell asleep watching performances by singers I didn't recognize.

After the rain came more sun on Sunday. The King of the Forest had also conspired for the occasion by coordinating park walks for the first of the year to lure us back off the Internet. We participated but carved out our own path then spent the evening horizontal.

Yesterday we met friends for a walk at Peace Valley, ironically named for the anxiety we toss into Lake Galena while away from work like coins into a fountain. New Year's Steve marks one of their dog's birthday, and a trip to Evansburg last year kicked off the annual tradition of hiking together to celebrate. The park was a little busy, which we conjectured was in part from resolutionists and in part from those squeezing the last drops out of their time off. We passed dog walkers, nature photographers, runners, and boaters. Whatever reasons attracted them might be lumped up with ours under one more layer of abstraction called gravity. Strengthened through the weighted exercise I returned to battle with Boost customer service emerging as the presumptive victor before tending to my normally scheduled Monday reset. We went to bed a little earlier than we have been lately, though I was restless through the night in a dream about Leo where we walked and talked about his absence, a ceremonial offering to two-faced Janus. We slept in this morning, then I read the paper and went out walking with the dogs around town.

Last year I thought to designate the day after a thing as its steve to complement its eve the day before. Today is Christmas Steve, which marks both Boxing Day and the start of Kwanzaa in various British territories and former colonies. Those in the US do their shopping on Thanksgiving Steve and call out sick from work on Super Bowl Steve. I spent my day walking the dogs, cleaning house, and battling customer support hot lines, a tirade for another day. I went to friends' for Christmas Proper yesterday. They gifted me a cookbook, SpongeBob trivia, lottery tickets, and snacks for me and the dogs. I also received an IOU for coal because king of capitalism Santa would rather track Coal Payable than constrain himself to commodity judgment since selling coal futures raises cash for toy production throughout the year. What if there's a mine collapse or the freight operators go on strike and all the naughty kids receive contracts instead of present moral condemnation? That's a problem for Christmas Steve.

I spent most of last week on the couch in the dog pile. I finished Breath of the Wild again and watched The Return of the King, Spirited Away, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, That Girl, Too Close for Comfort, Welcome Back, Kotter, The Jeffersons, Barney Miller, Maude, Three's Company, One Day at a Time, Archie Bunker's Place, and Alice. Mr. Kotter's Christmas message was that homelessness is the result of personal moral failing and that the Noble Homeless chooses his position and denies social support in favor of expressing shame as a gift to the rest of us. George Jefferson's message was to reach back to your roots to lift up others once you've made it up the ladder. I took a break from TV to watch the backyard birds Friday while I made black beans and rice. Later that afternoon my friend told me his bird Lola had just passed away.

I went to a party at friends' that evening. We started the night reflecting on sickness and loss and trips to cemeteries then drinking a toast to the current company we did have. Beneath the new moon the gravity of the situation rose so high that two in attendance fell to the ground. I caught one on his descent and held him until a medic arrived. I found his pulse while we waited and thought about mine. Our other friend landed back on his feet and all turned out well for all, and despite the freezing backdrop of a wind chill below zero our time together was warm. I hailed a ride home around midnight. The driver told me about his family back home in Ethiopia, his movement across the US from Idaho to Philly, the former of which has been his favorite place to live in the country so far, and his work driving.

Last week at my party I set out a small shrine with a beer and a candle to which a neighbor added offerings of incense and heart-shaped stones. On Saturday I lit the incense and poured the beer into the hops bed to clear the air and forward the offering to the garden. I spelled Lola's name in seeds for the other birds to trace then had a quiet moment to think about her and Leo and the shape of the year. The wind was still biting so I moved inside back to the dog pile and thought about the War on Christmas, for which the children named Marley as their champion, and the parents, denying guilt in this trial by combat, King Santa. I thought about Gay Man absent from the battlefield frolicking in the forest, missing his brothers, growing lonely, and blaming his condition on the war itself. I imagined him allying with his siblings and at last arriving mounted atop the wolf that nursed them to fire an arrow emblazoned with the seal of the Freedmen's Bureau through the heart of Santa, to don his robe and crown, and to assert new identity and cause for Claus.

I hosted a winter fest on Friday. Twenty-two guests attended, some in semi-formal attire and some in festive sweaters and suspenders. I pulled a costume change halfway through the party to dress in both, and Santa arrived with trivia and lottery tickets in her sack, one of which I won for naming Boris Karloff. The dogs sat on whoever would let them while a group of us played Uno, then I drank a homebrew with the friend who helped make it this summer. The first wave arrived by 8 and the last left by 2. I napped all day Saturday recovering on the couch eating leftover chips and cupcakes.

I spent the earlier part of the week preparing for the party and taking a seasonal moment of retrospection. I met Leo in the middle of December, and he passed away at the end of the month seven years later. The first day we spoke he was recovering from his work holiday party held at a local tavern that has since changed hands and re-branded. Our first night out was to a Starbucks the following weekend. We talked until we closed out the place then moved over to an Applebee's where we talked some more until they closed, too. By then a light snow had dusted the parking lot. That was the same day as the shooting at Sandy Hook, and the December he passed was the month COVID was first reported on the news. Our last night out was to my work holiday party, which happened to coincide with the anniversary of that first time we met, and which turned out to be the last of the work holiday parties I'd attend with that company.

The virus arrived here about three months after Leo left, and I found a sort of healing connection in the shared experience. The first day I attended church this year was the samhain service where we each added a stone to a pitcher of water to acknowledge the dead. I felt a similar kinship then to witness the crowded line and the water displaced by stone, the length and volume of which I saw as proportionate measures of how much change we had collectively grieved, a process a friend recently described like retreating to a dark place. I think it's dark inside a cocoon where a caterpillar can dissolve entirely before emerging as a butterfly, an image borrowed from a neighbor over tea at her place earlier this year on a rainy spring day.

I read an article a few months ago about hunger in Africa attributed to war in Ukraine as shelling kept stockpiles of grain trapped in warehouses. Those quoted said with confidence that the grain would move, which moved me because I was hungry not for the grain per se but for the resilience and sustenance. I left my day job five months ago this week. Before then I had the pathways and gates leading to the house repaired. I attended three months of counseling, had one panic attack, and hired one junk hauler to remove one truck of clutter. Since then I've left the county seven times for church and six times for outings, once to see Leo, twice for weddings, and three times to parks with the dogs. I've connected and reconnected with about 40 friends and neighbors, hosted two parties, written 65 posts including this one, and had one unplanned blog outage. There is war, famine, and plague, and there is music, food, and a fire still burning, rekindled in these pre-hibernation times.

I sent in a letter to the editor yesterday that I thought I'd republish here where I can rant without the 150 word limit imposed by the newspaper. I started a deeper dive expounding on it this morning then felt like I was muddling my own point so I stepped away from the keyboard to walk and clean. Then I started to worry that if I didn't write anything more the moment would pass. But the writing was already done and the letter already sent so there didn't seem to be much point in pontificating further beyond an anxious defensiveness to explain what I sent:

This paper published "Future of TV news might be free streaming" on Nov 13, 2022 and is now turning its back while kingdoms shift boundaries offering only a one sentence explanation attributing the sudden absence of the TV guide to a minor layout change a week after its departure. This is a disservice to those of us without the bandwidth to stream or check listings online and an abdication of the journal's scientific responsibility to provide an historical record of the changing broadcast lineup. Despite the earlier article's age-focused rationalizations, I'm in my 30s and technologically literate. I'm not "leaving this mortal coil", I'm being abandoned. A course correction to the direction of public service would entail not only a return of the guide but a report on which major newspapers still print it and their plans to continue to do so or not.

Tangentially, as part of my government service I signed a social media policy agreeing to an explicit notice that the ideas presented here are mine. If I could get somebody to sponsor me and my opinions that'd be ideal, but we're just not there yet. Until then and so long as I'll be volunteering around town I've added a disclaimer to the footer, and this disclaimer disclaimer is part of its audit trail.

Apart from shouting into the void and wondering what's on TV I went to a friend's for dinner on Friday. I haven't seen her or her partner since the Before Times. We spent most of the evening catching up except for the time I spent fawning over her dogs, one of which is new to the house and spent most of his time staring at us from the couch and one of which I met long ago and sat like people staring at us from the floor. They made wild rice and stir fried tofu with veggies and mushrooms, and I ate two platefuls.

I went out with a small group of friends Saturday night to attend a local brewery's fourth anniversary party. I rode my bike over and had two rounds while a band setup and played, long enough to hear the first set and head out when they stopped for a break. I made it to church yesterday morning where the theme was "wintering", taking deliberate time to exist in a liminal space and resist the framing of that passivity as a lack of willpower. The reverend is leaving for sabbatical soon and reflected on that as a form of wintering, which made me think about my time off in a similar way. I stopped at the bakery for salt rolls on my way home then curled up with the dogs on the couch where we spent the rainy day.

The water heater gave out this week. I was cycling laundry Monday and noticed a wet spot under the heater. It looked like the bottom had rusted out and was trickling hot water onto the floor. I went out for quotes from the big box stores that night then called the local shops Tuesday morning, one of which I contracted on the spot. It rained all day while they worked in the basement, and somebody clipped their truck driving by out front. Two hours, two grand, and one traffic dispute later the deed was done. I felt in high spirits despite the leaks of water and cash and attributed the mood to having written that morning. Then I felt a growing sense of hyper-vigilance brewing, anxious about something I couldn't put my finger on. I sat to process Tuesday evening after the job was finished and concluded it was Christmas itself. The Christian nationalism, the working class trauma, and the emotionality of the season were all running through my head as I sat there slurping down Christmas movies, hopping from one sweater party to the next while planning my own in my Santa hat and Christmas lights. A friend called out how bare my tree is and pushed me to decorate more. I realized that my brooding boy stubbornness compelled me to respond to that rush of seasonal anxiety with a half-assed trimming of the tree. We can have Christmas, I seemed to think, so long as we signal how much we'd rather not. The perspective was a funny one by then and offered enough motivation to spend Wednesday pulling out the rest of the decor after a dog walk with another friend.

The dogs and I walked again yesterday morning. We spotted several cardinals, a hawk, and a bird I couldn't recognize. We hopped in the bath afterwards where I pulled two ticks off Dany and washed another down the drain. I found one attached to Teemo a few weeks ago that I sent to the lab, which came back negative for everything they tested for. I ordered another test to send in these two, which were unattached. The dogs haven't been wearing repellent lately thinking that the cold air would be enough. I thought my decision to step off the path for a moody picture by a gazebo might have increased our chances of picking up a stowaway then I hoisted responsibility onto the owning class whose decisions changed the climate to support a year-round tick presence and whose demands kindled the emotional need for the occasional moody picture by a gazebo.

Some spots I decorated still looked unfinished so I went out to the dollar store after the bath. As her phone rang the woman before me in line remarked about the frequency with which the caller dials her, and the cashier told me about a friend of hers who drinks alone in his basement and calls her in his stupor to Catholocize and talk about rock and roll. I paid with a gift card a friend gave me and made it home with time to make dinner for me and the dogs before heading out to boro hall for a meeting. I saw a commercial for a hamburger last week that triggered a craving so I had picked up patties while I was out shopping. Once I plated the sandwich I realized the craving was more for the visual of the layers than the food itself and made a second to try to improve. The dogs got a can of wet food mixed into their kibble to stretch what dry food I have left until the new bag arrives today, which I thought was less visually appealing but was apparently more appetizing. On the way to the meeting I stopped at a neighbor's to return the Marley outfit. I chatted with her and her husband, who mentioned his current work selling grave plots. He said he's trying to find somebody to replace him and I thought the IT to Marley to cemetery arc was writing itself.

The beginning of last week felt like a holding on to the prior Thanksgiving week, then I hung around town so much the holiday already feels long gone. Last Monday I cleaned house, finally catching up after cooking and eating so much, then cooked and ate some more. I had stocked up at the market that Saturday and after a long afternoon walk on Monday finally made a more colorful plate than my typical monochromatic meal.

I still felt sluggish and transitory Tuesday morning so decided on an afternoon park walk with a friend to shake off the blues. Somebody had dumped pumpkins on the trail, one of which we tossed to Dany, who shook off her blues chewing on it. I spent the later part of the day at the library catching up on messages and updating donations for Giving Tuesday.

It rained most of the day Wednesday while I ran errands. I got my hair cut, thrifted a pair of pants, and picked up some groceries. The rain cleared as I was finishing, yielding to a moody, colorful sunset.

The pants were a little baggy in the legs but otherwise fit well so I convinced myself in the thrift shop I'd have the time, motivation, and courage to bring them in before a party the next day. It took a few hours to find the motivation and courage and a few hours more to do the work, but the result was passable and for $5 I couldn't argue with it.

Thursday morning I helped clean and decorate a house for an event Saturday morning then squeezed in a walk with the dogs before heading out to the party Thursday evening. That was a fundraiser formal hosted by and for a neighboring town's mayor held at a distillery I haven't visited since early 2020. My brother and his partner flew in from Atlanta and met us at the bar. We chatted up the neighbors then moved over to a tavern run by the family who hooked us up with puppy smoothies Thanksgiving morning for the after party. We made it home late then I spent most of Friday eating bagels and recovering. A friend came over in the morning to visit with my brother and another came over after everybody left to visit with the dogs.

It rained again Saturday morning, which the historical society I'm volunteering for was concerned would impact attendance at the open house they were hosting that day. There were slow periods but 64 guests total. The event was themed around A Christmas Carol, and I played Jacob Marley haunting the parlor burdened by those chains I forged in life. Those of us working downstairs had so much fun singing together and entertaining each other I think we mostly forgot our concerns about the turnout or the rain, which had cleared by the end yielding to a warm, sunny afternoon.

I used that time to walk with the dogs and rest before heading to an ugly sweater house party hosted by a friend of a friend I met at a happy hour event the weekend before Thanksgiving. I arrived in time to watch a few rounds of beer pong in the garage before following the crowd out to the fire pit where I wound up with most of a joint to myself. I felt like Michael Cera in a Michael Cera movie staring into the fire and watching the crowd of roughly ten new faces ebb and flow around me. I wrapped myself in a blanket and used the time to get to know them all better.

I made it home around midnight, which left enough time to sleep before church Sunday morning. As the service was starting my brother texted that he'd be driving through on his way back to the airport so could stop by for brunch. He picked up rolls and pastries from the bakery across the street and made it to the house not long after I did. We ate then walked the dogs around the neighborhood before he left to fly home. I packed the dogs in the car to join a group walk, then walked over to a tree lighting in town. The mayor and council president gave speeches and read to the kids, Santa arrived on a fire truck, and after three miscounts the lights finally came on.

I spent the rest of the night watching The Santa Clause and Jingle All The Way, both about absent fathers, the first with substance abuse issues and the second with anger issues. Having killed a man, Scott Calvin offers his son money to lie to his mother about the murder before convincing himself that he is the divinely chosen Santa Claus. The more he drinks the more his body tells on him as his face grows red, his hair white, and his stomach large. He takes his son to a backwoods trailer full of adult children nicknamed the North Pole. In the back is a lab questionably respectfully named The Toy Shop for the short chemist who runs the operation. The mother is aware throughout but reacts only by crying in front of the child, and her new partner, a psychiatrist, calls out the father's behavior as paranoid and delusional. Scott is detained after being caught running deliveries, and a scene in the police station highlights a poster for ending substance abuse hinting at what's happening between the lines. Still the mother burns her court ordered custody in front of the child, presumably because she believes that the absent father appearing only once a year in his Santa aspect will hurt the child enough to drive the two apart and prove her to be the better parent. From their perspective the child isn't a pawn nor is he prone to generational trauma, instead he's grateful for the rare, emotionally turbulent moments when the family comes together, even if that happens with a police barricade around the house and all the neighbors crowded around watching. Two hundred years ago the children enlisted Moralizing Marley to plead for an alternative to the annual Christmas Calamity, and in the decades since these movies were made industry has responded not with an alternative but with layers of abstraction to temper the pain like skin that wraps raw nerves without having to assert one side or the other is wrong or should change. And that's what Zoom Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Thanksgiving came early this year in exchange for more time until Christmas. With less time before this holiday I crammed in as much socializing as I could through the week. Last Sunday on my way out of church neighbors invited me to a bar to watch the Eagles game. I joined them to watch and to take pictures with the cheerleaders who happened to be there that day. Swoop was also there but we missed the chance to meet him. The autographs I did get made it to the shelves.

Monday was chilly but less cold than Sunday. I tidied up throughout the day then walked over to neighbors' for dinner, lasagna and pumpkin cake. Tuesday was even warmer so we went for a long walk around town. That night I attended the boro council meeting with a neighbor for my formal appointment to the shade tree commission then stopped for drinks with friends on the walk home.

I used the Wednesday sun to recover with another walk with the dogs. I had tentative plans to go on a hiking date with a guy who turned into a ghost and flew away. I was happy to have the time with the dogs instead. That night I met with a group of friends for more beer at a brewpub with a cover band. Afterwards I made mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, and chickpea curry to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. Our host provided kale, corn, cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes, which I had with a porter.

Thursday morning I met a friend for a dog walk around her neighborhood. She had heard a local shake shop was serving up treats so we circled by there. They gifted us rice bowls and made smoothies for the dogs, which they had for breakfast. For their Thanksgiving dinner I brought a can of puppy pate to mix into their kibble. I chatted up the shop owners while we waited, and they told us they also run a tavern in town. We parted ways after that, then the dogs and I took a bath before heading to our dinner. We ate and watched Drumline then made it home by 11.

Friday morning the neighbor who cooked for me on Monday invited me back to pick through their leftovers. I did and used the opportunity to return the tupperware he sent me home with on Monday refilled with my leftover chickpeas. I stopped by the mall to people watch and spent the rest of the day horizontal. Saturday morning I went for a dog walk with a neighbor then headed out to shop the farmer's market, which I found was closed for the day. I changed course to an indoor market instead then picked up a tree from a local farm. I paid with card but asked the cashier to break a twenty for tip for the guy who helped carry the tree, for bread I picked up from a bakery on the way home, and for the plate Sunday morning. I propped the tree in the stand then took the dogs out for another long walk. We found a sunny spot to sit for a few hours where Dany chewed a bone and Teemo yelled at every passerby while I tried matching with everybody visiting home on Tinder. I went back out for a bottle of wine from a nearby winery then stopped for a round with friends at the tavern run by the shake purveyors, where I found my profile had already been terminated for alleged violation of terms of service, that classic technological barrier to love. I spent the rest of the night lighting the tree and watching Christmas movies.

It rained most of the day yesterday, though less than forecast. The reverend was out for the day so we had a Lenape speaker visit the church, who shared some of her family's stories and traditions. She started with their creation story, which began when water took over the earth. As the water rose the animals decided something had to be done so muskrat went to the bottom of the ocean to scoop dirt onto a turtle's back, the mound of which became Turtle Island, the American continents. A wolf was sent out but didn't return, which signaled enough dirt had been gathered so muskrat's work was done. On the island sprouted a cedar, from which came the first man and woman. I met new friends after the service during coffee time then spent the rainy afternoon on the couch with the dogs. Another friend stopped by to join us then we crashed early soon after he left.