Monthly Archives: January 2025

Let IT… NO!

Posted on by John

This winter has been, thus far anyway, one ofthe coldest I can remember. Ah, what happened to those glorious days of 60 degrees and sun.

Before I continue though, I should acknowledge the wildfires in Los Angeles that are happening as I write this. I’m sure I know people who are out there, and I can only hope and pray that they and everyone else are all right. The loss has already been incalculable, unfortunately including some lives. I hope some kind of rain or cold will come soon to help put the fires out.

Here in North Carolina, we had our first brush with measurable snow since January 29th, 2022. Of course the drumbeat starts days before its arrival: excitable news reporters whipping themselves and in turn the public to a frenzy. “If it shifts a little south…” “will likely start around 4 PM on Friday…” “dangerous ice mixed in…”

As the appointed time arrived, my wife lined up with all the other Southerners to acqure the essentials: bread, milk, and toilet paper. Our Northern immigrants (yes y’all, we are our own country here,) shook their heads, bemused. They know they’re still cold though, they just don’t wanna admit it. And we don’t have the requisite equipment to continue normal functioning when a couple inches of “the white stuff” sweeps through town. I still do pick on our silliness, even if I understand it.

As I grudgingly rolled out of the blankets on Friday at 5 AM, I scraped the networks for answers as to whether I should venture out to work. These late-arriving storms are the hardest to predict, but since nothing I saw indicated that it would start prior to my 4 PM quitting time and 5 PM return home I decided I should go in. Once, back in 2014, I got stuck on a Durham city bus as over six inches of snow fell in a half hour while trying to return from work early. If not for a kind passenger ensuring I got home and more importantly to my door that could have ended badly. So I do not make this decision lightly.

Work was work, I spent this past week taking a new trainee on a crash course through JAWS to help prepare her for a position. It’s rewarding work, but let’s just say it also led to some good sleep.

As I stepped from the building, I was dismayed but not entirely surprised to feel drops of freezing rain hitting my hands. I was just hoping the GoTriangle paratransit vehicle I would be on would ferry me safely home, and then get the driver safely back to wherever they put them. I think I did feel us slide a little bit, but otherwise all was well and I got home quickly for a Friday. I suppose enough people heeded the warnings “WRAL Weather Alert Day!” our main local news channel intoned, to keep traffic fairrly light.

And now on Sunday, a little bit of that cabin fever is starting to set in. The good thing, I guess, is I can sit in my room and absorb lots of sunshine from my window. How many days till Spring?

2025: A Quarter

Posted on by John

There was an old (because most of the things I think of are old) country song where she says her momma gave her “a penny for your thoughts, a quarter for your calls…”. That and the fact that we are now into the 25th year of this century and millenium inspired this entry’s title.

I know some of you remember entering the year 2000, all those years ago. My most prominent thoughts from then, as I stood in a cramped church fellowship hall and the clock struck 12 were “I wonder if the TV and power are going to just shut off” (Y2K, look it up if you are too young to recall) and “I wish I could talk!” I’d been struck by a horrible head cold that had also taken my voice.

Anyhow, here we are all this time, with smarter phones and… well you can guess the rest. This past year was the first that felt like some semblance of normal since Covid arrived, though I am very much aware that this ss still not the case for everyone. I was fortunate enough to visit Myrtle Beach twice, and to fly to D.C. as Employee of the Year! (I wish I’d finished writing about that. I enjoyed delicious meals and (blah hearing aside) remember some of the fun of diing out. And work continues to hum along, with its new experiences and opportunities to help others come up.

But as always my favorite thing is reading. This year I set an all-time books-read record with 87 titles consumed. Granted GoodReads says that each book was on average 10 pages shorter than in 2023, but I still read more pages by far in 24 as well. And as I did for 2023, I will include a list of my five-star reads. If you don’t plan to look, you can stop here and I will wish you and us all a happy new year.

  • The Boys In The Boat, by Daniel James Brown
  • Somewhere Inside, by Laura Ling
  • All The Sinners Bleed, by S.A. Cosby
  • The House of Eve, by Sadeqa Johnson
  • Thicker Than Water, by Kerry Washington
  • The New Guys, by Meredith Bagby
  • The Women, by Kristin Hannah
  • The Last Lifeboat, by Hazel Gaynor
  • The Familiar, by Leigh Bardugo
  • Noumenon Infinity, by Marina J. Lostetter
  • A History of Burning, by Janika Oza
  • Shelterwood, by Lisa Wingate
  • Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa
  • A Calamity of Souls, by David Baldacci
  • The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, by Sara Ackerman
  • James, by Percival Everett
  • The Book of Lost Names, by Kristin Harley
  • Dust Child, by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
  • By Any Other Name, by Jodi Picoult
  • Eruption, by Michael Crichton
  • A Pair of Wings, by Carole Hopson
  • The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden
  • The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters
  • Lovely One, by Ketanji Brown Jackson
  • The Deaf Girl, by Abigail Heringer
  • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by Victoria E. Schwab