Monday, March 24, 2014

Evanston: on vacation; 'Q' 'R'




        Watching the second season of Netflix’s HOUSE OF CARDS—and if you haven’t seen the British original, you should—and March Madness, I had not been paying attention to weather forecasts and was surprised when I woke yesterday morning to find the world white again and flakes blowing past our windows.
        The day turned sunny and warmed to above freezing, so most newly fallen snow melted, leaving behind filthy vestiges of old accumulation from mounds once five and six feet high that make me think of corpses of prehistoric animals.
        Even to life long residents, this winter is too long and too hard on the spirit.  One sailing friend symbolically burned his socks on the first official day of spring.  He emailed me photos of the pyre.  Unfortunately it didn’t work.  I hope he has another pair of socks.
        It was snowing when I flew to San Diego on February 5.  It snowed the day I flew back on March 5.  And it is due to snow tomorrow when Carol and I fly to Florida for six days.  
        I have written that one should live so that he does not need vacations from his life, and pretty much I have.  There are those who consider my entire life a vacation; but I suggest that they lack imagination.
        Nevertheless our trip to Florida is a vacation.  We are going to visit Key West and stay at the hotel where we spent our first night of married life in August 1994, then drive up to Miami and watch some tennis.  (I will also try to sneak in some of the next rounds of the basketball tournament.)
        I am not taking my laptop with me.  Only my iPad mini and the new camera.  So you will get a vacation from me.  There will be no posts here until after my return.
        As an experiment I may post a few photos and words to the Blogger version of this journal.  But that is by no means certain.
        If I do post anything there, I will in time republish it here.
        Enjoy your time off.

———

    From THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY:

        quill:  an implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. 

        quorum:  a sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. 

        rabble:  in a Republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. 

        railroad:  the chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off.

        reality:  the dream of a mad philosopher. 

        reason:  to weigh probabilities in the scales of desire. 

        religion:  a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. 

        Representative:  in national politics, a member of the Lower House in this world, and without discernible hope of promotion in the next. 

        responsibility:  a detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Faith, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. 

        revolution:  in politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. 

        rum:  generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.