Friday, December 4, 2009

Night Notes

Ah, another stretch of overnights; time to wander around the gray matter.....or is it grey matter? Merriam-Webster says that grey is a variant of gray, so either is apparently acceptable. Grey somehow seems more classic, more Olde English.

- The cable TV music feed is a nice change from the radio. They play a different mix and don’t have commercials. On the other hand, they played the full-length version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, reminding me that it is possible for even a decent rock song to be too long, at least without the aid of recreational chemicals.

Speaking of recreational chemicals, the gentleman who works next door gave me two chocolate-covered peppermint sticks, which I’m sure have been around a long time but didn’t come into my life until recently. It does make a nice combination, but I can’t help wondering if it was one of those accidental ideas, most famously expressed in the old Reese’s candy-bar-dropped-into-chocolate ad campaign. I suppose it could have been a spontaneous idea; someone just decided to try it to see if it would work. A great deal of my cooking skill has come from that concept. I think my best idea came when, lacking lettuce for tacos, I substituted dill pickle slices (again, I’m sure it had been done, but I hadn’t seen it). My daughter liked it, and lettuce has not reappeared in tacos at our house.

- Perhaps I’ve just become jaded, but this year the "holiday" season hasn’t seemed as interminable as in past years. We’ve actually gotten to what I consider an acceptable time to be pushing crap-for-Christmas without me experiencing an urge to assault anyone or anything mentioning it. I guess I’ve been too occupied with more important things to pay much attention to the preseason hype. We’ve also gotten the family gathering arranged, which is usually a large headache. Whatever the reason, it is refreshing to see December on the calendar and feel something besides fatigue and the desperate desire for it to be over.

No comments: