The Immitigability of Our Mortal Predicament

What to say of 2020?  Best year ever amidst so much anxiety and collapse and rejuvenation.  The rejection of Trump and the magic of marriage.  The work-from-basement/SC/Zanzibar etc.  So much missed and such wonder discovered, such love.  Stuff of legend.  As Mweemba believes, it sounds funny to say out loud to the non-spiritual, and to hear your response come, that the spirituality and belief is there, citing the last minute purchases of Townes and Debussy and Carver to usher in 2021.

The year of the plague never to be forgotten.  A roadmap in overcoming adversity, making choices, prioritizing the important.  The past all pointing in the one direction, when looked at in retrospect.  Time the chameleon, cipher, and enabler.  What shall events hold for the latest one?  The silver dollar and the tux and the dip and the levee-less tour?

Let it show, let it show, let it show.  Forgive the bad pun, but it certainly doesn’t show signs of stopping.  This one existence.  Its occasional beguilements and its innumerable woes, as Henry James wrote in speaking of Guy de Maupassant.  A year of tales.  And you lived the best of them.

Now, go top it starting tomorrow morn.  48 minutes.  Just enough time for Van Zandt to bring us home.

The Rare Old Mountain Dew

Strange one, various messages, but no real presents, no true sense of occasion.  As if the stage is still being set for release, and for next year...  the package awaits opening in Sydney, at some time.  How will it end?  This time round last year, it ended with more stress, but with the start of revelations as well. Hard to believe the progress since.  The pandemic’s concentration of the mind.  King John’s India rubber ball, tears for memories of the past, to be stored lock-safe for the brand new future that awaits.  Vaccines and Visas are what we want.  Bring it, 2021.  One week to get ready for your cold yet welcoming waters.

I turned my face away, and dreamed about you... 

Contributions and Conclusions

Last half-work week before Christmas from the basement, reviewing the year that was.  Through 11 months, 680k from the main source, accounting for a hilarious 98.5% of the margin, and 62% of the personal hours.  Next, 18.5% to the Munis, 8% to Hef, 4% to Liberty, and 3% to the purchase of those NL wind farms.  Does not factor in the last flurry of petroleum product queries that should amount to another 5% or so.

An odd mix, especially when you think about how it feeds into a means of providing for the eclectic life of the past year.  A wedding that was far from foreseeable when the world turned over, but “Nada es Impossible”.  Enjoy the shortest day, more reflections before this crazy year brings in its conclusions.

Tobias called, listening to Dad try to explain about the wedding, and sending pictures.  “In Africa?  How’d he manage to do that?”  Heh.  Pinch yourself.

2010 Peru

Bought a bottle of rum today, with two fifties in my wallet that never quite got converted to Kwatcha.  Two Mrs. MacDuffs greeting each other over FaceTime and across the distance.  The Rum now tasting so good, as you plan for the memo to IOL in the ...

LH Facebook friend request.  Hope a son doesn’t feel the need to repeat the same photo, nor reference 80 hour weeks, but heh.  Spilt a bit on the bed and feel I could drink through until the morn.  Such is the world, and its tonics, and the few good men that must be watched anew.  Cheese advent (improperly opened),  Rob Lowe and son in a cheese Netflix classic, and yet work to be done on the partner input form.  Can you make a difference to compensation via the wording? Unlikely.  Annoying to be made to think so.  But what a year, in any case.

The App will arrive tomorrow, can’t wait to see next year’s stocking.  And the reaction to the mass 31st invite...

Day 12

The last of the wine.  Diablo.

The go ahead for a few more hours this week to listen into the UARB on another hearing in a passive role just granted.  Funny to think of the before-days, where that might have meant donning a suit to revisit Summit Place, and blog again surreptitiously from there.  Instead, the same shirt and underwear worn for days, waiting for time to expire, the hangover-like punishment/payment for such wondrous events and memories of November.

How else to pitch it?  The dreams pursued, and conquered (the last pronounced in that Shakespearean way, three syllables instead of two).  The 910 square feet of 601 a reliable refuge, at last for wifi, at least for a time.  Perhaps it will lapse after the third quarantine charm.  

When shall the walks begin again, the gambols.  When shall we welcome our lady - your wife! - to the wonders of these here surroundings.  Fun call with Flint today, the ancient banter with McDonough, always recalled, the warnings placed on files that you are privy to based on the most random of Pearson phone calls.  Dad’s ring resting nicely.  

And of course the 5th year celebration of the Mink-Hippo man, all these many years later it is almost as if a year has been skipped.  So much time.  To make a two week quarantine inconsequential.  Which is why you trade it, of course, for the broader experiences required.  The ability to move and yet be paid with no questions.  

I would I had more wine.  I fear the Scotch be next.  Pray you the headache not be much.  Two days.  Then we do the serious work and get this Application to Sydney and start the clock.

“The hips and bosom outside.”  At Avani tonight.  How lucky I am, to have that knowledge of space in past time.  Can’t wait to share the same on the reverse leg.

AGM Alignment

Inch dropped off the extra wine and tomato/feta/baguette combo during the AGM, so the course seemed clear.  A long slow road from before 4PM to after midnight, but so it goes.  Tham with the drop-off of supper as well, not to be forgotten in the mix.

But the token words of the Teams meeting...  opportunity to take stock of the year, in a disruption unlike any of us have seen in our lifetimes.  All have been impacted and tested in a wide variety of ways, tested, tested.  Resilience.  Blah.  Need to show alignment of goals of accountability and excellence and and and...

Not a lot of uniqueness, not a lot of spunk, creativity, acknowledgement of anything outside the "business".  But what odds?  "business" has been good, and such is the nature of a partnership that those are the circumstances where everything is breezed over.  Including one's efforts to disappear to A-fri-ca!  

What a prosperous year - 6 on from St. Lucia.  Would laugh about it with A. but she has already "removed the connection."  Heh.  In honour of the moment, going to book the return flight to Zam now.  With any luck, we'll head direct to the Keg and Lion to watch the United match...  What a life.  It must always be said.

A year in which we've learned a lot about ourselves, said JG.  Heh.  Isn't that the case?!