I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allen Poe

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
- H. L. Mencken

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
-Bertrand Russell

What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
-James Branch Cabell

December 28, 2017 - 1:53 p.m.

A Visit From Sprite Nicholas

Yesterday was cold so I headed south, … to Manhattan. It was only a little warmer. I was pleasantly surprised to have Festivus mail in my box; a card from Emily & Joe and daughters complete with their picture and a card and Holiday-esque Mix of 2017 from Chris. I should make A Batnose Festivus IV and post it online. Maybe next year As I lost most of my music I'll have to make it a Spotify playlist. After the post office I headed down to Trader Joe's in Chelsea. There are three Trader Joe's in Manhattan; the travel time to home is inversely proportional to their distance. That's because the furthers, the one in Union Square, is right by the 4 train which is on the same line as the 6 I take home. The closest is the one on the Upper West Side but there is no easy connection to the 6 from there so that means local trains and a walk or a train and two buses. The Chelsea one is not somewhat easier to get home from and is the least crowded store, so I usually opt for that. That was a good choice, there was hardly any line.

I just realized I was an idiot. One of the reasons there was no line was that it's the lull between Christmas and New Year's. On the Tuesday in between, I try and see Michael Daves's weekly show at Rockwood Music Hall as that's a week it isn't crowded. I forgot till now. It isn't easy not having a brain.

It's after noon now. I better eat brunch and then come back and finish this. I'm back, it's now after 1:00. I might as well tell you what I ate, a sausageeggandcheese roll on lavash bread. That's part of my breakfast rotation. I have two kinds of sausages, patties for use on sandwiches and link for omelets, rolls, grits ala Horvendile. Through a weird series of thoughts that reminded me to talk about gloves.

This will need some background. You know that I share this house with Bernie, Jane, and two cats, May and Smoke. As I don't want to be locked up I have not mentioned Nicholas, he lives here too. Nicholas is a sprite or elf or some other sort of mischievous magical entity. We never see Nicholas, but we see his mischief; he is a thief. When things go missing we know that it's his fault. Sometimes he returns things but sometimes they are the wrong things. He stole Jane's yoga mat and returned a different yoga mat. He returned a video camera that no one in this house lost, but there it was on the floor. I don't know how Jane and Bernie discovered his name; he's lived here longer than I have. He stowed away in their things when they were on vacation. I cannot vouch for that, or the yoga mat, I'm taking Janes word for those things, but the camera and other things I witnessed myself. I took the Pro-Truth Pledge, I must be honest about this and let you know what I know secondhand.

Yesterday Nicholas, (never Nick) returned two things he stole. The first was a roll of aluminum foil that Jane had just bought a few weeks ago and went missing the day before. It was what I was looking for when I lost my glasses. I was looking for something else in the closet and saw a beat up empty aluminum foil box. This was way older than the new one that Jane had bought. As I didn't see that the day before I looked for the foil again. I picked up the saran wrap box. The aluminum foil was in box but UNDER the saran wrap. Nicholas was really messing with us.

Then I looked on a table and saw a pair of black fleece gloves. The first cool day I was here I wore those gloves; the next day they went missing. I thought I had left them in the living room when I took them off to put something in the fridge and forgot to bring them back upstairs but the next day they were nowhere to be seen. I asked Jane and Bernie if they had seen them and they hadn't. That was over a year ago. Now here they were right out in the open. I asked Bernie about them. He said he found them in the pocket of his jacket. What a fiendish place to hide them.

How did sausages remind me of the gloves? Just as I am particular enough about my sausages to have different types for different dishes I am particular about the warmth of my gloves. I have three pairs; the super-warm Nepalese mittens that I wore yesterday, my leather thinsulate gloves, and the fleece ones. I wear the mittens when the temperature is below 28°F or so, the leather from 28° to 40° and the fleece from 40°-50°. That's not fixed, it has to do with wind-chill and how long I expect to be outside. I don't like being too cold or too warm. I'm Goldilocks, I want things just right. Since I lost the gloves I've often been one or the other when the temperature was in the 40s.

You might think I would be one of those people that always lose one glove. The truth is I rarely lose one glove; I'm an idiot but I know that I'm an idiot and take precautions. I never leave a pair of gloves separated except when they are in my pocket when I'm out. The fleece has a clip to keep them together. The mittens have buttons and hooks. The leather has a strap on the back to tighten them and I slip one glove under the others strap. The advantage of being an intelligent idiot is that you learn how to idiot-proof things.

This isn't fair, somehow my Word normal template disappeared from my computer. That means I lost all my preferences and worse, all my macros. There should an automatic backup created and stored in the cloud. In fact, as One Drive comes with your office subscription that's where the prime template should be stored, and the local version just used for when you are offline; then all your preferences would be stored no matter where you were and would be saved when you get a new computer. Microsoft is not an intelligent idiot. It doesn't take precautions to ease recovery from its mistakes.

This was not what I was planning on writing, but I like it better that the rant I had planned. I was saved by the sausages and my compulsion to tell you what I eat.



I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.





Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018



creative commons
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile December 28, 2017
site search by freefind advanced


Follow on Feedly



about me - read my profile! read other DiaryLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!