Darkoshi

Happy New Year, everyone.

New Year's Day had temps in the upper 70s here. So warm we left the windows open at night.
Today was wet and rainy. The rest of the week should be more typical winter weather.

My vacation is over. I did not manage to shift my internal clock back at all during that time.
Being accustomed to going to bed at 5am is not good, especially when I have meetings in the morning.

Christmas Eve was the one night I went to bed earlier, before 2am. There's something about that particular night of the year which makes my usual pastimes feel inappropriate. We celebrate on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. After the festivities and music, after the people and presents, after a month or more of small preparations and plans. It doesn't feel right to top all that off with my usual pastimes, as if it were any other day.

So I went to bed early (as I really was tired) but then I couldn't fall asleep*. An hour later I decided to get up, and stayed up again till 5:45am after all.

*Listening to and watching videos of big church bells before bed is a BAD idea. It hyped me up even more. The ringing and ringing and ringing of the bells. The swinging and swaying and clanging of the bells. The bells, the bells, the bells!

Went grocery shopping yesterday. Red chard (so pretty - the combination of reddish purplish stalks and green leafy parts), later cooked for dinner. Big sweet ripe raspberries - they drew my eye as they were larger and darker-colored than the ones in the adjoining cartons. But they really were raspberries. Their taste reminds me of ones picked wild in Germany.

In Germany, vanilla ice cream with hot raspberries is a common dessert. The combination truly tastes wonderful.

Right before entering the 2nd store at 6pm, nearby church-bells started ringing, and I tarried outside a while to listen. Nice sounding bells; real bells. They reminded me of Germany too.

In the 3rd store, I overheard another customer asking an employee for help in finding an item, "Jum". She had a foreign accent, and I wondered what this "Jum" might be. Jumbo? Gumbo? Jambalaya? Even when she explained to the employee that it was something one eats at breakfast with bread and butter, both he and I were still puzzled. (Does one eat gumbo for breakfast?) When she mentioned marmelaide, it finally clicked for me. Jam! The poor employee still wasn't getting it, so I went over to help him out.

Later, it occurred to me that the woman's accent was very familiar to me. Sort of Indian; sort of German. I can hear someone's voice in my head speaking with the same accent, but can't remember who it belongs too. Maybe someone on TV or in a movie.

these 2 old water-faucet knobs i had lying around finally told me what to do with them... make them into bells! of course! nuh, duh! (how is that spelled, anyway???) seems so obvious, it's odd it didn't occur to me sooner.