Laziness and sloth have become part of my life. Thanksgiving and Christmas have come and gone but I'm just getting around to writing. I'd like to blame this on our dull and boring life but it's just sloth. Thanksgiving was very good. My brother-in-law Mike was up from Panama and his daughter Samantha with her significant other Heather were able to join us as well. Much food was eaten and some good visiting was had. Christmas Eve was held at my sister-in-law Sue's. It's held so the cousins can get together and visit. It's starting to divide into the young marrieds and us old fogies. That's right and proper but a little sad as well. The cousins have married well and I like their spouses but they are from another time. Their concerns and triumphs are not ours. It's still good to see them. I wonder how long before they take over Christmas Eve. Christmas was at the mother-in-laws. I got to visit more with the nieces including Mike's daughter Stephanie who was in from Denver. Another good dinner was had. New Year's Eve was a wild one for us. We went to the 1812 restaurant in the Island House Hotel in Port Clinton. The food was very good, better than we've had in this area in a while. We were home by 9pm, napping on the couch and waiting for the ball to drop. It did and we went to bed. New Year's Day and we played tiles at the Mother-in-laws. Wild times folks, wild times. I found myself short of breath far too often and after some farm work had some pains in my arms. After extensive and expensive tests, my heart is fine. Evidently, I suffer from OFOOS. I'm Old, Fat and Out Of Shape. I'm trying to do something about 2 of those. I'm suffering from food fatigue from the holidays anyway. I can do with a much simpler diet. I've used this diagnosis to justify buying a set of bike rollers. Biking is the only other form of useless exercise that I've enjoyed other than fencing. Fencing is out now. It takes too long to heal my joints up after a fencing session. Biking is easier on my joints. I should have bought a unicycle instead. People expect you to be unable to ride a unicycle. All the Youtube videos show guys jumping on a set of bike rollers and riding fine in 8 minutes or so. I'm at about an hour so far and still can't stay upright. I really hoped to do better than this. I wanted to be in good biking shape by the time weather gets good. I do go for a walk around town from time to time at lunch. The farm and garden are on hold. I’ve done some mechanical work on equipment but nothing major. I need to cut brush on the one ditch and bring in a tracked excavator to clean it. I’ve got to improve the drainage or I’ll never be able to grow anything worthwhile. I may try to put together some primitive raised beds this year. I’d like to insure against tomato drowning. I suppose this will be a drought year. Who really knows? We were trapped in the house for about 5 days thanks to the weather. The county went to a condition 3 snow emergency which is: Stay off the roads unless you are an emergency vehicle or we’ll arrest you. I took some time to rearrange the attic and upstairs rooms. You would never be able to tell. It’s now possible to walk several steps in the rooms. In the process, I found several books that I haven’t read in a while. One was volume 2 of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I found myself reading passages about zeks (slaves) stealing bread from other starving zeks to try and live another day while eating a Lunch of sautéed bay scallops and zucchini over angel hair pasta. Should I be thankful of my good fortune? Should I feel sorrow and horror at the treatment of the Soviet prisoners? It gives me something to ponder while enjoying the Fukinese Sea Treasure Soup that Stacey just made. She uses bay scallops instead of fish maw. They go well with the Alaskan King Crab and shrimp. I’ll leave you with 2 more things. First, I hope to include pictures of my corn crop and my niece and friend. I trust you’ll be able to tell the difference. Second a passage from August 1914 by A. Solzhenitsyn that I have laminated and keep in my wallet: “Who is conceited enough to imagine that he can actually devise ideal institutions? The only people who think they can are those who believe that nothing significant was ever done before their own time, that their generation will be the first to achieve something worthwhile, people who are convinced that only they and their current idols possess the truth, and that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is a fool and a knave.”