I wrote yesterday about our friend Marilia’s going home to Brazil last week. One of the things she needed to handle was returning her E-Z Pass tag, and I volunteered to do that for her after she left. I’ll be putting it in the mail today.
That got me thinking about just how great E-Z Pass is. Remember when you had to sit in long lines at toll booths, breathing in exhaust fumes? On some trips it felt like you spent more time waiting to pay a toll than you did driving. Jennifer and I were relatively early adopters of E-Z Pass, so we often had the exhilarating experience of sailing through a toll both in the dedicated E-Z Pass lane while hundreds of other drivers waited to hand their money to a human attendant. It was our custom to chant “EE-ZEE PAAASSSSS!” as we cruised through. . . .
Category: Miscellany
Our Neighborhood Luminaria Display
My neighborhood has a yuletide tradition of putting out luminaria on Christmas Eve. Even if you haven’t done luminaria yourself, you’ve probably seen them. They consist of a white paper bag with some sand in the bottom and a thick candle stuck in the sand. When lit they emit an ethereal glow. I know people who place luminaria along their front walk or driveway when they have people over for a holiday get-together, but my neighborhood has for years put out hundreds of them, all at the same time. . . .
My Favorite Quote
I’ve read posts by several different bloggers sharing their favorite quotes —in particular, quotes they found inspirational or illuminating. Today I’m sharing mine. . .
The Great Conjunction
I can only imagine what the shamans of old would have made of the fact that a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is occurring on the date of the winter solstice. The two gods embrace for the first time in memory, and immediately the days start getting longer. . . .
Holiday House Decorations in My Home Town
I’m impressed with our township’s Recreation Department. Yesterday I wrote about how they’re encouraging residents to go out and ring bells on Christmas Eve — and providing the bells to do so. Another of their holiday initiatives is a house decorating contest. Any resident who has decked out their house for the holidays is invited to enter, with prizes to be awarded in the following categories:
- Best Inflatable Display
- Best Townhouse/Condo/Apartment Display
- Best Classic Display
- Most Extreme Display (a.k.a., Clark Griswold Award)
- Town Choice Award, which is voted on by residents. . . .
Ringing Bells on Christmas Eve
There is a movement afoot to ring bells on Christmas Eve. I read this morning on Patch.com that my town, Lawrence Township, NJ, is encouraging residents to go outside and ring a bell for two minutes at 6:00pm on December 24th. The township says that communities around the world are participating. The idea is to “spread a message of hope and peace.” My first thought was, “I don’t think we have a bell,” and my second was “How many families do?”
Tomorrow
Shortly after I started a new job in the mid-1990s, I read a book that changed my life. It was Do It Now!: Break the Procrastination Habit, by William Knaus. I don’t know whether the book would have made as much of a difference to me if I’d read it years earlier — it may simply have come at the right time because that was also when I was given my first big project to manage. Work suddenly became much more demanding. I was busy all the time and found that if I didn’t do things when they first presented themselves, it might be days or weeks before I could squeeze them into my schedule. Whatever the reason, that’s when I more or less banished procrastination . . . at least until 20 years later when I retired. . . .
Retronyms
Several years ago I learned a new word: retronym. When the sweep of history or changes in technology result in our using an existing word to describe a newer version of something — the way “phone,” for example, now refers to something very different from the device that Alexander Graham Bell invented — a modified version of that word is coined to describe the older thing that the word originally described. Thus, “landline phone” is a retronym.
I was immediately enamored of the idea of retronyms and started noticing them everywhere. . . .
Oops!
On Cyber Monday I found exactly the sweater I wanted at Macy’s for $49.99, marked down from $150. I ordered two of them. They arrived yesterday, and when I cut open the package, the sweaters kind of popped out. There was no inner wrapping; they had simply been stuffed into the plastic shipping envelope. It was only when I tried one of them on that I discovered a hole in the body of the sweater. I realized that when I’d cut open the envelope with a pair of scissors, I had snipped a hole in the fabric. . . .
Facebook is Tearing Our Society Apart
I read this interesting OpEd piece by Charlie Warzel in this morning’s New York Times about how Facebook’s newsfeed serves up “hyperpartisan rumormongering and conspiratorial misinformation” to tens of millions of Americans. “Touching family moments and Bible quotes that look like Hallmark cards” Warzel writes, are interspersed with hateful, vitriolic attacks and debunked conspiracy theories. . . .