New Year's

Christmas is for children, but New Year's is more for grownups.  I no longer stay up to midnight then; I prefer to be in bed, though I'm usually still awake when the fireworks and stuff go off.

East Asians have their own New Year's about a month later, at the time of a new moon.  I was actually born on the Chinese New Year's in 1962 (a water tiger year), at the same time as a solar eclipse and a conjunction of five planets in Aquarius had some astrologers predicting the end of the world! (The world almost did end that October with the Cuban Missile Crisis.) Others see it as the start of "the Age of Aquarius"!

I always used to think of the new year as starting in September, because that's when each school year starts.  I think the Jewish new year starts around then.

Remember New Year's in 2000 when people were worried about the Y2K turnover bringing down computer systems? (I actually backed up some files to be on the safe side.) But it turned out that the problem had been solved in time.

In Scotland, people used to visit their neighbours on New Year's Day.  We should bring that tradition back!

Baking

I'm the family baker.  I used to bake in our bread machine every week, but lately I've been getting lazy.  I bake a wide variety of bread:  whole wheat, multigrain, rye (actually a mix of white, whole wheat and rye), raisin cheese and even plain white bread.  Without such variety baking gets boring suprisingly quick.

For whole wheat, multigrain and rye, I use molasses and honey instead of regular sugar.  The main challenge for me is getting the flour-water ration right, so the loaf won't be too small or too big. Of all the varieties, whole wheat has the best smell when baking!

I also bake gingerbread sometimes.  One trick I've learned is to put a little oil in the measuring cup before measuring out molasses, and move it about so it covers most of the inner surface.  That way when you pour the molasses out hardly any will be stuck to the measuring cup!

In one of the Little House books, the family came to a new town just before the land rush, and made some money boarding people in their house who hadn't found their own places.  Some of them liked the mother's baking so much that they asked for her recipes, but she didn't have any; she'd just learned from years of experience!

The Christie people used to have a big cookie factory near the lakeshore in Etobicoke.  I passed it once and there was a nice smell!

Pigs

I've read that pigs are most intelligent animals in the barnyard. (Except for the humans, I guess.) I once saw a thing on TV--on the show Real People, maybe?--where a guy had his pigs trained so that they wouldn't start eating their feed till he'd said grace!  And wild pigs are probably even smarter.

Pigs will eat anything, which must be why Jews and Moslems consider them unclean.  I've also read that they don't naturally overeat:  famers have to thrust tons of food in front of their snouts to get them to do so.

After seeing the miniseries Lonesome Dove, I read the Larry McMurtry novel.  On the second page or so Gus McRae says "You pigs git!" and reading that, I immediately saw Robert Duvall in the role!

There's the Warner Brothers cartoon character Porky Pig, who stutters. On Youtube you can find a home movie the cartoonists made for an office party, where carpenter Porky Pig hammers his thumb and keeps stuttering, "Oh, son of a b-b-b-..." Finally he says "Son of a gun!" points at the audience and says, "Ha ha, you thought I was going to say 'Son of a bitch,' didn't you?" One of his funniest cartoons is Porky in Wackyland!

When I was little I read a comic book where Uncle Scrooge was up against a pig character from the Klondike called Soapy Slick, where saving his fortune came down to a big dogsled race. (I recently read that this character was based on a real guy called Soapy Smith!)

Bookstores

It used to be that the store in a mall that interested me the most would always be the bookstore. Today there are malls that don't have bookstores at all!

When I visit London, England, I tend to spend a lot of time (and money) at the bookstores Foyle's and Watterstone's.  When I was there a couple of months ago, I bought several Portuguese books because I'm interested in learning that language.  One was a children's book about the history of Portugal.  Another was of Charles Perrault's French fairy tales, told in Portuguese. (Children's books tend to have pretty easy language.)

You can find a lot of interesting books in university bookstores. At the University of Toronto bookstore I once obtained a huge Chinese dictionary!

A few years back I got a couple of puzzle magazines at Indigo Books.  After I left the store, I realized I hadn't paid for them!  I went right back in and did so, but I could have just gone home and got away with stealing.  Yet there's enough injustice in the world without me adding to it.

The swimming pool

I used to swim when I was young.  Don't do it much today.

I remember how I failed a swimming course at age twelve. It was all very discouraging, right from the early lessons.  I would have quit early on, except that I didn't want to be a quitter.  I'll bet that the instructors looked at me in the first lesson and said, "That's the one who's going to fail!" And they let me sink (not literally!).  I should have just quit.

Three of my siblings failed a swimming course too, but at least they failed together, while I failed alone!

I recall that on the day I failed, we'd bought a new Royal electric typewriter.  So I've always associated that typewriter with my failure.

I remember that the Beverley Hillbillies called their swimming pool "the cee-ment pond"!

Family dinners

Occasionally we'll have the whole family over for a big dinner, often of Indian food. (There's a good Indian restaurant around the corner from our house.) Sometimes we'll put two tables together and bring in chairs so there'll be room for everyone.

I tend to be the first to leave the table afterward.  Small talk isn't my thing.  My father and sister make better hosts than I do: company sometimes wears me out.

My brother and his family are vegans, so that can be hard to plan for. (It makes me appreciate mere vegetarians!) When they come over for dinner, they often bring the food, which simplifies things.

Father's getting on in years and we don't eat out much these days. We used to to to the Swiss Chalet chicken restaurant in the month before Christmas because they'd throw in a Toblerone chocolate bar with the special.  We also went to the Mandarin Chinese buffet, but you have to be careful to avoid overeating at those places.

Does anyone remember the Ponderosa steak houses?

Wilderness

The "Little House" books were written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and set in the wilderness.  So that's what I'll write about.

I really like the "Little House" books.  I read the first three when I was young, and the rest decades later.  They're children's fiction based on Wilder's actual family, who moved around the American frontier before settling down in South Dakota.

There's some controversy about the book.  Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who wrote some novels of her own, served as her editor, and some people wonder how much of the books are her work.  Her daughter was an early libertarian, and it's been suggested that her story is told through the prism of the daughter's anti-government sentiments.  One example is the part in the books where the family sells a cow and makes economies to pay for her blind sister to attend a school for the vision-impaired.  In real life, the territorial government picked up the tab!  But maybe the change was just to make it a better story...

Michael Landon's TV show, on the other hand, I've always found quite shameless, cheesy and manipulative. (Notice how clean their clothes were!)

There's a spinoff book series focusing on Rose, after Laura, husband and daughter moved to a new farm in the Ozarks.  I ought to read those books too.