As I stood on the porch this morning after feeding the cats, I counted six planes in the air. Blinking lights against the dark sky moving with purpose against the backdrop of stars and planets. There’s likely a waypoint somewhere close. All the planes seemed to be streaming up from the south then making turns just to my east to find their final destinations.

Shortly after my wife died in 2020, I talked with an artist friend to see if she’d be interested in creating a mixed media work using some of my wife’s small belongings and mementos. A work of art in memory. We gathered up little items into a nice collection, talked, and off they went. They came back Tuesday in much the same form as they left, having successfully eluded the grasp of inspiration. I think the little things felt they could still be used and pushed back against being stuck on a board forever. I’m glad they did.

I went to the recital of a friend’s granddaughter last night. It wasn’t planned, and part of a longer story, but that’s alright. The family has played a key role in my life since the death of my wife and the grandchildren know me as Mister John. We get along well. And getting to see one of them play at a recital reminded me of how much I missed my little grand-kids in Virginia and their recitals. So, it was a fun thing to do.

A lesson in commerce. My daughter and I spent several months discussing, designing, and creating a series of mugs for me to sell in our online store at Gatewood Press. The goal was to create something with the potential to sell not only to the fans I have for this blog, but to a broader base. To that end we even advertised on social media. I used the approach in 2021 when I published my last book, with good results. The results this time? We sold two mugs.

It is rather comforting for this old man to be back in the universe of Microsoft. Writing in word and calculating in Excel. The addition of the company’s AI tool has rounded out the package. I was late to the company’s initial offerings, but like the virus in Pluribus, eventually they assimilated the competing word processing and spreadsheet offerings in the early days of computing and became universal in the business world of my youth. I learned to love and use its tools. We were peaceful and happy.

Went for a short walk yesterday. Stood and looked at a tree. A fairly ubiquitous sight, a tree. They’re everywhere, and they just stand there, mostly looking the same from day to day, month to month, and year to year. But as I looked at this tree, I thought of the scene in the Matrix where Neo suddenly viewed the world as strings of data and nothing was real, and I thought of the tree as a big collection of atoms, strings of data, with an entire life going on inside it.

We planted five oaks when we moved into this house sixteen years ago. Two Chinquapin. Four Lacy. And a Burr. The Lacys and one Chinquapin are part of the original planting. The Burr is the second of its kind, as is one of the Chinquapin. The current batch is doing well. I stand in their shade, strain to see the tops while there, and two of the Lacys are starting to overtop the drive, while another offers shade to our visitor parking spot.

Spent my evening yesterday with people making music. An open mic, welcome to all comers, and they came. The evening is hosted by a friend which is what gave me my initial boost of courage several months back. I’m not real sure why I needed it. Sixty years ago, when I first picked up the guitar, I had a trio and we’d play for anyone at the drop of a hat. I guess as the years wore on, I learned how much I didn’t know, and that began to give me pause. These days, in the twilight of my life, my nerves twitch when I play for strangers.

Two years ago, in November, I hiked to the top of Gudalupe Peak, the tallest mountain in Texas. I got up the next day and did a seven-mile hike. Five months later, I had an abdominal aortic aneurysm repaired. I shut down. I haven’t been on a monumental hike since. Lots of short ones, but nothing like that one year of the South Rim and the Peak. Mostly, I’ve chalked it up to letting my body heal and age, but I hardly ever think of those seven stents anymore. So, that excuse is long gone. I think it’s time to strap on the boots and backpack and get moving.

Made a tactical error before bed last night. Ate some spice drops, my candy treat. Sure enough right about 1:30 the sugar hit my system, and up I popped. I know better than to eat before bed, but the drops were there on the counter begging to be eaten. I obliged. My suddenly awake brain thought it was time to work, so it dredged up some 1990’s workplace memories for me to mull. I said no thanks. Got up, took a big drink of water, and got back to sleep.

I’ve worn the letters c, d, l, and k off my computer keyboard. You would think e would have been the first to go since it’s the most used letter in the English language. But I’m betting the demise of d, l, and k has something to do with the fact that my fingers rest on them as I type. J and F are protected by little protrusions that identify them as index finger keys, anchor points for the hands of a typist. C is most likely the victim of ctrl-c. The copy shortcut.

An inevitable consequence of aging is the increasing number of Sad Anniversaries peppering my life. I’ve lost acquaintances, friends and family. And not only have I suffered losses, but my friends have suffered losses, and the closer they are to me, the more I know about them. And because we’re close we all share the pain, which is probably helpful, although the pain of grief is so deeply personal, that it’s hard to know what’s going on inside the mind of the one grieving. Still, we do our best and hope that it’s enough.

There was a time when the noise of the highway down the street from us abated. Late at night and early in the morning. Those days are gone. The sound of rubber on asphalt comes at all hours now. The road between Johnson City and Fredericksburg, once country, has a winery and tasting room for nearly every mile between the two cities. Even Hye, a wide spot just down the road, has a winery and a distillery.

Television, once central to my life, is no longer. I go days sometimes without turning on the television. I think it started when I cut the cable cord. Streaming is slightly more complicated. You have to remember what service has what show. And you can binge them, so with one good evening you can consume an entire season. And if you miss a show’s weekly appearance, you can catch up, which means the tune-in imperative is gone.

It’s raining and everything is oddly green given that it’s December. But we’ve yet to have a freeze. So, rain and cool weather have the grass excited and growing. A reverse version of spring. And no cold is on the horizon either. So, I’ll probably need to mow at some point, although that’s just for cosmetic reasons and I have no HOA or neighbors tut-tutting over my unkempt grass. So, I might let it go for a while longer.

AI wins again. I had a batch of Word Files. I wanted a field inserted into the header of each document. I knew it could be done because five years ago I paid someone to write me a VBA macro to do a similar task. This time I simply asked ChatGPT for help. Quick as a wink I had a program. We gave it a few tweaks and just like that 300 files had a field inserted into a header on each document. It saved me time and money.

Once upon a time I considered myself a well-read man, a reader of the great books. But that feeling has long since dissipated. I’m unable to quote passages from favorite poems or phrases from favorite books. I can’t site references from memory. The words I’ve read from the books and poems I’ve read are scattered in my memory like so many leaves from winter trees. The titles are there, the authors are there, and even some of the characters are there as well. But nothing feels coherent.

There’s a character in Star Trek that’s irresistible, The Borg. Resistance, as they’ll tell you, is futile. The Star Trek heroes obviously resist but lots of cultures don’t. I think the internet is our Borg, and judging by how many people use it, I’d say resistance is futile. Although, perhaps in retrospect its technology in general that captured us. But that’s for another day. Right now, for me, it’s the internet, because someone in China is still perusing my site every day.

It’s a cool windy day with a promise of rain. A good staying inside day. A cold front’s coming. Lows in the 30s, highs in the 40s. A Texas winter. We’re the place where blue northers come to die, victims of the second law of thermodynamics. Don’t bring your arctic air around here. You’ll be balmy in no time. It’s one reason why so many refugees from northern climes live here. The cold air might chase them, but it will surrender in the end.

It is nothing for me to wake at night and instantly recall some moment in my life that needs re-litigating. Sometimes, they’re events close at hand, other times they’re decades in the past. The other night I found myself in the early 80s, at my second job out of college. I have no idea why I decided to relive those days, but there I was, wide awake, going over all the things I did or didn’t do and regretting some of them.