Speaking of the better angels of our nature, I decided to avoid the gym for now, what with the New Year’s resolution types filling up the place, huffing and puffing, and none of them wearing masks. I find this bewildering and now it’s frightening. I will be doing more walking than usual, hoping ‘this counts’ as exercise.

Today Someone and I will get covid19 tests, as he is getting over a bad URI and I am getting one. He is tested regularly at work, but this will be my first test ever. I need to look up at the AMA what I do if I am positive.

Father’s Christmas check arrived and it was much more than I imagined. I called him to thank him and he explained he has too much money any isn’t going to take it with him, so he might as well give some of it now to his children and grandchildren. A week ago I thought this money would go towards prescriptions, but now it can go to The Father Spo Memorial Mattress or something like that. The HOA told us last March to get the house painted or else, so I suspect that’s what gets Father’s munificence. I hear tell the HOA won’t let us apply a fresh coat of paint to what we have already, but we have to choice one of their oh-so-dreary brown/beige combinations, evoking the Flannery O’Conner line about “bulbous liver-colored monstrosities of a uniform ugliness although no two are alike.” She has such a way with words.

Our usual pizza to-go joint closed its doors a few months ago. In a way I was glad we were bereft of having a pizza place. Last night we tried a new place, “Oreganos”. Someone stopped by on his way home from work to pick up a salad and two test pan pizzas. I was pleased as Punch they were good, and the pan pizzas allow us to get our own preferences. We declared ‘Oregano’ pizza and salad a success; we will be back. Pizza toppings would make a good blog entry; more of this anon.

Spo-fans may recall one of my 2022 resolutions was to do a daily five-minute dose of ‘doing nothing’. I remembered sleeping under the bed is my zafu and zabuton combination, which hasn’t seen daylight in years. Once navy blue, it has become more slate gray, a Rococo blue, until I realized this was just dust and dog hair – a lot. After pounding the hell out of them I sat down for a try-out. It went OK – other than the sneezing evoked from the dander and dust.

Tomorrow starts a new round of forms at work: one is a rating scale to give to the patients while they wait their appointment. The other form is a comprehensive checklist of services to charge for. They are to better patient care and improve our billing, respectively, but are more likely to just annoy and make things generally irritating. I am certain to write on these anon as well.