I got up... in These titles mean nothing.

.. in the middle of the night to do what people do when they get up in the middle of the night and to tend the fire. And then of course I’m here.

After reading a bit more about Henry VIII, the massive cruelty the world has always been capable of. I then finished a sudoko that had been started with green ink. I used red to finish it. I was going to toss it in the fire but the Crypto-quote was so good I could not throw it away without saving it somehow. So I came here.

The Crypto-quote maybe even related to Wolf Hall. Henry imprisoned people before he killed them. And Anne Frank who was certainly also a prisoner whose death followed, is said to have said:

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

Now that I’ve saved Anne and beauty I can burn the newspaper.

I’m in the basement sitting in the camp chair. The furnace blower is creaking away and warmth is radiating from the poor old woodo. We keep thinking it will be its last winter but so far there’s always been another one. Maybe next year we will do something about the house and how we so laughingly heat it.

The wood we brought in a week ago is about half gone. We have been having seriously cold weather. We have a bunch of wood cut and stacked outside that I think should be burnable. I guess I wait and see.

We are in the middle of a snow storm too. We got let out two hours early at work yesterday/Friday, partly for weather, partly because we the powers that be decided to do it. It’s a funny place. A lot of decisions are made collegially. (I knew that wasn’t a word. Let me google.

col·le·gi·al
kəˈlēj(ē)əl/
adjective
adjective: collegial

1.
relating to or involving shared responsibility, as among a group of colleagues.)

Well it’s an adjective so I should be able to put an -ly at the end and adverbize it. As you may notice adverbize is another new word I just made up. I took a noun and made it into a verb by adding -ize. I hate it when other people do that but it’s kind of cute when I do it.

OK back to the future. Or the past. The recent past.

After work I went to Decorah to give blood. The Red Cross was in the basement of the Catholic church. The Catholic church has plans to expand. Jim read about it in the Decorah newspaper on line. They are taking down their convent - in a more peaceful way than Henry VIII did - and making a one level entry and welcoming area to the church itself. The church dates back to 1917 and it a really tasteful red brick edifice in a town where the Protestant
churches are bigger than the Catholic church.

http://www.decorahnews.com/news-stories/2016/12/15248.html

When I was little my mother’s sister who ‘kept house’ for Father O’Sullivan presided in the Decorah rectory for a number of years. We went to visit once and I had never seen carpet before. I was impressed with the ‘soft ecnoleum’. I was making up words then too.

I still have my blood test finger bandaided. It’s the middle finger on my right hand and I use it quite a bit to type. I could take it off but that would take some effort and I’m being conservative.

The blood letting was pretty good. I get asked every time if I feel comfortable doing the survey when they ask all sorts of personal questions on the computer. I am so tempted to say that I was doing stuff on the computer before you were born but that would make me seem even older so I just quietly say I can do it. There were homemade cookies.

The roads weren’t that good to drive on. It was and maybe still is snowing pretty good. The Bluick with its front wheel drive and all season radial tires performed pretty flawlessly. I had to add some antifreeze before I left work. It’s leaky to the outside head gasket loses more coolant when I run the heater and defroster hard.

I stopped at Walmart to buy cereal and pop and other unwarranted carbs. I got some Christmas cards and tried to buy myself some long underwear bottoms but ended up with sweatpants and leggings which might work. I hope the leggings are big enough. I saw myself in my picture with Santa at work and I am getting remarkably bottom heavy. Life is so full of surprises. I mean how much salt caramel truffle ice cream and how many bagels with peanut butter and French jam can you eat and not have that happen? Apparently less than I have been doing.

It’s nice to slide into a weekend. Nice to be up at 3:50 am and not have to go to work in forty minutes. Nice to know the snow can get as deep as it wants to and I have enough cereal and salt caramel ice cream to see me through the weekend.

I just looked down and I’m still wearing my name tag sticker from the blood place. It says ‘Mary 4:30’. I had an appointment but was two hours early because they let out work early. They didn’t scold me at all for being early. Maybe I’ll wear my blood donor sticker all weekend. It has a red border around it and it’s kind of festive.