Sunday Serenade in These titles mean nothing.

Just checked to see if I’d spelled ‘serenade’ right and I had. It’s not a word I use a lot. Google’s definition - a piece of music sung or played in the open air, typically by a man at night under the window of his lover - was interestingly specific. I will keep it in mind.

I am inside, I’m not a man, I’m not below your window, and this is not music, so I guess it’s about as far from a serenade as it could be. It does push alliteration, I always adore alliteration.

Google dictionary or whatever it is that comes up when you google a word has an interesting feature. It counts ‘mentions’ and graphs them over time. The word ‘serenade’ peaked in mentions around 1950.

The word comes from French and Italian and has a root of ‘serene’.

A while back I discovered the Google Ngram Viewer. It’s a fascinating place. It’s like the dictionary graph that measures ‘mentions’ of a name or word over a period of time, but you get to determine the items and you get to determine the time span. And you can graph Marilyn Monroe against Ingrid Bergman or the word farmer against agriculturalist. I campared Iowa and Minnesota and Wisconsin. I compared my town and the one next door. I compared writers and book titles. It’s a way to waste even more time on the internet.

<iframe name="ngram_chart" src="https://books.google.com/ngrams/interactive_chart?content=brown-eyed+handsome+man%2Cfor+the+good+times&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2000&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cbrown%20-%20eyed%20handsome%20man%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cfor%20the%20good%20times%3B%2Cc0" width="900" height="500" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

(embed didn’t work - link does - opens in new tab)

So… here we are.

Temp at 7 am was a negative 1. Wind 11 mph from the northeast. Humidity 59%. As I said I never pay attention to humidity. It bounces around, it’s ‘relative’, is it not? But maybe some patterns will develop.

I was downstairs and the fire is dead as a doornail, and so since I do not have to do anything or be anywhere I came back to bed. I or someone will handle it later.

I guess the fire in the basement thing is hard to understand. I have taken the furnace’s picture many times. If I had Google’s little minions and algorithms to count and find them, I would show one to you. (I just looked up the spelling for algorithm and now I so want to see where that word came from. Ok here goes - An algorithm (pronounced AL-go-rith-um) is a procedure or formula for solving a problem. The word derives from the name of the mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was part of the royal court in Baghdad and who lived from about 780 to 850.

And here’s its Ngram-

<iframe name="ngram_chart" src="https://books.google.com/ngrams/interactive_chart?content=algorithm%2Ccomputer+program&amp;year_start=1900&amp;year_end=2015&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Calgorithm%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccomputer%20program%3B%2Cc0" width="900" height="500" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

(embed didn’t work - link does - opens in new tab)

Ok, enough of that.

Yesterday I went to town:

• first to library to take back the Will Rogers and John Adams tapes and the Henry Ford bio (I Invented the Modern Age by Richard Snow- very good) and the Martin Amis book (Night Train unread, maybe another time). I got a book on tape about riding a motorbike down the Ho Chi Minh trail so that will be a bit of a change. While there I pulled up the pictures from the CD of photos from my 50 class reunion that I didn’t go to and emailed a few of them to myself. Little blue Acer does not have a CD drive.

• tried a new place downtown that I was in the mood to visit but it was not open. A woman with roots in our town has come back and is offering everything from reiki massage to pottery to wedding planning to art lessons to used books and party clothes. I will try again another time and tell you about it.

• bought gas and cappuccino at Casey’s and caught up a bit with a former co-worker whose daughter lives and works in Hawaii. She complimented my camouflage pants.

• bought groceries at Fareway. Braved the busy meat counter for Italian sausage, chicken breasts and bone-in pork chops for $2.29 a lb. Found they have increased their stock of real sugar Pepsi, the kind I am required to buy. They don’t keep it in the main aisle so I didn’t know they had it - you have to go in the special dedicated pop aisle. (I know it’s evil. I buy it for Jim, as if that makes it any better. I have solved my can problem though. He saves the cans for Joana and she takes them in for the nickel rebate. I used to not mind doing that but the can return place is under new management and I find it less welcoming. Yeah, I know, first world problem of the redneck variety.)

Also thought I should tell you the tickets for The Great Gatsby, a play to be performed March 22 at Viterbo University by the Montana Repertory Theatre came in the mail. Row F, seats 13 and 14 look to be pretty good seats. I will keep you reported on that too.

I finally got my LL Bean gift cards spent last night. I had wanted a new coat and I sent for one that didn’t fit and I really didn’t much like anyway so I sent it back. Last night I ordered another bigger less shiny, less constructed one that I hope I like better. It’s on back order or something and won’t get here till sometime in March. I also impulse purchased a Fitbit. It’s a wrist one and it’s Slate in color and should arrive at the end of next week. I will keep you updated on that too.

So I guess that is about all I have to say. It was too much wasn’t it?

Oh well.

Here is today’s picture.

The prom in 1963.

Oh wait!! I forgot what’s really important. The eagles have laid their first egg! I so love the background sounds. Pic is exquisite too. A lot of the time.

---

Last updated February 22, 2015