22 January 2014: Wednesday ... the clear, blue sky and bone chilling cold the day after the snowstorm ... shoveled and had to warm hands ... Dancer in back ... found my sock

I posted this silliness on the web this morning after I found it. Felt good to me.

MISSING SOCK FOUND, NEXT STEP GRAVITATIONAL WAVES: 

I found it. I found it. Well, at least one of them. My missing sock hidden in the sleeve of a shirt that I'd folded and placed in the drawer. No cat to blame or mini-black hole in my house, it was there all the time,
within an arm's reach. 

What to do next after solving this MAJOR conundrum. The Big Bang Theory of course and the "search" for gravitational waves. If I can located one missing sock, what's a few waves or whatever in deep space.
A call to Stephen Hawking is next on the agenda."

Computer model of the gravitational waves coming from the collision of two black holes.
Image: MPI for Gravitational Physics/W.Benger-ZIB

Had a blast from the past as I walked Dancer tonight on the quiet streets of our

neighborhood. It's the chilling feel of air into your nostrils that begins to freeze the

moisture in your nostrils. I felt it most on the stretch leg from Sheridan Square to

Limestone Gardens via Nicholby Drive, which essentially circles the two neighborhoods

barring the section that it becomes Pickwick Drive in LG from Pecksniff to Limestone

Road.

9 January 2014: Thursday ... Linda Walls and Beth Kincaid come for a joint visit, again, a wonderful combo ... Memories of Geisha suggested by Linda ... the day is gorgeous ...

A good visit this early afternoon by Hospice -- Linda Wills, social worker, and charge nurse Beth Kincaid. Discussion of catheterization was put off but the supplies are here and when it needs to be done, it can be by an RN.

One of the suggestions from Linda was the movie Memories of a Geisha, as we discussed music and Yo-Yo Ma came up as well as Vladimir Horowitz, who she saw play at the Academy of Music with her father, an amateur classical pianist, the one who brought his baby grand to Princeton along with two other undergrads for a trio of babies in their dormitory. The movie is available on YouTube and I will show it to mom on the iPad at her earliest convenience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoSqhYEO3G8

1. I am in a rut. Today has been dispiriting. I have been exhausted. I am getting over a cold and did stay up late last night and watched the end of Titanic and the Colbert Report with an interview of Ishmael Bael, the child soldier from Sierra Leone, who has written a novel of going back home, but to the point, my "rutness" today. It was a motivational talk by this inspiring young man who misses his homeland.
   
2. It's the same old, same old. The lack of motivation. Not making an attempt to challenge myself and in the process, moving further backward. Looking for the easy way out and not making the tough choice or even the proper one like having dispensed mom's medications in her daily containers so they'd be ready today, which they were not. Well, this could go on and on and I feel the same way and I want to get to bed so that I can begin the same old, same old again in the morning and have things remain as is. Unchanged. That appears the way I want it.
   
3. I did have a good walk, a little over 2 miles in the mild chill compared to the other day, that was ended by a phone call about the time share and an offer to pay our maintenance fees, in perpetuity, but there's a catch and I've said that the caller, from Colorado, a woman who walks her two dogs in the morning, will call again tomorrow to set up a conference call for the offer.
   
4. This is getting tiresome. I'm getting nowhere. So, I think I will call it quits.
   
5. An additional note of thanks, the second of a proposed 5 on this page, is the acceptance of Linda Lucero to attend a concert, with a free will offering, of the Serafin Quartet in downtown Wilmington at Trinity Episcopal Church at 7:30 p.m. The concert looks totally engaging with the following pieces:
   
   (Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade is a light, charming and quirky short work composed to reflect his love of the Italian countryside.
   Felix Mendelssohn's Quartet in Eb Major, Op. 12, was heavily influenced by the his awe of Beethoven, and contains both introspection and brilliance. It was written when Mendelssohn was only twenty years old, and although it bears an earlier Opus Number, it was actually written after theOp. 13 Quartet in A Minor.
   The String Quartet by Claude Debussy, written in the early 1890s, is considered a pivotal work in the development of his signature "French" style -- which in many respects ushered in the "Impressionist Era" with its exotic harmonic flavors and jazzy rhythms.) 

Not a good thing to give up, especially when you can make inroads, at least marginal ones, incremental starts that can be a place to return to, rather than defeat. I have know too much of that word in my life and much of it has been self-induced. I have made the willful decision -- was it my own free will? (a topic discussed in Stephen Hawking's -- is it "ph" or "v", I do not know -- am I just deficient memory-wise or do I just not pay attention?) -- (a quick, as always, Google check comes up with "ph" but I will I remember it, probably not, but it's a start, like those inroads mentioned at the start of this graph, you can only make an attempt and whether you opt for invasive chemotherapy or palliative care, that is your decision and one must live with it or in the case of Stage IV colorectal cancer (Stage IV is the most advanced stage of colorectal cancer. If you have been diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer, it means that the cancer has metastasized to distant sites, such as the liver or lungs. The cancer may or may not have grown through the wall of the colon or rectum, and lymph nodes may or may not have been affected.), die with it.) 

http://www.csmonitor.com/From-the-news-wires/2010/0629/Stephen-Hawking-book-The-Grand-Design-out-in-September

So, as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking brazenly confronts in his first program on Grand Design, "The Meaning of Life", what does this existence consist of and does it have any meaning in the long run. I believe it does but it will not evolve without effort and interaction. As an agnostic humanist, one must reach out to others for existence is naught without the interchange of ideas and thoughts and laughter, much like Heide's call last evening before turning in for bed. It capped off with brilliance a day that had been, as illustrated by my bold and blue and large list above, a "rutful" day. This need not be the case if one looks for those "incremental starts" that can start the evolution of design and construct the building of meaning.