Cool and part sun, with a breeze. I’m just guessing, but that’s what the weather liars mostly do anyway, only with prettier charts… yesterday was nice. The part sun turned into mostly sunny and the temp stayed reasonable. It was pretty humid though. It was 74F and 88%RH when I went to bed.
Spent yesterday doing some more paper sorting, one pickup, and some other messing around. Had dinner as carryout from a local restaurant. One of our schools had “spirit night” where the restaurant donates 10% of the profit for the night to the school’s charity foundation. The food was ok, and the joint was jumpin’. I’m glad we got the food to go as it was a mad house. It’s actually one of the places I was thinking we might have our ham radio weekly lunch, because it has a large outdoor eating area. It’s mostly an outdoor place in fact. The food was good enough, and I’ll suggest it to the guy who coordinates our lunch meetings. I’d like to start having them in person again.
Daughter 1 is having a birthday dinner today, and we’re going out for sushi. That should be interesting. We’re going to do presents in the morning (a couple) and the rest later tonight. The number of gifts is higher than I expected,but the cost was low. I mostly bought stuff at auction and thrifts over the last year, and I got her craft and science-y stuff. When you spread out the buying, it’s easy to lose track of how many you bought…
We are trying to keep some level of ‘normal’ going for the kids. Rituals are a big part of that for us, so birthdays are a good reason to celebrate.
I’ll be doing some last minute running around to get stuff ready for tonight, I think. She wants fresh chocolate chip cookies, and not a cake, so I’ll be making those, and I don’t have to get dinner together, but fresh flowers would be nice.
Ritual, traditions, family norms. How do you transmit your culture to the next generation? You do the best you can, but your formative events/books/thoughts are not theirs. The schools are not doing it. The service organizations are not doing it. Most of the churches are not doing it. It’s up to you. For me that means sharing books I loved, and movies too. Talking. Being there. Providing a good example. Encouraging a bit of disregard for the rules, and a bit of subversiveness… Attitude first, skills and knowledge second.
And taking care of their worldly needs too, by planning and stacking. Stack it high,
nick