brainsplotch

The dust has settled on Christmas and it's already New Year's Eve.  I am coming to you via our new Dell Inspiron laptop that my wife bought us (i.e. the two adults in this family) for Christmas.  I have vowed that the children will not get their grubby little hands on this computer as they did our previous laptop, which is only buying time until it's inevitable trip to software heaven. It was a good Christmas.  I have stopped comparing Christmases to previous ones and worrying about whether the current holiday celebration outstrips previous ones.  The older I get, the less important that becomes,  I'm just happy to still be standing upright and be able to be with my family.  As it is, the holiday celebrations are constantly evolving over time as generations get older and/or pass on, while new generations make their appearance on the scene.  And for me, Christmas really is mainly about the children and how excited they become in anticipation of the bi...

While I'm feeling reasonably inspired, and don't currently have a son playing "Minecraft", "Team Fortress 2" or "Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit" on one of our two functioning computers, I will at long last write a blog entry to let my loyal legion of readers (all two or three of you) know what I've been up to and what I've been thinking about. First of all, I'm finally coming down off my seasonal football fever.  If you don't already know (or care) the Michigan State Spartans lost the Big Ten football title game to Wisconsin, so there will be no Rose Bowl trip for Sparty.  Two weeks later, I'm finally over it. Secondly, I actually read a novel written for adults (and not for children).  The first time that has happened in quite some time.  The Sense of an Ending , by Julian Barnes, was quite wonderful and I highly recommend it.   It touches upon the fallibility of our personal memories, and the regrets we may harbor over decisi...

With my beloved alma mater Michigan State playing in the Big Ten football Championship game tonight, I have been in a football frame of mind as of late.  Once this whirlwind of a college football season ends, I'll try and be less neglectful of this blog. Quite often I feel that my life would be so much easier if I wasn't a sports nut, and didn't (quite illogically) feel that the fate of the world rested on the result of an essentially meaningless sporting event, but then I conclude that life would be so much less interesting for me if I WASN'T a sports fanatic. Sports fandom seems anathema to intellectual pursuits.  Then again, people like George Will (baseball nut), Frederick Exley (football nut), and David Halberstam (all-around sports nut) have all managed to balance the two. Anyway, I will be back when my college football fever subsides, which depending on the result of tonight's MSU/Wisconsin tilt, could be either early next week or early January.