Temperature guages gone wild

Which is crazier?...the weather or the temperature gauges? A vast difference between our various measurements of the actual temperature. Phones, cars, TV give inconsistent temps....is it 2 below? or 6 degrees or 18? My car registered 18 when I left Bridgeton and 28 when I got to Greenwich. That is only a 20 minute drive. Also dealing with 6 or so inches of snow. Feel like the little kid in A Christmas story, all bundled up and having trouble walking. I am all bundled up and walking on ice and carrying many parcels. Sigh. Am getting slower and slower.

There have been many armed home invasions in my town. Must get better about locking my front door. I forgot to do it the other night and it snowed on my doorstep. Starting to lock also the door at the TOP of the stairs to further deter the robbers. My only consolation is that whoever breaks into my home will think it has already been ransacked! A home on the 100 block of Hampton Street was invaded one night. People were sitting on their porch at 10 minutes after midnight. Three women came down the street and started talking to them. They moved from the porch into the house and then three men joined them with handguns and robbed them. One of the six suspects was described as being four months pregnant and wearing a blue zip up jacket and braids. All I can say is there must have been drugs involved.

Finished a book by a "local" author. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The Fifty-first state is a novel written by Lisa Borders. Someone loaned me her "uncorrected proof" copy. The milieu is Millville and Bivalve. The author made up locations, such as a town called Floyd. I found this rather off-putting, although we do have a town called Norma nearby. Lisa lives in Boston and this is her second novel. The book begins with a car accident. Hallie Corson returns from New York to help her long-estranged brother after their parents die in the car crash on Route 55. Themes involve research of frog abnormalities, old boyfriends, teenage angst, city versus country life, and family histories.

Life is weird

Strange things which I have noted lately...
- A woman died while doing yoga.
- A young man was shot in Newark. He had recently become a father AT AGE 14.
- It hasn't even started to snow and they have been talking about the coming snow for hours now on the television

Feeling kind of self satisfied since I got online today and also worked out. What more can a person look to accomplish in retirement? I did call and volunteer to staff the homeless shelter which they established after a guy died a few weeks ago. I am sort of worrying about stuff like illnesses and bad behavior and how you get them to LEAVE in the morning. And now a snowstorm and freezing temps during the day adds a new layer of complication to the whole thing.

Really depressing weather day today. Freezing and grey and looking and feeling like snow all day. My heat does not even work when it gets THIS cold (a low of 6 degrees predicted for tomorrow!) At least I have some new, fuzzy bedroom slippers.

More hideous weather

Escaping the raw, rainy day here in the library. I used to work here and remember it as being warm and cozy and colorful. Winter has not even started yet and the weather is despicable.

Returning a book that I got on Interlibrary loan. The last bohemia : scenes from the life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by Robert Anasi. As Brooklyn gets hipper, I get more like a country bumpkin and an OLD one at that! Feel like life is changing and that I am getting more "out of it". This book is about young, not rich, people viewing the gentrification of a funky place and lifestyle. And it was short so I could finish it before the due date.

Nighttime eating getting out of control. I think I got some cheese out last night, even after I pigged out at French club. There was an "old" me and a "new" me. I have lost touch with the "new" me.

I thought I heard a mouse last night and there were a few nibble marks on the cheese that I don't think were made by me. Need to set some traps. I hear rustling in strange places. I don't think I am alone.

Erasers that don't work

This is one of my pet peeves. Can't think of any others at the moment. I am also very unhappy when the temperature goes below freezing as it did today. Plus there was wind. It is really HAT weather.

Was asked to work this weekend. I said yes since I only work one day a month and I didn't have one scheduled for the month of December. Yes, it will inconvenience me, as I was supposed to go to a funeral. (It is amazing how working only ONE day a month can still feel incommodious when it rolls around). But I am barely employed and so want to be agreeable and able to be counted upon.

Feeling kind of busy over the holidays but not with parties. Just with scheduled events that are distracting me from getting ready for gift shopping and wrapping. I am very bad at all that anyway. I don't shop for myself so it is not so fun to shop for others.

BO in the library

And other reasons why most sane people have the Internet in their homes. Also they don't have to come out when the temperature is 28 degrees.

I am KIND OF in my own little world with the earbuds on. The CD, Blurred lines, by Robin Thicke, is starting to grow on me and now am enjoying my Youtube playlist (Queen singing Bohemian Raphsody right now).

Looking up my diseases on the Internet and worrying about doing or not doing anything about them. I will not be specific but suffice it to say, there are reasons why I have become celibate...too many conditions about that people do not know that they even have!

Robin Thicke and Nora Ephron

Listening to CD Blurred lines by Robin Thicke. That is about the only single that appeals to me.

Greatly enjoyed The most of Nora Ephron. She died in 2012 at the age of 71. Good to reread things such as Heartburn and When Harry met Sally. Her later essays are quite poignant, like I remember nothing and What I won't miss and What I will miss. Painful AND funny reading her thoughts about aging and death.

I can't believe I read the entire 618 pages of Joyce Carol Oates newest book, The accursed. It was a mess and I didn't really enjoy it much. It jumped all over the place, including historical references about New Jersey, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, the New Jersey devil, mesmerism, Prebyterianism, Upton Sinclair and more. I did read carefully to see if Mother Bloor was mentioned. She was a Socialist who used to live in my town, unhappily, at my actual address. She helped Sinclair with research for his book, The jungle.

It was kind of confusing. I read many books at once and I was reading one called The accused and one called The accursed.

I'm his guardian angel?

I meet some characters at the car mechanics. I like the car mechanic as they are honest and down home. They scribble what to do on a piece of printer paper smudged with oily fingerprints. Then they put your car keys on top. Calendar seems to be day by day and hand written. I brought stuff to do but I forgot about the loud country music they play. A guy came in, looking for a left hand mirror that he had ordered "a long time ago". He had left the country and his brother took over the truck and then kept it for awhile. When he finally got it back, the left hand mirror was STILL broken. He said if the mirror was still in the back room, he was going to call ME his guardian angel. It was. I am. He counsels prisoners as a labor of love for 40 years and his work is never done.

The weather is hideous. I can't stand it much longer. Two days of dank, damp and dreary. The only good news is that my roof didn't leak (yet).

I am busy organizing nuts and delivering them. Due to the horrible weather, I have not lugged the four boxes of nuts upstairs into my house. I am organizing them IN THE CAR. Soon, I will commence to binge on nuts every night until they are gone. I sort of overbought, if that is possible.

Volunteered for something I really don't feel like doing. I gotta stop that.