3:53 p.m. as Friday the 16th slides away

Ah! An elegant custard pecan pie arrived from Pearson Farm in Fort Valley, Georgia with no card or other mark of who sent it to us. Someone with exquisite taste for the scrumptious, but who?! Gratitude, to whom?! Thanks and blessings, and we invite you to tell us!

Busy season, isn't it. Always so, busiest Time of year. Christmas Weekend food to buy, cooking schedules to coordinate, Ray and Britany came over this morning to pick up the beef items - - they're professional photographers now, but the family still counts on Ray's years' experience as Chef - - trusting him with the beef tenderloin to compliment the turkey on Christmas Day, and the standing rib roast for Boxing Day, I can let go of my fear of slicing into beef that I've overcooked. 

Wandering off alone at Tyndall Commissary yesterday, I found a 30-pound Butterball turkey, but Linda came up before I could lift it into my cart, so we lost it. Against Linda's preference for 12 or 14-pound turkeys, I like having the biggest bird possible, and did finally have the victory at Thanksgiving by bringing home a 20-pound turkey, which Jeremy splayed so it could roast evenly: it was perfect, with plenty for every family to take some home and still a turkey sandwich for me the next day; but being watched now, I don't expect to pull that off again.

Cars. I love being the Car Person in the family. When Kristen was at college ten years ago, after a car crash that totaled her Saturn SUV on an Atlanta freeway during rush hour traffic and scared the Living Behaysoos out of me, I replaced Kristen's wrecked car with a new Volvo XC60 as the safest car in the Universe; but she's driven it 115k miles, physically worn it out inside and out (although mechanically it's been well maintained at Centennial in Pensacola and by trusted folks at Bay Town on 15th Street). Lately she's been driving it with the right headlight out, raising anxiety that I don't need at this age, so I spent weeks online contemplating just the right priced and safety equipped Chevy, Buick or GMC SUV to replace it. She said, wistfully, "Papa, I don't want an American car," so I switched to VW or Mazda, but she kept saying she hoped to look at a BMW, which I suppose is a young person's dream, so I switched from new cars to used and scoured the internet for a couple weeks. A fortnight ago (that's two weeks, for you Americans), we settled on a white, low mileage X1 with warranty and maintenance coverage that should take it into the next decade, and it cost thousands of dollars less than the cars I'd been shopping for her. Me, these days I drive very little, so I'm giving my 71k miles 2006 SRX V8 to Joe, and adopting her 2013 XC60 as my ride for the fifty miles or so I need a car every month driving between 7H in StAndrews and HNEC in the Cove. 

As a car lover, my years of Real Life I changed cars at the rate of about three cars in every 24 month period, in the process sometimes having as many as seven cars parked out front; but I've been driving the SRX for going on seven years now, so anyone who knows me knows I'll enjoy a change even if it means moving on from my all Time favorite car!

Funeral this afternoon. John Cheshire, the day after his 97th birthday. Character of characters, one-of-a-kind among ones-of-a-kind, John had stories to tell, and he told them, and the next Time you met, he told you those and new ones. He leaves us a treasure of adventures to remember about him. Astounding intellect, he was a gem among human beings.

Linda has the place covered with gifts and Christmas wrapping paper. I'm trying to stay in the background and out of the way. In my growing up years, counting today, eight shopping days 'til Xmas, the PCNH would have noted in the lower right hand corner of the front page. But our Blue Laws are pretty much gone, so now you can go to Walgreens for that Whitman's Sampler on your way home from church on Sunday. Which is better? No system of law that favors one religion over others is better best. In Iran, for example, insurrection is stirring because a young woman was murdered by the police in being arrested for not wearing her head covering properly, Evil on the throne. In Israel, an ultra-rightist political party is clamoring to forbid the production and distribution of electricity on Sabbath; Evil at work, any time and every time and everywhere when people in authority insist on laying their religious certainties on other people: as well in the United States, justices wielding Roman Catholic religious and moral certitude have finally gained control of the U S Supreme Court.

Image: from Channel 13 as weather moved into Bay County at 5:14 p.m. this past Wednesday. Within hours, the sky was as clear and beguilingly innocent as Genesis 1:6 when God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Friday the Sixteenth as the future unfolds into the present minute by minute, instant by instant.

RSF&PTL

T