Happy 70th Birthday, Elvis.

While there is a lot of great Elvis music available, my favorite recording is The Million Dollar Quartet with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins. It's a casual studio session with then-current rock tunes (Brown-Eyed Handsome Man) and gospel standards (Farther Along, I Shall Not Be Moved).

And what an interesting collection of people sharing this birth date: Stephen Hawking, Graham Chapman, Shirley Bassey, Bill Graham, Soupy Sales, David Bowie, among others.

I have family and friends with chronic lung ailments, for whom each breath is something of a miracle. I think of them often as I continue to recover. Breathing is important.

Brother Mike came by yesterday afternoon and shoveled a path from the back deck to the wood pile. We are grateful and humbled. He also gave me a copy of Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1, good reading for a snowy day.

A snowy day it will be. The forecast calls for another six inches (15cm) of snow in a short burst from mid-morning through early evening.

On the overnight radio I heard an interview with the BBC's news director as she defended the service's slow response to the south Asia tsunami story. (Mostly, people were away for the holiday, so it was difficult to get a full team together.) The news cycle on the tragedy, it appears, is just about complete. This morning, the BBC News web site reports, as its second story, on the breakup of the marriage of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt. The story was featured, although not quite as prominently, on the MSNBC and CNN sites, and buried as a wire service blurb on the New York Times or Boston Globe sites.

A cardinal, bright red against the white snow, has joined the other birds at the feeders out back.

My bronchitis continues and my voice makes me sound like Johnny Cash. I went to the doctor's yesterday and have some antibiotics that, we hope, will reclaim my lungs from the forces of evil. My family and friends have been quite kind and comforting, but we're all growing weary of this. There's work to be done, fun to be had, attention to be paid.

I'm staying home again today. I am seriously concerned about the work that I'm not getting done. Assuming that I'm back to good health next week, I may ask my manager if I can put in a few extra hours to make up for this week's lost time.

A thumbnail moon is rising in the southeastern sky. Much of our southern horizon is blocked by trees, so this will be the last day that we can see the moon in this cycle.

Scott and Val's cat, Sadie, passed on this week. She was in her late teens and suffering from kidney problems. She lived a lot longer and a lot better than was expected, but faded in the past couple of weeks. She was the sister of a couple of our former cats, Spot and Kissa. Sadie lived a long life with good grace and energy.

We picked up several inches of snow topped with freezing rain yesterday, the whole mess freezing solid overnight. I wasn't able to get the snowblower into the back yard, so the path to the wood pile is going to be a problem. We have a large cart with bicycle wheels that can make it through the snow and ice, but isn't easy to maneuver. New England winter, the gift that keeps on giving.

As the saying goes, I've become sick and tired of being sick and tired. This time it's bronchitis and it's dragged on for a week now. It's worth thinking about why I should be getting sick twice in such a short time. I don't have a good answer right now. In the meantime, however, I'm staying home from work today. My co-workers don't need another day of my coughing in the office.

This isn't a good time to be missing work. I have a couple of tasks that are a bit behind schedule. These tasks are also holding up someone else's work. I can take the heat for missing my own deadlines, but don't like it when I make someone else's work more difficult.

I had bronchitis another time, several years ago, and had to miss work for several days. We were under severe pressure to release a product. My manager wanted to send a courier to my house so that I could finish a couple of documents. We get sick in the context of who we are. My manager might not have been so anxious had my work been up to date at the time that I got sick. It had been a challenging project and I often felt as though I wasn't up to the task. We did complete the project, though, and it was successful.

The BBC reports that web log readership is increasingly popular in the United States.

From the description of a software product that helps you develop online help:

"Product documentations are manage in some different languages by QuickHelp eBooks !!"

Originally written in German, the phrase made some detours on its way to English. It reminds me of the "All your base belong to us" phenomenon from 2001.

If you're looking for an interesting way to waste time, the Lost in Translation site shows you what happens to a phrase when it goes through several automated translation cycles.

With the cold rain, it feels more like a day in late March than early April. There's talk of 'a significant snow event' Wednesday night and Thursday. Other forecasts suggest that we may get more ice than snow.

I first learned about the word 'dooced' through this article. A bit of further research on the 'net shows that Dooce was the nickname of one of the first people to be fired for writing a web log about work. Although this is a private journal, shared only with family and a few close friends, it's also in a public space. There's nothing in here that I wouldn't want my manager to read.

The AOL software on Mike and Lynn's home computer resisted my attempts to fix it. (It hangs on the startup screen with the waol.exe process consuming 95% of the CPU. Someone at work reported something similar; I hope to find out more today.) Next step is to reinstall the software and then, if needed, call AOL technical support. If there was a fine manual to read, I'd read it.

Addressing a problem I didn't know I had, the AARP has started an ad campaign to encourage advertisers to consider the over-50 crowd as a worthy market. Just think of the wonderful solicitations that await us.

Because New Year's Day fell on a Saturday, we have today as a company holiday. It looks to be a busy day. I'll spend time with Mike and Lynn's computers, the one at their home and the one at Mike's office. Mike is looking for ideas about setting up a web site for his business. As with most things, we rarely have to choose between good and bad options; those choices are easy. With computers anyway, we have many, many good choices, including choices that didn't matter to you until you knew you had the choice. (For example, these keychain USB drives are extremely handy.) It's not unlike the first time you walk into Starbuck's and say, "I want a cup of coffee." The person behind the counter points at the menu board and the blood drains from your face.

The pain that Sandra's mother was experiencing appears to be gone. She and Woody went for a walk on the rail trail yesterday afternoon.

Sandra and I had a great time in Boston. We had lunch at Quincy Market. While we were waiting for our order at a Mexican restaurant, a woman came up to the counter and looked with interest at the array of side side dishes on display. Sandra urged the woman to step closer so that the restuarant staff could see her. She did so. The man behind the counter came over. They talked in brief, low tones. The man served a large plate of rice, much more than just a side order. The woman put a dollar on the counter. "That was nice of you," Sandra said. "She comes in here every day and gets the same thing. We try to help."

The Lion King at The Opera House. Both the show and the venue are stunningly wonderful. On our way out of the city, I got a bit lost, giving Sandra and me more time to talk enthusiastically about the music, visuals, and athleticism in the show. Eventually we found our way to the Mass Pike and home.

In an audience of 3,000 who were attending a show set in Africa with lyrics in Swahili and a predominantly black cast, I counted three black people in the audience.

The camp is in good order as we begin 2005. We had several strong wind storms in December, but there were no trees or large branches down anywhere near the camp. The road had just a bit of snow and ice. There were tracks on the road from at least one truck and a couple of snowmobiles. The ice is generally safe, but there are weak spots where the springs have eaten away at the underside. With the ice, there is no sound of water against the shore and the whole lake is very quiet.

We were invited to an open house at friends of Mike yesterday afternoon. We stopped in briefly between a visit with my father and the trip to the camp. One of the people at the party, also a friend of Mike, attended Notre Dame, a nearby Catholic high school. He and I were on our high school debating teams and had debated against each other a few times. He's Joe's godfather and his son has worked for Mike for several years. We had a good long talk about caring for parents. His father died at home not long ago and both his mother and mother-in-law are living close by.

Sandra's mother has had a bit of a setback. She woke on Saturday morning with a great deal of pain in her back. We suspect that it may have been triggered by sitting in the movie for two and a half hours on Friday. She's ok when she's lying still, but it hurts a lot when she stands and walks.

After we got home, I received a call from Michael Francis. His voice is getting deep and at first I didn't recognize his call. He asked if he could get a ride. His parents and siblings were still at the aforementioned party and he had made plans to see his girlfriend at her house. Lynn and Mike got home just as I arrived to pick up Michael. I drove him across town to a nice-looking home. I'm glad that he called us.

Sandra and I are taking a quick trip into Boston today to see The Lion King at the newly renovated Opera House.

Bringing a bit of fresh air to new year, we clean out 2004 with Dave Barry's year-in-review, Arianna Huffington's things to forget, and the list of banished words from Lake Superior State University.