The son of my mother's friend had recently received a Ph.D. in sociology or something similar. "He's a doctor," the friend said, "but not the kind that can help you."

For two days in a row I didn't spill a cup of coffee in the computer lab. I've been setting up a system in the lab and have needed some assistance with a couple of things. On the way back from the espresso machine the last two days, I have met up with one of the support engineers and we've gone into the lab to take a look at my problems. There was no place to leave the coffee outside the lab, so I brought it in with me, a clear violation of all that is sensible. What will I do in the future? Well, we've set up the systems with remote access software so that I can spill coffee in my office as often as I need to.

I've found that Walter Mossberg's Wall Street Journal columns on Wednesdays and Thursdays are a good source of clear information about personal computers and related technology.

Because I've been keeping more sensible work hours, which includes coming home before 7PM, I haven't listened to David Brudnoy as much in the past couple of years. He was erudite, an old-school professor, with a thoughtful libertarian view of things large and small.

Let's see. On TV tonight we have Get Down Tonight: The Disco Explosion (PBS), Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (WB), WWE SmackDown! (UPN), Extreme Makeover (ABC), and Survivor (CBS). It makes me glad that we have cable so that we have alternatives such as Hunting 201, 101 Most Sensational Crimes of Fashion!, and the Essence of Emeril, where we can learn how to make cheese herbed popovers. Is it any wonder that this - http://www.tvbegone.com/ - is one of the hottest items for Christmas?

The lead story in our local paper told us about poisoning rats in an old factory in Gardner. The stories about war, famine, and disease in other parts of the world were below the fold and on the inside pages.

Oh, and this gem from yesterday's paper: " The bloodstains and nauseating smell discovered inside a Crescent Street apartment Monday could have been caused by the tenant, a 37-year-old Russian illegal immigrant, who had partaken in serious drinking days before the discovery and also suffered from minor bleeding wounds, authorities said yesterday.... The odor and scene at [the tenants]’s apartment led investigators Monday to believe a decomposing body might have been inside. " He's not dead. He just smells that way.

Yesterday the town where I work was having problems with its water system. An email went out to all employees in the two buildings, urging us to limit our use of the rest rooms until the problem was resolved. Mercifully the crisis was resolved quickly.

The Grammy nominees were announced yesterday - http://www.grammy.com/awards/grammy/47list.TXT. Do you think that, in 30 or 40 years, our grandchildren will get all misty-eyed when the oldies station plays Hoobastank?

At the suggestion of a grandson, I've been listening to Linkin Park. Not bad, although I'm still pretty much a three-chord rock-and-roll guy. The mash-up (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:cln8b5b4xsqa~T1) with Jay-Z is also pretty good.

On 8 December 1980, I was working at a small newspaper when the news of John Lennon's murder came over the wire. It was late in the evening, so there was just one other reporter in the editorial room. He and I sat in silence for a time and then went home.

The seventh of December was covered with snow ...

It's just a coating of snow with some freezing rain to seal it.

We have a friend who is bipolar and who has been, somewhat proudly, off her meds for quite a while. The symptoms are now gently humorous - the visit that lasts a bit too long, the odd gift (two cups of leftover Chinese food), the intense and non-stop talking. Her name showed up in the police log for playing loud music in the middle of the night. We've seen her out in her yard in her bathrobe, tending to the plants, in the chilly early morning darkness. She's been to court because of a parking ticket that she refuses to pay.

She's not a great danger to herself or others, not now, anyway. The threads in her life are starting to fray, though. Her husband moved out (was kicked out, depending on who's telling the story) and won't come back until she accepts help. The parking ticket could result in a revoked driver's license. We wonder how she can pay the bills.

Every illness requires, at some level, the willing participation of the patient in the healing process. Whether we have a broken leg, ALS, or a cold, we have to do the right things that will strengthen us and, to whatever extent possible, make us whole. Many mental illnesses, however, rob the patient of that ability to participate fully in the treatment. Of course, there's no assurance that the meds will be effective or tolerable, either.

Here we tread gingerly, taking care not to judge or presume the right course of treatment. (Even the professionals have to try different combinations of meds to get it right.) Acting with humility is one of the things that we, as adults, have to do.

I'm not very good at estimating crowds, so there could have been anywhere between 50 and 100 people at the party after CasSandra's christening. Lots of good food and company. The weather was mild, so the kids could play outside most of the time. Lynn and Mike are such gracious hosts. We're having a much smaller gathering of family at Christmas (20-25) and you will be hearing about it for a month before and a month afterwards.

The New York Times reported that IBM is in talks to sell its PC division. I don't have direct experience with the desktop systems, but I have been a great fan of their laptops for a long time. The keyboard, among other things, is outstanding. I hope that the sales doesn't disrupt the development and production of these fine machines.

The Boston Globe has a article in today's paper saying that this IBM news is part of a large consolidation in the IT industry: http://tinyurl.com/55ke2.

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Here's the science: http://www.weathernotebook.org/transcripts/1997/07/07.html

We visited with my father yesterday afternoon and spent most of the visit looking for his hearing aid that had fallen off a bureau. We looked under furniture, around the wood stove, in the basket of 10-year-old newspapers, but didn't find it. We'll try again next time. It couldn't have gone far. He still has another. I suggested that we drop the other one in the hope that it would lead us to the first. He can get by, for the time being, with just the one. Besides, only needs them when people come to visit.

Also during the visit we looked through tattered paper albums and cigar boxes full of pictures. My grandmother had prepared some of the albums. Some of the pictures are 80 years old, photos of my father as a kid. There were lots of pictures of unknown people, many taken in Finland, stone-faced old Finns caught in a moment when all the world was in black and white. We'll probably never know who these people were.

Marley's enjoying having Sandra's parents in the house. Sandra's mother will be lying on the couch and Marley comes over to rest his head on her leg, giving and getting comfort in equal measure.

Hunting season has started. I passed a couple of hunters who were getting some supplies (beer) before heading out. They were dressed in camouflage jackets and pants and fluorescent orange hats. Do they want to be seen or not? There's no snow cover so it's difficult to track the deer. The forecast suggests that we might get some snow this week.

The funeral for my father's friend, Ben, was well-attended. We talked with Ben's daughter for a bit. "Now you're the only one with these stories," she said to my father.

He related one story about a time when he and Ben were riding the rails during the Depression. The train stopped. A railroad cop rounded up all of the guys who were on the top and in the box cars. The cop made all of the guys stand in a line and show the palms of their hands. He looked at my father's and Ben's calloused hands and said, "You guys can go. You know the meaning of a day's work."

My father and Ben were in their late teens and had spent a lot of time in the local gym, particularly working out on the high bar. Their hands were calloused from the workouts, not work. They'd not worked on anything harder than picking blueberries in the local fields.

Lynn stopped by yesterday afternoon with CasSandra. C. will be christened tomorrow, with a party to follow. Sandra's brother and sister will stay here tonight.

Lynn said that Krista had asked if C. could come in for Show and Tell. So, yesterday, Lynn brought the baby to the school. The kids in the first (Tess) and third (Krista) grades were quite excited. Joe's fifth grade class was more reserved, more cool. The teacher asked if there were any questions. After a few moments of silence, Lynn said, "Alright, I know that there's one question that you want to ask so I'll answer it now. Yes, Joe was this cute when he was a baby.

Last night we went to an art show. Last spring friend spent a week in France with eight other women. They are all artists - pen and ink, painting, and photography. This was a showing of the work that did on the trip and also a chance to tell the story of the trip to a wider audience.

It seems like we're getting out more and I guess that's true. We're just catching up, seeing people we should have seen six months, a year, two years ago. Good friendships are resilient, but we should never take them for granted.

The memorial service for John's mother will be next Saturday morning. She was an interesting and interested person, always greeting us with warmth and good humor. She loved opera and travel.

Friend John sent an email yesterday, reporting that his mother had died. They'd just brought her home from the hosptial and were making ready for hospice care. There will be a memorial service tomorrow morning.

John noted the unreality of it all. While this major and sometimes overwhelming event has taken place, the rest of life goes on around us. The same TV shows are on. Massachusetts drivers are still idiots. Kids are hitting their resonance frequencies as they anticipate Christmas. How do we fit this death in with the tremendous ordinariness around us? And if it doesn't fit, what then?

I'll take my father to the services for his friend, Ben, this morning. The owner of the funeral home is a good friend. He lives year-around at Queen Lake. The stairs to the funeral home are pretty steep, so my father called the owner and asked if he could come in the back way, using the elevator.

There was talk of snow today, but the cloud cover seems to be pretty thin.

He said, "potatoes".

Marley's getting signals from the dog satellite again (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326900/). He's pacing the room with a low growl. When I let him outside, he looks around the yard and comes right back in. He does this four or five times until it passes and he lies down in front the stove again.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Why 2004 was the year of the blog

"The first of December was covered with snow. And so was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston."

We'll overstate things a bit for the sake of poetry. There was just a bit of light snow falling very early this morning in central Massachusetts. The rain has washed it away.

Today is Huck's 91st birthday. The morning paper, however, lists the obituary of Ben, one of his closest friends and traveling buddies. My father was recently talking about Ben, noting that he was one of the last of the old gang. The services are Friday morning. I plan to attend.

As I started reading the paper this morning, I remarked to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice if, someday, just one day, the obituary page was empty?"

This is the last official day of the 2004 hurricane season. Someone forgot to tell Otto, a minimal tropical storm in the Atlantic east of Bermuda.

For those who are interested in exploring Canadian history, here's a pointer to the Archives Canada: http://www.archivescanada.ca/english/index.html

[This posting is later than usual. The weblog service that I use, blogger.com, was having technical difficulty until just a few minutes ago.]

Yesterday afternoon I walked past a display of wreaths. The smell of the evergreen brought the feeling, for the first time, really felt that Christmas is approaching. We've had Christmas gifts and displays in the stores since August, but it's been just noise to me. Christmas lights went up on many houses over the weekend and they look nice enough. The fragrance of the greens, though, brought me around. I'm now ready to face the season, a season that brings us stuff like this - http://www.hammacher.com/publish/71144.asp?promo=sportleisure.

My mother's been gone for more than four years, but we're still receiving mail for her. It ranges from Catholic worker newspaper to the journal of the Insight Meditation Center in Barre MA. How else might we learn about the grim tale of the Foolish Monkey - http://www.dharma.org/ij/archives/1999a/ss_monkey.htm?

The work deadline that had been scheduled for Friday, in my mind, at leasst, is now the end of the day on Wednesday. Today and tomorrow may be a bit frantic. I'm pretty sure that I have enough time. The major difficulty comes from interesting interruptions.

We're heading into an odd season. This next month has most of the usual work challenges. I have an important deadline on Friday and I'm quite anxious about it. At the same time, however, many people, adults and children alike, have already checked out in anticipation of the holidays. People at work are talking about decorating the office area. It isn't often that the outside world infiltrates the workspace.

We had a delightful holiday, including another Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. We met Jennie's father, step-mother, brother, and sister at the Publick House in Sturbridge. The meal and service were good, but the restaurant did a less than stellar job of scheduling. We arrived early and were seated right away. Others, though, had to wait a long time, filling up the hall and stairs. One of our party has MS and gets about with an electric scooter. Navigating through the crowds was quite a challenge.

Sandra and I stayed overnight in Northampton. We booked online and chose one of the better rooms, with a promised view of the park. When we arrived, we discovered that we had a view of the alley. After a discussion with the front desk, we were given another room. This time, we could look over the air conditioning units and vents from the restaurant and see the park - ing lot. We had good time in town all the same. It's refreshing to be in a place where not everyone is white and straight. We visited with Adam, Jennie, and Lily for Friday night supper.

George Washington Papers: Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation

I left work early yesterday so that I could get my car inspected. Massachusetts requires an inspection of all cars once a year or when the ownership changes. There is a basic safety inspection (lights, horn, etc.), but mostly it's an emissions check. My greenhouse gases were in good order. In years past, they'd jack the car up and check the tie rods. They'd also poke at the body to see if there were dangerous amounts of rust. One friend had patched his car with press plates from the local newspaper. You could read last month's news in reverse print on the fenders of his car.

I still get nervous during inspections, going back to my days of driving $250 cars. A friend called my Volkswagen a Rolls Canardly - it rolls down the hill and canardly make up the other side. Repairs were simple, though, usually requiring just a screwdriver, pliers, and the occasional hammer. One time, I was driving along and the engine caught fire. (Some oil had squirted out from the filler tube.) A few wires burned up before I could blow out the fire. I restarted the car and it ran fine. I never did find out what those wires did.

We've ordered cable television for my father for his 91st birthday next week. He'll be able to watch the Celtics games this winter; those games are only on cable.

My father worked construction. One day, it was so cold and windy that the bosses shut down the site and sent everyone home. My father arrived home and looked next door where his parents lived. My grandfather was on top of the roof, on top of a ladder, on top of a five-gallon bucket, swaying in the wind, trying to reconnect the TV antenna lead that had come loose. My father hollered, got my grandfather down, and went up there himself to finish the work. My grandfather was in his 70s at the time; my father would have been close to my age.

Earlier this spring, my father was having a problem with his sailboat. A cable had come slipped and the end had snapped up to the top of the mast. So, he gets on top of the boathouse, lassoes the top of the mast with a bit of rope, and tries to pull the mast close enough so he could reach the cable. He couldn't pull the mast (and boat) close enough. We arrived some time later, lowered the mast, retrieved the cable, and put things back in order.

Adam once observed, "It's a wonder that you're not any crazier than you are."

Want to feel old? A key contributor to the Firefox browser development team is 19. .Linux News: Open Source: Mozilla Firefox Browser Blazes Across the Globe

We had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat. My brother-in-law, Scott and his wife Val hosted a delightful dinner for 18 or so. I sat at the kids' table and had a great time. Scott worked as a chef for many years and is able to plan, prepare, and present wonderful meals.

On the ride home from the Cape, Sandra and her mother sat in the back seat and sang in lovely harmony. They sang rounds ("Scotland's Burning), hymns ("That Old Rugged Cross" and "We Gather Together"), and others ("O Canada").

Popular Science is out with its second annual survey of the worst jobs in science: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,20967,713471,00.html.

It's a great comfort to look in the back yard and see all that new wood. Up close it smells good, too. We'll be warm this winter. I don't know how our wood guy makes a living at the prices he charges.

This should be a quiet week at work, with folks mentally checking out in advance of the holiday weekend.

Our niece, Rachael, is 26 today.

John Steinbeck observed that kids and dogs are the great ambassadors. When our boys were younger and involved in sports, it seemed as though we knew everyone in town. The same was true when we'd be walking our dogs around the neighborhood, particularly Bob and Raye, a pair of Springer spaniels. People would stop and talk with us; they'd pass us by if we were walking alone.

So, it was a surprise yesterday to find ourselves in places where we knew people. We just haven't been getting out much. We went to a local apple orchard to pick up a few things for the holidays and saw several people from our other home town. Last night we went to a musical production. A neighbor was a featured singer and had invited us. Imagine, Karl and Sandra out on a Saturday night. And we knew several people in the audience, although we had to coach each other on some of the names.

When we're at home on Sunday mornings, we get to enjoy a gospel music radio show on a local, 600 watt station, WCUW. The station was described by one reviewer as "quagmire of incompetence and apathy." Nevertheless, we've been listening to it for more than 20 years and the signal has gone silent just a few times.