During the lunar eclipse on Thursday, January 20, I wasn't in position to take any pictures using a tripod, and those I took didn't fare too well with my shakey hand and the extreme telephoto setting that I had chosen. I'm sure that if I had used a tripod when the moon was fully eclipsed, I would have been able to see the shadows of my waving hand and of the bunny ears that I made over someone's head. Alas, it was not to be. I had a class to teach. But I like this picture that I took about an hour before the eclipse began almost as well as I might have liked the more successful pictures I had envisioned of the eclipse itself.

Because I am teaching a class on Friday evening and Saturday morning, the powers that be saw fit to schedule no classes for me in the mornings, an arrangement that I could quickly grow to love. If I can feel productive in other ways, then being free to roam while others work has always been -- well, need I explain? I almost feel like a retiree must feel, except that I usually remember the day of the week. I mention the matter of the day of the week because that's a game my parents play. Today I called my father, who has been retired for seventeen years. Tuesday he will be 78 years old. I called today because I invariably transpose the day (25) and the year (22) of his birth. And true to form, I did it again this year, but better early than late or never, I suppose.

When I called, one of his first questions (as always) was "Is it Sunday already?" Lacking other reference points like a work week, my parents calculate the day of the week from other recurring events, like the day of the week that the kids are likely to call, or so my parents pretend. My father also estimates the day of the week by his recollection of when he last golfed. His golf day is Monday. "Let's see: I golfed yesterday, so today is Tuesday." That seems to be the system. But I also know my parents are not above putting me on a bit by playing up the stereotype of the forgetful elder. They remain alert and sharp-witted, and they are more or less healthy, and as such, they might exaggerate the luxury of their apparently limitless free time, all too aware themselves that their time is finite; however, they do not wish, I suspect, to subject their children to the ineluctable fact of mortality.

But of course, their children do know.

A delicious word, ineluctable, except when attached to mortality.

So. I have gone a long way out of my way to come back a short distance correctly (Thanks, Mr. Albee.) At noon Friday, after a leisurely morning off, I headed out to Dillon's (Kroger's to much of the rest of the US) for some fixings for lunch. I headed up the bakery aisle for a loaf of french bread. Before racing across the back of the store for my usual fare -- smoked turkey slices and pepper jack slices, a pleasurable penance I do for succumbing to too many two-dollars-two-whoppers lunches -- I cruised past the deli cases with a quick glance at the cheeses.

Brie. There's a two-fold mystery to me. In the first place, at least five young girls that I'm aware of in this town, contemporaries of my various sons, are named Brie. An attractive name, I suppose, if you associate it audially with, for instance, the word "breeze." But I wonder about naming children after cheeses. I wonder if Josh would be resentful today (could he possibly be more resentful?) if we had named him Cheddar, for instance, or Gouda, and if the latter, would we pronounce it goo duh or how duh. But the real mystery surrounding brie -- the cheese, not the person -- is the white rind on the cheese. Is that meant to be eaten, or is it like the red wrapping on the gouda, meant to be hocked up and hidden in the ficus in the hope that the cat will bury it before the host discovers your (my) gaucherie?

Apparently you can remove the boy from the eighth grade, but you can't remove the eighth grade from the man. Windows like these existed long before the modern PC, and I suspect they will persist when Windows seems like DOS.

And now the produce department conspires against me. While I still fret over the brie and its rind, having only recently mastered designer onions and unraveled the mystery of the kiwi fruit and the new array of jalapeno-type peppers, now comes a new bunch of boutique agriculturalists to present me with this -- the starfruit, or the carambola, as it is known to us insiders. Or to those of us who have decided that Carambola was not the name of the inspector. Okay, to those of us who looked it up at www.m-w.com. Oh, I get out. I do. I've seen them sliced as garnish on buffet platters. But I have been trained not to eat garnish, you see.

Extend the reminder to update the journal links page.

The family (less me) trekked to Salina today so that Josh could take some more SAT tests. They arrived home by mid-afternoon.

The cold that rolled in earlier in the week never took hold. This afternoon, the temperature reached sixty degrees here.