Skip to main content

New Year's Celebrations - Plan B

      Although nothing went the way we had planned, we had very good New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day celebrations. We had planned to go to Tony’s Mining Company with Barbara’s sister, Cathy, and her husband, Tom, for our Eve celebration, but the weather forecast called for a winter mix of rain and snow, so we decided to call it off.
      Fortunately we had a plan B: a few weeks ago we decided to get the free tickets to the celebration at the Muhlenberg in the event we couldn’t go to Tony’s. We had a good time with friends there.
      If the New Year would have rung in at 11:00 pm, we could have had the toasts, hugs and all that stuff; as it was, by midnight we probably snored through it.
      We had also planned to go to Cathy and Tom’s house for the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch New Year good luck meal of Pork and Sauerkraut. About 10:00 am Tom called and told us Cathy had got sick with flu, bad food, whatever, and we would have to call that off too. Our plan B this time consisted of going to the fridge and getting out the Cornish Game Hen. Actually we formulated plan B after Tom called.
      Shortly afterwards we got another call offering to prepare a care package of P & S, Mashed Potatoes, etc., and bring it to us. Of course we protested, sort of.
      Sometime later Tom and their son, Kyle, showed up with the above plus Rolls and Pecan Pie. Needless to say, we enjoyed it very much.
      I got to thinking afterwards how lucky I am to have married into such a thoughtful family. Only the best would think of preparing a carryout dinner, and driving five miles to deliver it.
      As I mentioned, P & S is the traditional New Year’s dish in this area, but other sections of the country have their own traditions. I have heard of good luck meals of Black-eyed Peas and Corn Bread, Sow-belly and Collard Greens, and I am sure there are others.
      Looking back at the state of the world during 2009, we can all use all the luck we can get. Hopefully all these lucky meals work. Wait a minute, we ate these same meals last year, and look how that turned out!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

There Are Only Seven Jokes - Introduction

      The statement “There are only seven jokes – all the rest are variations,” has been around for a long time, but no one ever seems to know what the original seven are. I think I have found the solution to the mystery.       The answer is to be found in an article published in the New York Times on May 2, 1909. Entitled “New Jokes? There Are No New Jokes, There Is Only One Joke,” it goes on to say that all jokes are a distortion, and lists seven categories of distortion. Supposedly every joke will fit into one of the categories. I believe that repetition changed the seven categories into the seven jokes.       Each of my next seven blogs will be devoted to exploring one of the categories. In addition, I shall attempt to give an example or two of jokes which I think fit the category.       You must realize that this article appeared over one hundred years ago, so most of the jokes a...
The Future of Work This is for folks who don't mind stretching their imagination a bit. Let me review some of the things that are happening in today's world. A recent news article stated that in spite of the decreasing jobless rate, the number of retail jobs has been dropping rapidly. An article in Business Insider calls it a retail apocalypse. According to the article, in the retail industry, "Since October about 89,000 workers in general merchandise stores have lost their jobs, which is more than the number of people employed in the entire US coal industry." ( http://www.businessinsider.com/retail-job-losses-are-hurting-the-economy-2017-4 ). This loss is due to the rapid expansion of online merchandising. But this is only one example of the point I want to make. According to an article in Scientific American, two professors at Oxford University published a study estimating the probability that "702 occupations would soon be computerized out of exist...

Men Never Outgrow Their Love of Toys

     I guess I am no different from most other men – I like gadgets. I know there are some wonderful toys that I am missing, but if I am sure I have no use for an iPhone, xBox, and the like, I don't buy them. And I decided that even though the ultimate toy, my car, is 10 model years old, it's in good shape, and I don't need a new one. However, we are driving from Pennsylvania to Texas next week, so I did spring for a GPS, and it's really fascinating.      I downloaded the owner's manual and after perusing it, sort of (owners' manuals are to use when you can't figure it out otherwise), I entered my home address into the instrument. I had to test that, so I drove a couple of miles, turned around, and hit the “Home” button.      I was a bit disappointed in the results: it got me home OK, but it didn't take the shortcuts I would have taken. It did keep saying “recalculating” a few times, and when I got within a block or two of t...