You've got to have heart, as the tin man said

National Wear Red Day is on the first Friday of February (so on February 6th in 2026).  The day is to raise awareness that cardio-vascular disease is the #1 killer of women.  Wearing red encourages women to know their risks and prioritize heart health.  I had open-heart surgery on February 19, 2009, with four bypasses.  I blogged about it HERE, if you want to know details and what my blogging friends said.  So wear red tomorrow.

Thinking about two things today

1.  Three surveys to fill out for the social workers in the office:

1. Program Survey (Yes, I'd possibly enjoy a discussion of literature.)
2. Daily Life Survey  (Yes, I prepare my own meals.)
3. Quality of Life Survey (No, I don't get bored.)

2.  Café meals:

• I pay for five meals a week delivered, so I don't have to cook all the time.
• I eat in the Café with friends as a way to socialize.

Six more weeks of winter

Groundhog Day, celebrated every year on February 2, is an unusual holiday that stretches back hundreds of years to ancient times.  According to tradition, if it’s a bright and sunny day and the groundhog sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter.  If it’s a cloudy day and the groundhog does not see his shadow, there will be an early spring.

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today, which means that we are in for six more weeks of winter.  Hmpf, as I look out my window and see white snow (and mushy gray snow) along both sides of the cleared street below, I take a deep breath and think, "Oh, well, lots more of this."  (But just how accurate will Phil's prediction be this year?  We shall see.)

This week's reading and activities

During January (which seems to have zipped by), I was able to attend two of the four classes on "Building Emotional Resiliency" that met weekly here at the Crown Center where I live.  I was also able to get copies of the handouts for the other two classes that I missed because of other commitments.  These classes covered things like managing burnout (when you realize you've been stretched too thin) and getting yourself moving again, even if you don't feel like it.

The subject this week was about building and nurturing relationships, with ideas for staying connnected and communicating your needs.  How do we connect with other people?  Shared interests, for one thing.  But we also need boundaries, like taking into account the time and energy involved.  I'm comfortable striking up casual conversations, but I know that is easier for some of us than for others.

Week in Review

• On Monday, I mused about a cat who sang for the birds, HERE.
• On TWOsday, my subject was the Circle@Crown Cafe, HERE.
• Wednesday's post was for language lovers, HERE.
• Friday's Book Beginnings , HERE, looked back billions of years, HERE.
• Saturday's book was a story that dealt with devastating loss, HERE.

is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

A library book I just checked out

About Alice ~ by Calvin Trillin, 2006, memoir, 78 pages

In Calvin Trillin’s antic tales of family life, she was portrayed as the wife who had “a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day” and the mother who thought that you had to go to your child’s school play, or “the county would come and take the child.”

Five years after her death, her husband offered this loving portrait of Alice Trillin off the page, an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, "managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in."

It deals with devastating loss, but About Alice is also a love story that chronicls a romance that began at a Manhattan party when Calvin Trillin desperately tried to impress a young woman who "seemed to glow."

"You have never again been as funny as you were that night," Alice would say, twenty or thirty years later.

"You mean I peaked in December of 1963?"

"I’m afraid so."

But he never quit trying to impress her.  In his writing, she was sometimes his subject and always his muse.  The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, "I wrote this for Alice.  Actually, I wrote everything for Alice."

Beginning ~ billions of years ago

Beginning

In the beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume kess than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry ~ by Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2017, nonfiction, 224 pages

What is the nature of space and time?  How do we fit within the universe?  How does the universe fit within us?  There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos.  So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in chapters you can read anytime and anywhere in your busy day.  While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, this book will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines:  from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.

I have written about Tyson and his ideas before.  Click HERE, if you would like to know more about him and his books.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Something new from Collins Dictionary

Collins Dictionary is a free online dictionary, thesaurus, and reference source.  Here's what's new there:

• Motivation Mondays = Words that set a positive tone or relate to motivating events/topics for the rest of the week.
• Trending Tuesdays = Words that are currently trending or tied to what’s trending in news, culture, or topics people are talking about right now.
• Wordy Wednesdays = Interesting, unusual, or obscure words that few people know about.
• Throwback Thursdays = Archaic or old-fashioned words and memorable objects from the past.
• Foreign Language Fridays = Words that originated from different languages.
• Slang Saturdays = Slang words, both from the present day and the past.
• Submission Sundays = Words that are chosen by users and they can submit their ideas every Monday on our Instagram story.

HarperCollins UK (www.harpercollins.co.uk) emailed me this information on Sunday, January 25, 2026.  Did you notice that they chose to present the week as Monday through Sunday and not the usual Sunday through Saturday?  You can find their Word of the Day, HERE.