I'm an elderly "girl" who loves books

After the Galentine's Day party on Thursday, the friend who rammed a table up against me recently, slamming me up against the wall of windows (see HERE), gave me a gift wrapped in red tissue paper.  In it was this small canvas cosmetic bag that says, "Just a girl who loves books."  Is it an apology?  She didn't say, so I called her the next day to talk (for 10-15 minutes).  She has neuropathy and can't feel the tips of her fingers, so she was sitting there trying to figure out what to do and HOW to back up.  "I never, ever meant to hurt anybody," she said.  She'd bought the small bag long before, just because she immediately thought of me when she read what it says about loving books.

A fellow in a kayak was swallowed by a whale, but he must not have tasted good because it immediately spit him back out.  Wow!  Was this like the story of Jonah and the whale?  Read the news item HERE, which has a video taken by the kayaker's father in another kayak.  And HERE is a report from the victim.  (Added mid-morn:  It's ironic that I've just learned today is World Whale Day!)

I've been reading Colleen's blog almost from the beginning of my blogging days, which means since about 2007.  This week, in her Thirteen Thursdays, her comment #9 (of 13) says:

"9. I’m having a hard time following the news because there are so many acronyms and abbreviations, like USDA, USAID, DOD, DOJ, OMB, OIG, NIH, NOAA, etc etc."

Oh, yeah, I agree.  So I left this comment:  "I've been thinking the same thing.  So confusing, as I try to think what each one stands for.  Sometimes, I just give up and move to another story."

Report on Galentine's Day:

We had a good crowd with three tables shoved together for nine people, and there were three or four sitting at other tables in the Cafe.  Two more women came later, after some had left.  We even had one of my friends from the neighborhood and some new residents who have never done anything like that before, plus a few Crown Center staff were there.

Here's what I have posted this week:

1. On Monday, I was musing about thoughtlessness, HERE.
2. My subject on Tuesday was the Chinese New Year, HERE.
3. Wednesday's word was yoga, HERE.
4. On Thursday, I said "a penny for your thoughts," HERE.
5. Friday's book beginning was from a book about life choices, HERE.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

Next week is Palentine's Day and/or Galentine's Day

Invite your PALS, male pals as well as female pals.

Meet me in the Circle@Crown Café at noon on Thursday, February 13th.  Let's celebrate together, eating or drinking whatever you get for yourself from the menu.  We will celebrate with our friends (and also with our PALS — see illustration above) by being together for an hour or two.  There won't be a program; just visiting each other.  See you there!

** P.S.  We will ALL be talking to whoever is at your table,

so obviously I cannot promise to sit with each person.

Thoughts about tragedies ~ but also about fun

Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941.  I was a one-and-a-half-year-old toddler.  My daddy was eventually drafted and shipped to the Pacific; I remember standing on the sofa to wave out the window as he left.

The JFK assassination occurred on November 22, 1963, when I was the mother of three small children.  My youngest was born earlier that year.

The Twin Towers came down on September 11, 2001 (that's 9-11), a few months before I retired.  Each of these was "a date which will live in infamy..." as FDR said in 1941.  And all of these happened in my lifetime.

Greg Freeman: A Gentleman, A Gentle Man ~ by Greg Freeman, 2003, newspaper columns, 191 pages

Why am I thinking about these dates?  I had just read Greg Freeman's column (p. 138) that was published on September 12th, when our whole country was still focused on the two planes hitting the world's tallest buildings:  "Tragedies like this stay with us the rest of our lives.  For one generation, that tragedy was Pearl Harbor.  For another generation, it was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  For this generation, Sept. 11, 2001, is a date that will live in infamy."

Tuesday was Galentine's Day, a day that is now also called Palentine's Day.  Some of my friends met in the Circle@Crown Café.  People drifted in and out, so I don't have an exact number of attendees to report.  But we sat around tables, talking and laughing.  Several women from the office joined us.

Amy Poehler’s Parks and Recreation character, Leslie Knope, invented the holiday in 2010 to celebrate sisterhood one day before Valentine’s Day every February — and fans are still toasting their gal pals annually.  Read about it HERE, and there's also a video on that site so you can see the best Galentine’s Day moments in that show.

You are invited — let's talk on the 13th

Meet me in the Circle@Crown Café at noon on Tuesday, February 13th.  Let's celebrate together, eating or drinking whatever you get for yourself from the menu.  We'll celebrate with our friends (and also with our PALS — see illustration below) by being together for an hour or two.  There won't be a program; just visiting each other.  See you there!

Invite your PALS, male pals as well as female pals.

** P.S.  We will ALL be talking to each other,

so I cannot promise to sit with each person.

Palentine's Day is something new

Palentine's Day (information found HERE) sounds like Valentine's Day.  It was shown as a NEW WORD on February 13, 2023 (HERE).

For several years, I celebrated Galentine's Day on February 13th (click HERE for photos on this blog).  But Palentine's Day is even better because it's more inclusive.  It's on a Tuesday this year, so I'll plan to be in the Circle@Crown Café (more on that later).  In the meantime, maybe I can convince our program coordinator to make it an official program.

Monday Musing ~ about Galentine's Day

I posted about Galentine's Day in 2018, 2020, and 2021.

(Apparently, I forgot about it in 2019 and 2022.)

Click this link for Galentine's Day or the label below,

if you want to see photos of us celebrating in the Café.

Join me at noon today in the Circle@Crown Café, if you're interested.

Thursday Thoughts ~ it's Black History Month

1.  Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States.  It is a time to remember important people and events in the history of the African diaspora.

2.  Galentine's Day is celebrated on February 13th, the day before Valentine's Day.  Around noon on Monday, I plan to go to the Café.  No plans except chatting with gals who are my friends.  Invite your lady friends and come, if you want to join me there.

3.  Zoom in

The meaning of ZOOM is changing, so could I say that I'm zooming into a Zoom Meeting, since we're doing it online?  How fast is zoom?

4.  Zoom out

Colleen wrote:  "When in doubt, zoom out.  Ignore the cult of doom and gloom, and embrace the cause of zoom and boom.  We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate, and summon the brilliance of praise and create.  Life is crazily in love with us — wildly and innocently in love with us.  The universe always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it." — quoting Rob Brezsny

5.  What's it mean?  When you zoom in on something, you take a closer look at it.  You might zoom in on one particularly beautiful sentence in a book you're reading, for example, reading it slowly a few times.

6.  Cat chasing a white dot (this isn't Clawdia)

When the sun shines in our windows in the morning, Clawdia comes and sits looking at me expectantly.  Sometimes I move my wrist so my watch reflects a little round dot of light.  Sometimes I use my iPhone, getting a squarish sort of light.  And sometimes, Clawdia just sits and watches the light show, when both lights start playing and chase each other.

7.  Our new apartment

When construction is completed and we move into our new apartment, our windows will be facing west.  I wonder how having no morning sunshine will affect Clawdia's thinking about the little white dots.

8.  Miss Sheri's Cafeteria

Someone told me Miss Sheri's went out of business.  Is that true?  I used to like to go there to eat, back when I still had a car.  (Update:  confirmed.)

9.  On the other hand

I'm not so sure a cafeteria would work now, since I use a cane.  I don't think I could balance a tray full of food and drink in one hand.

10.  My closest cousin died

I was on the Crown Center bus, going grocery shopping, when I got a text from Andy saying his mother had died on Tuesday evening, January 31st.  Carolyn was a year older than I was, minus a couple of days.  When she'd call to wish me a happy birthday, I'd always say that I had caught up with her.  We were the same age for two days each year.

11.  Remembering with a smile

I remember splashing together in the tub, when we'd visit overnight.  Two little girls, having fun.  And I still have the twin bed we slept in, side by side, when we were that small.

12.  Bulletin board

I've given up the volunteer job of changing the bulletin board on my floor every month, and my neighbor Galina has taken on the job.

13.  Word of the Day

snarf /snärf / verb (informal) = eat or drink quickly or greedily.  Example:  "I woke up hungry and snarfed down my breakfast!"

14.  Unforgettable Senior Moments and Remember

These two books really go together.  What I read at the beginning of the book on senior moments sounds exactly like what I read in Lisa Genova's book:  "The most familiar type of forgetting is absentmindedness, in which information is never properly encoded in one's memory, if it's encoded at all.  Say you've misplaced your keys.  When you laid them down, you weren't giving their location your full attention, you were distracted, or, as scientists say, your attention was 'divided'" (p. iv).  Click either title to read more that I've blogged about that book.

15.  Astounding numbers

This blog had more than 500 "pageviews" in 12 hours last Saturday, from 9:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m.  Those stats are on the sidebar beneath my photo.  Usually there are only about 200-300 in a whole day.  Somebody must have spent a lot of time reading my blog that day.

Galentine's Day ~ one year ago today

Can you believe it's been only a year since this gathering of "women celebrating women" on Galentine's Day 2020?  Of the people I can identify in the photos from last year, at least one has died, a couple have moved away, and we haven't been sitting together at the Café tables like this since last March.

It seems like ages ago that I posted this invitation saying, "Let's party on Thursday," and we gathered in the Circle@Crown Café.  I was going to simply link this to last year's photo album, but then decided to post all the pictures here.  You can click to enlarge the photos and have fun identifying people you may know.  Yeah, we could see whole faces back then and now have trouble recognizing each other, with only eyes and hair color to help us figure out who that is behind the mask, who now has hair down to her shoulders.

Notice that the Café was open and other customers were there, too.  Some of us brought a friend or a caregiver, so you may not recognize every person in these photos.

And this is what Galentine's Day is all about on February 13th every year, even when we have to "meet" online or by phone.

I first heard about Galentine's Day in 2018, when Barbara and Sandy and Donna helped me get a few invitations out to friends.  I miss my friend Barbara, who died before these photos were taken.