Not irrelevant

There were a couple of points here in notes on a book about vagabondage that related to sabbaticals; one about negotiating for a sabbatical from work in order to have extended time for travel, and another about making work almost completely subordinate to one's travel-oriented lifestyle.

The Biblical pattern is Six On, One Off, with an extra One Year Off every 50th year.  As I pointed out in my book on sabbatical rest, Israel's 70-year exile in Babylon was to make up for the sabbatical and jubilee years they had failed to observe over the centuries.  

Addendum to The Fall of Minneapolis

Earlier post here.  [Edit:  I have added to it a bit.]

Derek Chauvin's wife Kellie entered (and won) the Mrs. Minnesota America pageant in 2018 with the encouragement of her friend and earlier Mrs. Minnesota Andrea Bennett Xiong, whose husband was Tou Ger Xiong, Twin Cities Hmong celebrity.

It has been reported that Tou Ger Xiong was kidnapped, stabbed a dozen times, and thrown down a hill in Columbia; multiple Minnesota Congresspersons have issued statements.

It's very odd that this came only a few weeks after Derek Chauvin was stabbed in prison.

Christmas stuffed

Every year I start to get the house into reasonably-decluttered order in the fall...and then the holidays hit.

This year, I had the idea of filling up the Christmas decoration boxes with regular decor and other stuff, once the Christmas decorations were up.

It's only two small boxes, and within a few minutes I had found enough items to fill them both.  This was not just swapping regular displays for Christmas decor, but also making some areas downright austere to compensate for ornamental elaboration elsewhere.  

There were a couple of small items that I just put up on the Christmas tree.  A few days ago, I moved a wall hanging to the undecorated back entry, to make room for my Christmas sign.

Another idea I had was to put a tray on top of our toaster oven.  We don't use it often for toasting, but it always has lots of smaller things on top of it because we have very little counter space.  Now it can be cleared off and used much more easily.

Similarly, I put a tray on top of the painted crate we hold to hold tea and teacups, which will make it much easier to plug in the toaster oven when we want to use it.