January Recap

In keeping with my 2023 plan to slow down The Tempest, I published only five regular posts during the month of January. The rest were either short stories, an ill-conceived attempt to rewrite a 35 year old story, and more recently—the first seven chapters of a novel I wrote called A Life of Dreams. Judging by the readership numbers it is safe to say that you guys are not fans!! Ha! Apparently, Tempest readers prefer my contemporaneous ramblings to my fiction—by a wide margin. For this I apologize. However, I plan on continuing it for the foreseeable future. Its actually been quite nice keeping my opinions to myself for a change. The world is still a hot mess as far as the eye can see and has managed this without my snarky input.

Has there been anything going on out there in January about which I felt tempted to comment? Sure. The six year old kid who shot his teacher was a soul-crusher. The bumper crop of mass-shootings in California were infuriating. The number of dead squirrels that magically wind up in my yard remains a mystery. But mostly January has been about getting another year started at work, doing the work of reviewing millions of dollars of investment holdings in hundreds of accounts belonging to my clients. Its the sort of work that clarifies the mind and focuses the attention.

Lots of cool stuff happening at my church so far this year. This coming Thursday thru Saturday Pam and I have signed up for something called The Book on Love, a class for married couples. Ever since we’ve been at Hope we have heard people raving about this class, so we decided to give it a shot despite the fact that we have been married almost 39 years. I wonder if we will get some sort of prize for being the oldest people there? Nevertheless, I believe that you are never too old or too experienced to learn how to get better at stuff. Apparently there’s homework involved, so I’m a little concerned about that since I have never been good at homework. But hey…if this class results in Pam becoming a better wife then I’m all for it……JUST KIDDING!!!!

So, readers of The Tempest, thank you for chopping my writer’s ego down to size by your disinterest. Humility is always a lesson worth learning. 

I close with this:

Two cats are having a swimming race. The first cat is called “One two three” the second cat is called “Un deux trois”. Which cat won?

“One two three”…because “Un deux trois” cat sank