Clean start

The photos above seem to say it all. Jayne made the girls clean their room over the weekend.

Alyssa is smiling and proud of her work. Mischa, our little dog, is tired from helping out so he thought he'd take a snooze.

Elspeth is not happy about having to pick up her toys and make her bed.

We had a nice set of holidays here. No one had to go to the hospital and nobody in the family passed away. A good start to the new year.

The 14-plus inches of snow that fell throughout the last few weeks has melted away with heavy rain and 57 degree afternoon highs. Wow! Just a few days ago I used my new roof rake for the first time to cut down on the ice buildup on the eves. Strange weather.

Reading this and that

I finished a short biography of Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley -- she quoted Peter Akroyd extensively, and I read his biography of Dickens a few years back. Dickens is an amazingly complex man and, I agree with Smiley, the first celebrity as we in the 20th and 21st centuries understand the term.

Keeping in the spirit, I re-read "A Christmas Carol" to remind myself how good he really is.

Now I'm reading a book my boss lent me called "Lamb." It's a book about the lost years of the life of Jesus as told by his resurrected best friend Bif. I'm a few chapters into it and have laughed out loud more times than I can count.

I loved the opening section where Bif talks about his name (a nickname he got from the sound of his mom smacking him) and his friend's name: Jesus being the Greek of Joshua; Christ not being his last name; and, what made me laugh hysterically, that Bif had no idea what the "H" is Jesus H. Christ stood for.

Thought: School's back in session today. Hooray!