Happy New Year

 

by Sybil Johnson

Happy New Year to everyone! Sorry I didn’t post a couple weeks ago. I was in Seattle visiting family. We didn’t have a power outage, but there was an ice storm that added unwelcome excitement to our time there. Luckily, we flew in on the Thursday before Christmas, which was pretty okay, just a little icy. Then the ice storm hit on Friday, which dropped the temperature significantly and closed down the airport for a bit. So glad we weren’t flying that day. The ice was the thickest I’ve ever seen it, like a pane of glass. Saturday dawned and temps went up into the upper 40s or so and all was well again.

I spent most of December doing stuff around the house, including making roman shades, and ignoring writing. I decided I’d start off January by organizing myself a bit, including going through my Inbox and actually reading things people sent me and filing things away that I wanted to keep. I have a tendency, if I don’t immediately have the time, to keep messages with links to look at later. Only later often doesn’t come.

I found these gems waiting for me in my Inbox. 

• I discovered that I’d missed my two billion second date. That’s the day I’ve been alive for two billion seconds. The husband sent me a message giving me my 1, 2 and 3 billion second dates. The first was in 1989, the second just this past July 30. Don’t remember why he calculated these, but remember we were both math/computer science or computer science majors so this is the kind of thing we enjoy.

• Someone I worked with at Xerox long ago sent me some pics from the 1980s. In them was one of me from the early to mid-80s. That’s my best guess, anyway. So here I am at my desk.
  
  
  
  

• A friend I study the Coptic language with sent me this interesting article on the Coptic church in the US. There are a number of Coptic churches in the Los Angeles area. I hadn’t noticed them until I started studying Coptic. The language is a liturgical language now, only used in the Coptic Church. That’s the Bohairic dialect. I have been studying the Sahidic dialect. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/coptic-church/555515/

• Duolingo sent me my statistics for learning Swedish this past year. I did 966 lessons, spending 4226 minutes on them. I spend 5 to 10 minutes a day practicing my Swedish. My grammar is fairly good, but my vocabulary is not that great. But it’s improving.

• A friend sent me a link to the most haunted houses in the UK. I don’t know what I think of ghosts. Let’s just say that I’m open to the possibility, but I’m not sure I want to go and visit them. I do love ghost movies, though. So, if you want to see some ghosts here’s where you can find them. https://www.historyhit.com/guides/most-haunted-houses-in-the-uk/

• Here’s another interesting article about how the English failed to stamp out the Scots language. Yes, there’s a Scots language. No, it’s not the same as Scottish Gaelic. A surprising number of people speak it today. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-english-failed-to-stamp-out-the-scots-language

• If you want to animate your family photos like in the Harry Potter stories you can go here to find out how. Seems a little creepy to me.  And here’s a YouTube video about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjBYSnoAWqg 
  

•  And, finally, you can access back issues of Suspense Magazine here.

 I’m not quite done with the clearing out of my Inbox, but getting pretty close. Who knows what else I will find.