Yule and the New Year Moon

Where’s the Webb? From home? 641000 miles. To L2 257000 miles. 71% of journey complete. Slower yet at .2639 mps. Mission day 13. Yesterday the aft instrument radiator got deployed. Today the primary mirror begins to unfold from its launch position. This begins the last deployment,  the mirror segments. Complete by mission day 15. Then it’s cruise on, slow, slow, slow. Puff, puff, puff and L2 insertion.

Friday gratefuls: Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Jodi, Bowe, and Brian. Coming today. Finish early next week, I imagine. Choice. Daily. Too much choice. Habit. Routine. Bed sheets. The family crate. Safeway. Grocery pickup. Covid. Kate, always and still, Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Max in his parka, a snow angel.

Tarot-January spread: Money-The Wanderer, 0 in the major arcana

The whole team gathers here at 9:15. Me. Bowe and Brian. Jodi. We’ll discuss last steps to complete the work. I have a punch list but so far it’s pretty small. Bowe anticipates my concerns and fixes them. Wish I could hire him for everything carpentry I need to get done. Maybe I can?

If I had gone with the Karman cabinets, I would have had a three month wait for delivery. End of January. Even with delays I’m ahead of the curve. Bowe had bookings into March so it could have been much later. Even with Brian’s pokiness this is faster.

I heard one complaint he had: can’t hire good help these days. I’m sure the pool of folks looking for work in Fairplay is not big to begin with and the Great Resignation has upended the entry level job market.

His work is not quite as good as I’d anticipated, but it’s good. Good enough. I like it. I imagined custom cabinetry like in a fancy built home. Not that level. But maybe the next level down. Better than mass produced for sure.

Brian reminds me a bit of Gollum. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Oh, you’ll like these, sir. Attention to detail. Oh, yes. An obsequiousness that hides deep resentment. Not to me, we don’t know each other well enough to have that sort of bad blood, but to customers. To the folks who put demands on his time. To the world which has not seen his genius. Makes me sad.

Read an article on Languishing that ancient brother Paul recommended. Here’s the article’s definition: “Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.” The author describes languishing as the middle ground between depression and flourishing.

I recognize the symptoms in myself. Covid has gone on too long. Add grief. Hard to get the motor runnin’, get out on the highway. I’ve gotten stuff done, mostly d3 stuff, domestic duty day things. The remodel, Herme pushed back against this tendency to slow down, way down around 4 pm.

Finding a center point for my life, finding a way to make my schedule creativity friendly, that’s the big on the table right now issue for me as a person. I feel like this is a good time to go for it.

My grief has had the tincture of time. Part of me now, reminding me always of the beauty and power of my love for Kate, hers for me. I carry it as a gift today, not a burden.

Covid. Well, not gone. For sure. But. I am in a better place, not where I need to be, but better. In spite of omicron. As long as I stay at home, or meet with friends, it barely affects me. I’m tired of masks, yes. I’m tired of thinking about vaccines, about being high risk, yes. I can, however, see an endpoint, a time when covid becomes a flu equivalent. Maybe a booster at a certain time. Masks in some situations. Not an everyday, what’s the death count kinda thing anymore. This year. The truth is out there.

Yule and the 2% crescent of the Winter Solstice Moon

Where is the Webb? Interesting. It’s just over 50% of the way to L2 this morning. 52%. 474000 miles from Earth, 424000 to Lagrange 2. On mission day 7 it’s coasting, slowing. Now at .4082 mps. 1470 mph. Still gradually unfolding as it goes.

Saturday (and 2022 so far) gratefuls: 2021 is in the books. 2022 arrived with six inches of snow. First time out of high Fire danger since July. Jon, Ruth, and Gabe up for New Years. Medical Guardian. New Moon coming. Glad for clean calendar, no memories in it. Leaning toward the future, honoring the past. Celebrating in the present.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The New Year

Tarot past-present-future spread: Ace of Stones, The Foundation of Life; Six of Bows, Abundance; Queen of Stones, Bear

Auspicious. Always love that word. Has a Chinese ring to it to me. 2022 already and in an important way. On New Year’s eve and continuing through this morning we’ve received over six inches of fluffy new Snow. As I noted in the gratefuls, this is the first day since early July when we are not in high fire danger.

Ironic and sad that it came a day after the Boulder County fire. Now we can switch anxiety to slick Mountain roads and Ice dams. Just kidding. Feels so good to have Fire off the table for a while. Hopefully until late May, June.

Up at 8 am though I only stayed up until 9:35 pm. I told Gabe that was midnight in Grandpa world. When I got up to what Gabe now calls my lair, it was 2 degrees outside, 2% humidity, and 2 degree windchill. The winds subsided yesterday. Glad.

Finished Wild Seed by Octavia Butler a couple of days ago. Paul Strickland recommended. A good, strange book. Butler died in 2006. She wrote Afrofuturist science fiction. Wouldn’t know how to describe this book. A mythology of sorts. Doro and Anyanwu’s back story. It was the last published in her Patternist series, but the earliest in terms of the series chronology.

Butler was the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur genius grant. I can see why. Her work, this is the first one I’ve read, is not like anything else I’ve read, science fiction or otherwise.

Gonna leave this for now and go see the kids and Jon downstairs. I’ll do a proper New Year’s post later today.