Taking it easy today. Might have to stay in pajamas and read. Kid is home from school so there could be board games as well. Naps and sledding seem likely, as well as an attempt at a dog walk coupled with digging out the car.
Blog
-
ODDS and ENDS: It’s Raining, Music, and Nabemono
(I’m in a hurry, gotta go…)
First of all, I had to move the car today as Alt Side Parking is back in effect in NYC. I haven’t had to move my car for almost three weeks due to the snow that changed to ice. But after a week of the temp being above freezing, and the ice mainly having melted, the City said we had to move our cars for the sweepers. I’m cool with that, as the trash and dog poo has been piling up. What I wasn’t expecting was that it would be raining today, which, sure, helps with melting the ice, but also makes it rather raw outside in 38 degrees. I did it, moved the car that is, but also it made me have my first moment of looking forward to Spring.
I have two new, to me, music discoveries; Mapache, and Labi Siffre.
The other thing that has entered my life this week is that I have a correct nabe pot. (Which is a funny thing to write as “nabe” is Japanese for “pot” so I have been saying “pot pot”.) This has been a long time coming as I have mentioned, about a year ago, that I was looking to start doing some hot pot cooking. Well, we started it, and it has gone over rather well. We’ve done a little shabu-shabu, and last night we tried our hand at mizutaki. I can say that it has been some of the healthier eating we have done, and the kid just loves it. The downside is that we started doing this cooking late in Winter, so we don’t have too many cold nights left to gather around the nabe pot.
-
Short Story Review: “Predictions and Presentiments” by Valeria Luiselli
(The short story “Predictions and Presentiments” by Valeria Luiselli appeared in the February 16th & 23rd, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)
Illustration by Jesús Cisneros
“Predictions and Presentiments” by Valeria Luiselli is a short story that gave me a reassuring hug. The reassuring didn’t come in the form of any answers to the questions which the story brought up, but it reassured me that life is about growth and discovery.
Overly Simplistic Synopsis: After a divorce, a mother and her daughter spend time in Sicily, not too far from where the mother’s grandmother is originally from. And they try to cook a swordfish head, too.
In the story, the main character has a small mosaic fragment of the god Proteus which her grandmother obtained/stole from an archaeological dig she was working at. The mosaic fragment is a clever dramatic device in the story. But I had this thought in my head that “Predictions and Presentiments” was a bit like Proteus; it kept shifting and changing. Was this a story about just the narrator, a mother, and her daughter? Was it about her grandmother as well? Legacy trauma? Family origin story? Connection to the past, or the ancient past? What truths do we share with our families, or do we make fictions out of those truths? Can we change who we are, or we destined to our nature? Is our future but a guess, or is there a way to logically know what’s coming?
This is a story that walks a very nice tightrope of keeping it all together. I couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment the mother and daughter could spin off into ruin. I can’t say where in the story I got that from; perhaps it was the refrain of starting over in a new place, the perils that come with beginning again, and discovering something new? Maybe it was the climax of the story, or the fishmonger who sold the fish head? Or it could have been how not everything that happened in this piece got wrapped up neatly, or fully explained? This created a feeling of fragmentation, that Proteus mosaic again, but Luiselli held it all together. See, it reassured me that life is messy, not neat, but wonderful to experience.
-
Earworm Wednesday: It Took A While But I Came Around to This Song and Video
The true problem here is that I heard this song when I was a little little kid, and it just seemed so weird. The video didn’t help my understanding either, it also seemed sooo weird, too. But now that I am older, I can now see how Gary Numan was way ahead of his time in both this song’s sound and the video as well.
What gets stuck in my head is the way Numan sings the words, “In cars…” That little inflection he does is hard to mimic, so his cadence gets stuck on replay in my brain.
-
Our Dog is “Neighborhood” Famous
I was running errands in the neighborhood this morning, and I was on the corner of an intersection which I frequently cross often if not a couple time a day, and where there was a coffee cart. As I was waiting for the light to change, the woman in the coffee cart leaned out the window and yelled at me, “Where’s your dog? Is she okay?”
It took me a second to register that she was talking to me, and that her questions weren’t the ravings of a lunatic. When it hit me that these were meant as friendly questions, I responded that the dogs at home.
“I don’t see her anymore. I was wondering if she’s okay.”
“She’s fine,” I said, “we just changed the time we take her for a walk in the morning, is all.”
“Okay, she’s a cute dog. Very funny.”
The light changed, so I thanked the lady, and wished her a good day as I crossed the street.
She wished me and my dog a good day as well.
