Because I need to post something, dammit

I live a pretty dull life. I actually like it that way a lot of the time, but it does give me precious little worth writing about. Still, since not having anything momentously important to say hasn’t stopped millions of other bloggers, so why should it stop me? So, in no particular order ....


My youngest brother has been accepted into the physics doctoral program at Oxford. That's the Oxford in England, one of the world's more prestigious educational institutions. Yes, he's pretty smart. Not only can I not understand the sub-field that he specializes in - I can't even remember what it's called. (I'll have to ask him if he plans on trying to pick up an "Oxford accent" while he's there - that would be ... disturbing.)


Far less welcome was the news last Friday that my sister in law in Germany had to have surgery. She is apparently doing OK - nobody in the USA has heard from my brother since this past weekend, but since he would always contact us if there was a serious problem, we are going by the principle that no news is good news.


I have several important things that I need to start working on, the most important of which is looking for a new place to live. I have responded to these challenges so far in my usual fashion -- by procrastinating energetically.


I met an old friend who I hadn't seen in a couple of years for lunch this past weekend - he and his family seem to be doing pretty well, which is good news. We caught up on stuff that has been going on in our lives and reminisced about the "good ol' days" when we were growing up (in our case, mostly 80s and early 90s).


It's snowing here now - we're supposed to get mixed snow and rain for about the next 3 days. There isn't supposed to be too much accumulation, though, partly because the rain in the day will help melt the snow that fell at night. Unfortunately, all this freezing and thawing will probably make for a lot of ice on the roads.


There's more stuff that I don't have time to cover (or can't think of) at the moment, but it will have to wait ....