New Year. 2013

--You get that we can't do this better than they can, right? First we'd have to build a half-mile-tall building....

--I was driving an ambulance when the new year rolled in.

--My 10-year-old was at her best friend's house as the new year turned over. She said that they were dancing non-stop, mostly to Madonna. My wife was certainly glad that they went over to her best friend's house for that.

--We had our annual black eyed peas for New Years Day, in the form of  "Skippin' Jenny."  I've eaten this for years and never called it "Hoppin' John" nor "Skippin' Jenny." We also had cabbage. We didn't do that as a kid.

--I'm not in the least superstitious. But I like black eyed peas stewed with meaty pork bone, served over rice with greens. And I enjoy the tradition. So what harm?

--I ran a lot of calls, and overslept at the fire station.

--I did a lot of laundry, both at the fire house and at home, on New Year's Day.

--While I was on duty at the fire house, my daughter took down the tree and decorations. I had only to put them up into the attic when I got home. It feels very liberating.

--My younger daughter got an art set, which markers smell (respectively) like: honeysuckle, green apple, pine trees, marshmallows, "sea breeze", vanilla, cherry, berry, orange, spices, and lemons. Do we really want to be encouraging kids to be sniffing markers?

--I'm having more trouble than I thought, securing the right tree to put into my father's yard. Apparently 2012 was a bad year for pecans, and everyone bought up the good stock.

--It's been a bumper crop for the pecan nuts, though. Last night my daughters and wife and I shelled enough pecans to fill two and a half gallon bags with pure nut meat. That's about 9 pounds of meat, which we got out of our yard (from our neihbors' trees), all in one night, while watching a movie.

--I was surprised at how into the movie Taken my wife and kids were. Huh. A shoot-em-up, beat-'em-up thriller, with Liam Neeson (a personal favorite of my wife's) in it. There was even a moral in it for my daughters: Do what your Daddy says. Don't lie to your father. We all gave it thumbs up.

--Even with the chartered jet and knowledge of Paris, Liam Neeson's character seems to get a lot done in 96 hours. Apparently, he does so without sleep.  Then, after killing all the Albanians and all the Middle Easterners  in Paris, and after shooting the wife of one of the major deputy chiefs of the French spy syndicate, he takes his daughter and gets onto a flight to come back home. (Charter, again, I suppose.)

--I had half a fruit tart (a spoonfull is in the picture at upper left of the link) at La Madeleine French Bakery and Cafe yesterday. I also had half of blackberry and cream cheese croissant fresh out of the oven. This stuff is bring you to your knees good. Cheap, too, considering that I ate it while getting refills of coffee and complimentary fresh bread and butter. Those guys have a hell of a business model.

--I'm retiring cases from 2012. I had a lot of criminal cases to work on, and did very little traffic last month.

--I'm a complete sucker for those year-in-retrospective shows that come on about this time every year. I may write one for Better And Better.