My determination this morning took me as far as Sainsbury’s Local (which is not very far, but does mean I have to cross the road – however, the city council kindly installed a zebra crossing last year, so it’s a lot easier than it used to be.) I thought it was raining, but I needed milk so made myself go anyway, and the rain stopped.
It’s the second today, and the second and the seventeenth are important days with regard to the weather blanket, because they are days for starting new rows (because there are sixteen squares in a row, and obviously each day’s square can’t be done till the next day at the earliest, because it’s done on the basis of actual conditions, not forecasts). The first row for each month starts with a square indicating the name of the month, followed by 15 days (or 14 and one indicating the year for February), and the second row has 16 day squares, or 15 and a filler square at the end for a 30 day month (or the other half of the year, 14 days and a filler square or 15 days if it’s a leap year.) The other thing that happens at the ends of the rows is that I add the next bit of the border to the new one and the one immediately before (which was completed the day before, because the dates run left to right for the first half of the month and right to left for the second).
That might sound confusing, but it’s really simple in practice, and it means that today I need to do a square for yesterday and one saying ‘Nov’ to start the next row (I do them in that order for reasons which are a bit too technical to go into here), and then extend the border over the end of the previous row and the beginning of the new one.
To anybody who doesn’t at least know me on Facebook the above will sound like complete gobbledegook, but hopefully the illustration will help.
Before I went to Sainsbury’s I filled a jug with cold water to fill up the coffee maker then knocked it all over the counter, and had to move the spice rack out of the way, which meant that quite a few of the jars fell out, though fortunately nothing smashed and no lids came off.
Shit Happens – the First Noble Truth of Buddhism.
‘When the demon is at your door/In the morning it won’t be there no more/Any major dude will tell you.’ Steely Dan, Any Major Dude. I guess the Buddha was one of the most Major of Major Dudes.
Cause and effect – everything happens for a reason – or a complex of reasons, in the sense of the set conditions which cause it, but not in the sense that it has a purpose. Purpose implies a guiding consciousness – and on the question of an overall consciousness/purpose for everything, the jury’s still out.