Today

Today I am going to write a quick blog post, entirely because this is the last day of the December writing challenge. (For a while I didn't count blogging toward the challenge, but I decided to be flexible about that across Christmas and New Year's.)

Today is the feast of St. André Bessette, who spent his life telling people, "Hey, St. Joseph can help you out with that." We also always celebrate the Three Kings on January 6, instead of whichever random date the Sunday falls on. So after I fold a load of laundry we are going to embark on some family fun: a trip to see The Last Jedi, followed by pizza (Whole 30 starts tomorrow; gather ye breadcrumbs while ye may), followed by little presents, followed by the ritual Getting The Tree The Heck Out Of My Living Room. This year I think we will institute a fun new ritual, Betting On Whether The Robot Vacuum Will Pick Up Your Personal Pine Needle, like the third millennium version of Pooh-Sticks.

Oh! Speaking of betting: I have been getting a bunch of solicitation emails lately. Hi, Jamie! We'd like to write a high-quality post for your awesome blog at mostgladly.net! Usually they have some loose connection to something I've actually written about, but most recently I got one from a "leading gaming and sports betting site." I would have to screw up my face and think a bit to come up with topics less likely to fly here. A Celebration of Cigars? Winning Band-Saw Hacks? I don't even know.

Speaking of the robot vacuum: it's working pretty well. It's a little alarming to see how much crud it sucks up from floors that didn't actually seem to be all that crud-covered. It is interjecting fewer Chinese comments as it goes about its business, though it still seems perplexed by the number of chairs in our dining room. It is strangely fascinating: we get the floor ready for it and then sit with our feet drawn up, watching it feel its way blindly around our space. "Ching shao," it seems to say with a falling intonation, and I wonder to myself whether that's a word-level falling intonation or a sentence-level falling intonation. So far it has not unleashed any robot overlords on Gladlyville, but watch this space for updates. And if you see any posts on sports betting strategies, maybe let Typepad know that I've been hacked.

Happy Epiphany! May your January be free of pine needles on the carpet.