Winter Solstice, Christmas and Hanukkah

• Today is the shortest day of the year. From tomorrow on, we get one more minute or so of light every day. And it’s the second (or third?) night of Hanukkah, another source of light in our life. And there are all the lights of Christmas. Here, I’m learning about luminarias, which are lights in bags (classically, candles set in sand in bags, but now, they’re probably electric candles) that are used to line walkways, porches and the tops of walls in celebration of the season. Most spectacularly and without par, are the sunsets. Two or three nights in the last week, I put on my sweatshirt and went to stand on the deck to watch the sunset in 360degree glory. I can see why southwest décor is often based in blues and peach to mauve to salmon to crimson. The décor of sunset – awe-ful.
  
  Bringing several stories to closure:
  
  Nick got home safely, and no worse for the car accident. He had a sore hand, but no breaks, and a twinge in his back. His sense of fairness was the more injured: the phone number the driver gave him appears to be false. But, the cops ran the license plate and he has the owner’s name and address if he needs it. What he DID bring home was a cold bug, which has blossomed into a very nasty cold that has kept him in bed most of this last week and the weekend.
• I picked him up at our very own Grant Co Airport. There were two different women there than on the occasion of Nick’s departure. Since his flight was late, and I had Nutmeg in the car with me, I asked the obvious question anticipating the obvious and negative response, “Can I bring my dog in?” Of course, they said. “Just let us put our rabbit away!” I had not noticed the rabbit in the cage on the floor by the counter. So I brought Nutmeg in who had a grand time checking everything out, and finding the dog toy left by some other greeter dog. Got into a wonderful and wide-ranging conversation with the women on duty – in this case there were two. We started with the rabbit, which led to falconry as a sport, to birding, to Hawaii (the big island) because one of the women lived there before Silver City and the Hawaiian crow, (the Alala) and Hawaiian hawk (the Io), to conservation and recycling, to the DC Solar Decathalon (some of you will know what that is) and I don’t know what else. T’was a great conversation to fill a spare time, until the pilot called in on the radio and suddenly they were all business.
• Nutmeg’s illness was caused by drinking creek water up at Steph’s the weekend before. Turns out humans can drink the water in New Mexico, but maybe dogs have to be careful to get their water from a sealed bottle? Anyway, she had a flagellate infection (infestation?) from parasites in the water up there. I guess Steph’s dogs are used to the little buggers, but not Nutmeg, to her discomfort and my dismay.

And beginning a new story or two:

• We discovered quite by accident that our house is still actively listed for sale! We have emailed the agent and her broker a couple of times pointing out this unhappy fact. You might remember that the house belongs to the agent and her builder-husband. They keep telling us that it was a misunderstanding and the house is definitely NOT for sale. But we keep finding it on Yahoo Real Estate and the local MLS. I feel very uncomfortable about this. I may ask a good friend out there to pose as an interested buyer and contact her to see whether she really says the house is off the market, and the listing is in error! Entrapment may be illegal, but you can always ask a question, right? We are wondering about her husband’s, the builder’s, financial stability because he’s got several spec houses on the market (not including ours, we hope). Mmmmm. I hope you don’t get an email from us in the next months giving you yet another new address.
• Nick sent in our memberships to WILL, which stands for something having to do with Life-long Learning. They are a membership organization affiliated with the University that offers adult learning classes, taught by professors from the university and other retired teachers and professors that live in the community. For one $50 membership/year, you can take as many classes as you want. We looked at their Spring catalog, and there are about 6 classes that look very interesting, including Pre-Beginners Spanish. I’ve never heard of a Pre-Beginners language class, but that sounds about our speed. Pre-beginners probably teaches you how to pronounce the basic sounds or elements of speech, such as not pronouncing h’s, j’s, and g’s in some cases, and l sounds like l, but ll sounds like y, and so on. I know I can use the classes. I took 2 semesters of Spanish through Mont Co public schools, and that, plus the little bit of Arabic I learned before going to Palestine in the early 90s and brushing up on my high-school French before going to Paris just left me confused. I start to say something in one language and I’m likely to finish the sentence in another language. It can be very embarrassing!

We hope you have a safe, warm, and brilliant celebration of light, whatever you call it, just as we hold you in light and peace at this season. Sonnie and Nick