January 23: Useful Thing, Taking a Nap, Cold Temperatures

A little information from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.  Partly it has a practical value.  You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy River Moth; set it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you--daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

You'll have to forgive me if I stop there with the towel passage.  There's more to come tomorrow.  However, I find myself quite tired tonight.  I just got back from a liturgy-planning meeting at church.  It was important stuff, but, after working and teaching and coming home to clean the bathroom, I did not have attention to spare.  The only thing that kept me going at the meeting were the snacks and wine.  That's right.  There was alcohol.  (Well, it was a Catholic gathering.)  So, I sat eating cheese and crackers and Chex mix and drinking red wine.

That passage from Hitchhiker's is all about the uses of the towel, focusing on its versatility.  I, on the other hand, do not feel very useful at the moment.  In fact, I'm barely awake right now.  All I can think about is taking a nap.  My wife and son and daughter aren't home, so the house is completely silent.  I could do it.

. . .

I'm back.  Took about a 45-minute snooze.  And now it's almost 10 p.m.  Just checked my weather app.  There's a huge storm blowing in.  And then, for the next week or so, temperatures that aren't going to climb much above a single degree.  In fact, some days the high temps aren't going to get above -6.  I have a feeling my kids are going to have a few days off school next week.

This weekend, in the midst of this arctic freeze, I head west to Calumet for a couple days.  I don't think I'll be packing any towels, just a couple sweaters and a bathing suit.  I'll be performing in a radio show on Saturday evening.  Lots of rehearsal time on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.  I simply hope that my voice will hold out, and that I won't have a coughing fit during the recording.

That's what's on my mind tonight.  Towels.  Naps.  Cold temperatures.  Coughing.  I know it's not exciting.

Tomorrow night, it's poetry.  A workshop that I'm conducting, come high water or snowstorm.  Poetry doesn't take a day off.

And neither does Saint Marty.