Happy Newtonmas!

I’m sitting here early on Sunday morning, with a chocolate peppermint pecan pie baking in the oven for our usual Christmas dinner at the Drakes (this year, we’ll be bringing our menorah over to light the first candle of Chanukah, too).

Jeff’s up, so I’ve already lost custody of the paper, though I hope to retrieve it before we go to the JCC to work out (wonder if they’ll have turned off the music, since it’s almost certainly going to have a high Christmas content). With nothing handy to read, I turned to the computer and got caught up on my Gmail and RSS feeds (boy, does that ever feel good!), and discovered from Hal that today is Newtonmas, too.

I wish I’d known that yesterday, while we were talking to the people moving in to Diane’s dad’s house. I knew that they were Palestinian, but I didn’t know if they were Christian, Muslim, or something else, and so, as we were finishing our conversation, I ended with “Happy Holiday,” to which she replied “Tomorrow isn’t a holiday for us, but Happy Chanukah to you”. I felt awkward, and said, “well, enjoy New Year’s”. If only I could have wished her a Happy Newtonmas!

Even if they did celebrate Christmas, I’m sure she would be busy cleaning the house today anyway — they’re moving in on the 29th, and there’s 50 years of stuff in the house for them to go through. She’s putting anything which seems like it requires a decision in a storage area in the attic; we’ve told her it’s OK to do anything she wants with the furniture, but there’s still a ton (probably literally) of papers in various places in the house. I’m not sure when Diane or her brother will be able to make a trip to Valley Stream and sort, but I’m sure it’s going to be a busy trip when it happens.

An empty inbox is a happy inbox

One of the books which made an impression on me this year was David Allen‘s Getting Things Done.

I can’t say that I’ve completely internalized the GTD system, but a lot of it makes sense. One item which resonates very strongly with me is the need to keep one’s inbox clear — rather than reading a piece of mail, then leaving it in the inbox, it’s better to move it to an “actions pending” file if it can’t be dealt with immediately. That way, the inbox is “new news”, and you don’t have to keep touching old stuff over and over again.

But even though having a clear inbox is a goal, it’s also very difficult for me to do. And once I fall off the wagon, so to speak, it’s very difficult to get clear again. But I managed to clear my work inbox before I left a week ago (I’m sure it’s loaded now, but I haven’t looked at it, so that doesn’t count). And I spent most of today clearing my Gmail inbox, which was even harder work.

Most of what I’d left in my Gmail inbox came from one of two sources: The Union for Reform Judaism‘s weekly Torat Chayim and daily Ten Minutes of Torah mailings accounted for the biggest share, along with Kolel’s weekly commentary. I’d fallen behind while travelling some time during the summer, and every time I thought about catching up, the size of the task discouraged me. And so I fell behind further every week. But today seemed like a good opportunity to make a dent in the backlog, and once I got started, I got into a rhythm. I did take a few breaks, but I finally caught up.

Of course, there’ll be new mailings next week (as well as the other stuff which arrives in the mail), but at least for tonight, I feel that I’ve accomplished something, just in time for Chanukah.

Costco strikes again

We just finished the last of a bottle of Kirkland Select 2004 Oregon Pinot Noir, purchased on a whim on a recent trip to Costco. I hope I bought more than one (I haven’t checked), because it was very pleasant, and, if memory serves, reasonably priced. Of course, now that the shopping season is over, it’s safe to go back to Costco again — but since only 7000 cases were made, they may not have any left anyway.

I could tell that shopping fever had cooled when we went to lunch at the Tony and Alba’s near Valley Fair; unlike our trip there a month ago, it was easy to find parking, and when we drove past Valley Fair, there were a few empty parking spaces visible there. Even though we needed to pick up a couple of small last-minute gifts, we decided to skip the mall; instead, we took advantage of the wonderful weather to walk to Starbucks, where I was pretty sure we could find some chocolate — and I was right, though the selection wasn’t as broad as it usually is.

Awfully close to 45mpg

For years, I’ve kept track of the mileage I get at every fill-up, with the thought that if it changes significantly, it might mean problems with the car. But I’ve never bothered to look at the mileage closely, until today.

I was curious about the mileage I got on the trip to Tucson, and whether it was significantly different than the mileage I get in normal driving. So I brought in my logbook and started entering data; when I finished, I’d discovered that my cumulative average mileage had been very close to 45mpg since my second fill-up, even though the individual fill-ups gave me very irregular results (especially the one where the automatic shutoff on the pump didn’t work and I pumped 11 gallons, some of which went outside the car instead of in the tank!).

The average mileage for the Tucson trip, 45.9 mpg, was slightly higher than my long-term average of 45.0 mpg, but not by a lot. On the other hand, my average speed on the Tucson trip was undoubtedly significantly higher than my normal speed — most of the distance was on roads with 70 or 75 mph limits, and we spent a lot of time at or above 80 mph (just keeping up with traffic, of course). Around here, the limit is 65, and traffic usually moves about 70.

Diane’s car gets somewhat lower mileage (currently 44.3 mpg long-term), but it’s going up with almost every fill-up.

Naturally, neither of these numbers comes close to the EPA figure of 60 city, 51 highway, 55 combined, but they are much better than the 20mpg or so I was getting from the Saab most of the time!

Home again!

We had a long and mostly uneventful drive home from Palm Desert today; I had expected us to arrive home at 6, but we made it just after 5:30, greatly surprising our housesitters, who didn’t expect us until tomorrow. I guess communicating via blog is not the most reliable method possible.

One reason we got home early is that we decided not to have lunch at a restaurant; instead, we stopped at Trader Joe’s in Monrovia and picked up some sandwiches and salads, which we ate at the Tejon Pass Rest Area. This saved us at least half-an-hour and $20, as well as probably saving us from a pile of calories we didn’t need.

But while we were at Trader Joe’s, I was surprised to hear my phone ring; it was Diane’s dad, with the news that he’d gotten an offer on his house. This was a real surprise, since he hadn’t put it on the market yet — the offer came from a neighbor who knew he was planning to sell. I guess the market there is hot!

It was a good trip, but it’s good to be home. Tomorrow, I look forward to having the DirecTV guy show up (there was an automated message from them waiting for us on the answering machine, confirming the appointment) and fix whatever’s wrong with the system.