Odd Moments

I had forgotten how funny The Odd Couple could be. I remember watching it on prime time TV fifty years ago, and have recently been watching it regularly on the Decades channel. Interestingly, I have yet to see the movie or stage show on which it was based. Such as that is, was, or evermore shall be, I like the show, then and now, although perhaps I didn't get all the jokes as a pre-teen.

But that's not really why I bring it up. What strikes me most is the revelation that maybe I'm living what old people lived, well, fifty years ago. I'm seeing what was once new to me but is now aged. Quite aged. Very significantly aged.

To offer a frame of reference, I became a Beatles fan after I bought Nowhere Man off the oldies rack at the downtown Detroit Kresge's in 1973 That on its own should age me. It had been released as a single in 1966.  So in my 13 year old mind, seven years was old. Very old. Now, I watch something seven times that age, a show I watched when I was 13, and think, that's not so old.

So I suppose in watching Tony Randall and Jack Klugman I find myself feeling what I think my grandparents may have felt, say, in 1972 listening to music from 1925. There's only problem.

I don't feel that old.

The ineffective pep talk

Me Pops, you need to know (as many of you do) was the oldest of eight in his family. Me Uncle John whom we call Zeke was the youngest, and there were twelve years between them. Just in front of Uncle John at positions 6 and 7 in the family order were two other sons. The four of them at one time or another worked for me Grandpa Joe in his welding shop. Now you have all the information you need in order to understand my tale today.

Zeke was a young teenager and work simply wasn't going well for him one day. Try as he might, whatever he touched did not turn to gold. All turned to dust, maybe, and he'd even have to sweep that up. It was, according to me Pops, a rough day for the kid.

So Pops decided to do what a good elder brother should. When there was a break in the action, he sat down with his youngest sibling to offer encouragement. Ah, give it time, things will go better, stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing. Pops decided to finish the speech with a flourish. Waving an arm across the inside of the Shop he said, "And remember, Zeke, one day all this will be yours."

Uninspired by the sage words of me Pops Uncle John sat, dropping his shoulders a bit and becoming even more glum. "When you and Mike and Jim (two brothers between Dad and Zeke) get done with it, I don't know if I want it." he said.

Until the last time he told that story, me Pops laughed loudly over it. Honesty can hurt. But it can be darn funny too.

Dad at 85

Me Pops would have been 85 today. Seeing as his Pops, me Grandpa Joe, barely took care of himself while taking a lot of silly risks, made 86, I sure didn't expect the old man to go home at 77. But such is life, eh?

I can only rarely hear Dad's voice anymore yet I hear his laugh regularly and readily. When I think of it, I hear it, simple as that. I might hear single words. I can hear him rap on my bedroom door and say, "Marty" when it was time to get up for school or work from when I was growing up. Underlying parental authority sticks with us, perhaps.

The only time I can actually hear his voice for more than a word is when I think of him chanting in Latin. About twenty five years ago my wife and I took the kids to participate in a novena, nine days of prayer, at old St. Dominic's one summer. We wanted to instill in them the idea of prayer as a habit. The services as such began at 7 each evening. Everyone present participated in the prayers, which ended with the hymn O Salutaris Hostia. It was written by St. Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day is also today. 

Unexpectedly but unsurprisingly Dad was participating in the novena as well. I always rather believed that he did it to help his grandkids appreciate prayer too, through leading by example. I still hear him plainly at the end of each night, chanting: O Salutaris Hostia! Quae caeli pandis ostium! Bella premunt Hostilia; Da robur, fer auxilium! I especially hear his voice raise at Da robur, with an honest lilt while singing fer auxilium! 

He had a good voice. And ain't it something that I hear me Pops the clearest chanting an 800 year old Latin anthem?

Happy 85th birthday Pops.

For those interested an English translation of the hymn is:

O SAVING Victim opening wide
The gate of heaven to all below.
Our foes press on from every side;
Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.

Twenty One Dollars and Thirty Seven Cents

There was a line yesterday at UPS as I went to ship a package. It was a little slow, nothing terrible, but it led to me killing time by reading the various posters about what can and cannot be shipped via UPS.

Radioactive materials, for one, UPS will not accept. It made me wonder if someone had actually tried to do that.

Another chart listed that you cannot ship dead animals. I guess that means you can ship live ones, right?

On a longer list of what they won't ship was, 'Objects of Unusual Value'. My immediate thought was, so, something that costs $21.37? 

That strikes me as an unusual value. Have you ever seen something priced for $21.37? Do stores ever advertise: "Buy now at the special discount price of $21.37?" I know that in all my years in sales I have never sold or bought anything for Twenty One Dollars and Thirty Seven Cents. Not. Once.

So I guess that counts, doesn't it?

The snow fairies

I got out the door early and shoveled the sidewalks this morning. Then I brushed off the cars. I knew it had to happen sometime. It's difficult to escape from some form of winter in the D. But it makes me pine for the days of yore.

There was a time in my life when someone else would do the walks for me. I would politely ask them, with no underlying threats involved whatsoever, and they would take shovels and clear the walk. I would gratefully watch them through the windows with a hot cup of coffee. Or hot chocolate. Or something...warmer. And they would clear the snow.

Our kids are supposed to grow up and go on their own, right? But isn't there a law somewhere that they're still supposed to come home after winter storms and clear our walks? 

Asking for a friend.

NC Chicken

Mom likes cheeseburgers. That's fine. She also likes for you to have what she's having. I can live with that. But I have to admit eating cheeseburgers every Sunday gets old. So yesterday as we were out and about I suggested, "Hey, what about chicken for lunch?"

She brightened up and responded, much to my delight, "That sounds great!"

Quickly enough a KFC appeared. "Is Kentucky Fried Chicken okay?" I asked Mom. She said yes. Then as a joke I added, "Unless you want Tennessee friend chicken."

She grimaced at that and said sternly, "North Carolina fried chicken."

I have to agree that is the best, though we settled for KFC.

For those of you who don't know, Mom is North Carolina borned and raised.

Whither Unity?

President Biden is calling for unity. Well, all right. I'm for unity too. Yet that is in fact where the trouble begins: unity for what purpose or to what degree is he asking of me?

If you wish me to unite with you for abortion rights the answer is a hard no. There is no unity on that issue: either you get your way or I get mine, simple as that. I will do what I can to fight the Biden Administration there. I will not unify with the President or anyone else in favor of abortion.

If you mean unite in the sense that we do not go to war on the question, I'm down with that. I'm okay with such basic unity. We agree to refrain from physically slapping one another around when we disagree, even emphatically. Cool beans.

Perhaps that is what the President meant in his inaugural address. Yet I don't believe so. I think all it was to him was a baseless platitude, a throwaway sentiment, a gushy pandering which serves little purpose but to appear, on the surface, good. "Did you hear that?" he hopes people will say. "Biden wants unity."

That is as empty of meaning as wanting diversity or education or tolerance. Diversity only means A isn't B. This fails to address the underlying and potentially critical questions of the real differences between A and B. 

Education towards what purpose? Tolerance of what and why? Those questions ask, properly, for the contexts in which those words might have useful meaning. The same with unity. The Soviet Union had unity. But would you really want to have lived there?

As it is, without consideration of the what abouts and whys surrounding it, pleas for unity belong on the trash heap of overused, overhyped, and little understood words such as diversity and tolerance. Biden wanted nothing but a sound bite. I'm sure he got it.

Canada and Indiana

Can you mail a car? Further, can you mail a car internationally?

I have seen many unusual sights in my travels. Yet what I saw yesterday while coming home from a sales trip might qualify as the oddest.

Driving north on Interstate 75 near Monroe, Michigan I saw a Canada Post van. That was strange enough. But what really put the emphasis on the weird-o-meter was that the van, a Canada Post van I remind you, was towing a car. A car with Indiana plates.

So, can you mail a car internationally? Any of my Canadian friends have an explanation you might offer?

Soap powder Cloyce

Yesterday I spoke about a particularly tight character whom I called Cloyce, just to give him a name. His cheap ways went beyond drain snake repair.

He himself admitted to me Pops that he couldn't let his own wife go shopping on her own. "Oh, Bill, she'd spend a nickel too much on soap powder (non-liquid laundry detergent to those too young to know what soap powder is) if I wasn't right there to watch her," he explained one day to the old man. Granted, a nickel meant more in 1968; you could still get nickel Hershey bars then for example, even though those paled next to the nickel chocolate bars of thirty years before that. 

Pops just shook his head at the admission.

Yet despite how hard he held the dollar legend had it that old Cloyce could be known to go nuts with his money in one place: a carnival. We never heard it from Cloyce of course but from other plumbers who knew him. Several such common acquaintances told me Pops that Cloyce would actually spend wildly at fairs on games of chance. He could not get enough of the wheel of fortune, apparently.

"Big Six wheels would have Cloyce all starry-eyed," said one drain cleaner. "He'd keep betting quarters until his old lady fetched him home," another told Dad. Bet that cost him a lot of soap powders, thought me Pops to himself. 

I guess we all have our devils. Cloyce apparently had two. 

Spliced Cloyce

I don't think you need to know a lot about drain snake cables to understand this tale.

Back in the 60s and 70s there was this one plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who was as the parlance says, so tight he squeeked. He had the first dollar he ever made. He'd squeeze a penny so hard Lincoln would yell. You get the picture.

One day old Cloyce came into the Shop to have me Pops repair his cable, which had broken. Again. When a snake cable breaks you can use a threaded metal piece called a splice to fix the break. In this particular case the cable was broken less than 18 inches from the end. Typically in such instances Pops would put on an end fitting rather than a splice, as splices too close to a cable end can cause problems. Trust me on that.

So the old man says to Cloyce, "I'll just put an end fitting on."

Cloyce was aghast. He was almost panic stricken at the thought. "Oh, no, Bill, splice it. I can't lose any length; that's my good cable.

Me Pops looked over the snake. He counted 18 splices in Cloyce's 'good' cable. The thing needed to be replaced, but Cloyce was too tight for that. So Dad spliced it and charged accordingly. 

The fact is that with over 18 splices (well, 19) he could have more than paid for a new cable. Probably two, honestly. Yet that's simply not how old Cloyce thought.

Curious George and the KC-8

Yesterday morning I was confused (quiet, Ron). I took a call while at home grabbing a sandwich for lunch. The customer was asking if his machine was ready, one which needed a KC-8 gear shaft. Don't worry about what that is (although I'll tell you if you insist; are those crickets?) as it's not important to the story. I told him no, sorry, at which point he asked if he could get it by 2. I said that would be no problem.

The interesting thing is that right before lunch I had finished installing a KC-8 on a machine which I promised for Noon. Yet upon returning to the Shop I saw that I had actually repaired the unit for the guy who had called as I ate. I had repaired the wrong machine. Fortunately I had time to get the other done promptly, before that customer had come for it. Thank goodness for tardiness sometimes.

In any case that allowed me to call the guy from my lunch straight away and tell him he was ready after all and he could come get his machine at his convenience. But as I explained the situation to me brother Phil he remarked, "In other words, you pulled a Curious George."

"Huh?" I asked, further confused.

"You did the wrong thing but it worked out well."

He has a point there, doesn't he?

Monday Holidays 2021

You may as well say, there he goes again. It's time a for regular rant of mine about the Monday Holiday law.

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and that's fine. If anyone deserves a holiday it's the icon of the Civil Rights movement. But for those of you who don't know, I never liked moving holidays to Mondays. I get the reason for it: three day weekends. I don't doubt that makes things like business scheduling easier or that it gives people the opportunity to plan for longer breaks. Yet I can't help but believe that such mundane and arguably selfish concerns distract from the real point of honoring someone or something.

If we are supposed to remember and honor Dr. King why aren't we remembering and honoring him on a day which would have meant something to him? Why does his holiday get moved around to suit our purposes? I would argue that it smacks of nonchalance, of dishonor.  However so subtly we're putting our business and/or personal lives ahead actually honoring a man, woman, concept, or event.

Now while I'm sure Dr. King or President Washington would likely, in their modesty, themselves argue they are underserving of such laurels I believe that if we're going to look past that (as we should, with all respect) then let's at least honor them on a day of import to them. It doesn't even have to be a birthday, birthdays after all being somewhat benign compared to what a man or woman actually achieved in life. It could be to commemorate I Have a Dream Speech or a Washington's elevation to Commander of the Continental Army or any number of things. But pick a day which would be important to what they stood for and stick with it.

Or at least stick with their actual birthdays. Monday Holidays detract rather than uplift the person or place or event they purport to recall.

Near reunions

One day back in 2003, me Pops, me self, and me son Charlie sat at the office in the Shop, drinking coffee. Hey, it was a well deserved break. We'd been working hard that day.

Anyway, for whatever reason me Pops was staring up at the calendar on the wall. He observed, "Man, time flies. I have my fiftieth high school reunion coming up."

Curious myself about mine then I did some quick math and said, "Yeah, really. Looks like my twenty-fifth is next year." 

As a little smarmy smile grew on his face, me son Charlie remarked, "I'm coming up on my second."

Touche, boy. Touche.

I got a million of 'em

I'm tired of the drama, aren't you? So how about let's not be dramatic today? I give you: funny Facebook updates!

A friend posted earlier this week: What if there were no hypothetical questions?

An update of mine a few years ago, which I think was original, was: Placebos cured my hypochondria!

Another friend remarked: They say we can have gatherings of 8 people without issues. But I don't know 8 people without issues.

How about this: Luckily for you, mirrors can't laugh out loud.

Until tomorrow...

Politics Not Aside

I have never unfriended anyone on Facebook because of political or philosophic differences. Not once. But as of a few minutes ago I have been unfriended by a least three people in the past few months for just that. I suspect there have been more. That's just sad, especially as they're all folks whom I had always respected. I still do. It's bewildering.

I know myself well enough to know that I can come on strong, and that even at times to have been simply bull headed or patently unfair. When I realize my sin or am properly called out, I apologize, and try to do better. I don't know what else there is to do.

It can be a struggle, especially with things near and dear to ourselves. But if we can't stay friends even after pointed exchanges on important subjects, well, I'm at a loss for explanation. Don't we want to talk? Don't we want to understand one another, and help each other to alter attitudes as need be?

If we can't talk, what can we do? If we can't talk, where will our lack of communication take us? That fear alone should cause us to talk rather than shut others out.

 

 

The Smoking Van

Just to be straight with you, dear readers, I don't care one whit whether you smoke dope or not. Your choice. The truth is I've come to the point that I think even drugs beyond marijuana should be legalized, the whole kit and kaboodle. We spend too much money fighting them and our prisons are too crowded with drug offenders. Legalize the whole lot of them, and then treat them like alcohol offenders and bust those who drive high and so forth. Yet none of that means I don't cast a scornful eye on outrageous drug use.

Monday morning at 10 o'clock I had two young plumbers (or guys who pass themselves off to be plumbers) pull up to the Shop, needing a chuck on their drain cleaning machine. Fine. I put on the part and took their money. But they were not only higher than kites, their van emitted enough smoke that you may have thought it on fire. When they opened the sliding door to bring their machine in, literally clouds of smoke poured out of the vehicle. If you've seen, I believe it's the comedy Scary Movie, you would have an idea what I mean. In that film, at one point a group of teens were smoking so much weed that their car looked like a cloud had been contained inside.

The van these fellows drove was very nearly like that. They'd picked up a cloud and were showing it the sights.

I can't believe that anyone would let them into their house to snake a drain. Further, I can't imagine the kind of house which would allow them in, although apparently they exist. 

And all this at Ten AM on a Monday. I couldn't wait for them to go away. The next three customers, spread out over about an hour, remarked on the smell of weed in my Shop afterwards. It was that bad. Bad enough that my conscience wonders if maybe I should have gotten their license plate and called the cops.

Yeesh.

Church hymn funny

We hear all kinds of hymns in Church, some memorable, many forgettable, and perhaps even a few which simply don't fall off the tongue well at all. And some, not that I'm an expert in religious music, which are pretty easily interpreted by a lay person as to content and meaning. One such hymn which is easy to sing and has the proper message for a God-fearing institution is All Are Welcome. 

The basic refrain is All are welcome! All are welcome! All are welcome in this place. It's exactly the kind of music and singing one should expect in Church. And I dare say, and again I'm no sage on Church music, that it's pretty obviously a processional hymn, one to be used as people congregate, as they come into the Church. You would use it at the start of a liturgy, wouldn't you?

I know I would. Yet the organist (I'm sorry, music minister, and I suppose I do mean that just a bit snidely, for reasons I may get into at another time) at a Church we once attended played All Are Welcome as the recessional, that is, as we left Mass. He did this routinely. Maybe I'm missing something, but it never seemed appropriate.

Or, as my family took to singing it, perhaps a little quietly so as not to be too heretical, All are Welcome! All are Welcome! All are Welcome, leave this place! 

I think it's funny, in part because Snarky Marty thinks the change clever, as the adjusted lines feel more appropriate to leaving rather than arriving at Church. But if this qualifies me for extra time in purgatory, please help my cause and sing it at the beginning of my funeral. Thank you.

Ushered out twice

My brother Phil had a good friend, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who spent about twenty years as a reservist with the Detroit Police. He never did much more than cover at baseball and hockey games but hey, it helped the regular cops out. 

Once Cloyce was working at a baseball game at old Tiger Stadium when, as part of his rounds, he stopped by the DPD office under the stands. The sergeant, indicating a sad looking fellow sitting over to the side, told Cloyce to escort the guy from the premises for public drunkenness. So Cloyce did. 

About three innings later Cloyce was back by the patrol room, and the sergeant told him to show another guy the door. The same guy, in fact. "Isn't he the one I took out before?" Cloyce asked. 

"He bought another ticket and came back in," the sergeant answered with a shrug. Warning the drunk not to return a third time or he'd face a night in jail, the sergeant gave him over to Cloyce. 

Cloyce spent the rest of the game keeping a sharp eye out for the miscreant. He didn't want his own reputation soiled if the guy actually did get back in the stadium.

They'll do it every time

Until yesterday when I had it fixed I was having the oddest trouble with my new old van. I could only fill the gas tank slowly. The flow would cut off almost immediately if I tried to fill up at regular speed. It wasn't a huge problem; it required simply putting the gas in slow. But it was annoying, especially in the cold.

After dealing with it for about a month I decided to get it checked. It turns out that it wasn't venting correctly, a tiny pipe of some sort being plugged. The vent pipe allowed air to escape from the tank as it filled. With it blocked the air couldn't go anywhere unless the gas flow was slow enough to let it go out the larger tube where gas is added.

That perhaps inadequate explanation aside, I had resolved that, it not being the worst trouble in the world, I didn't want to spend too much. Mentally I settled on $200. More than that and I would just deal with it.

Within a couple hours my mechanic called me with an estimate of $202.57.

Of course I had him do it. But my shoulders actually slumped and I let out a sigh when he gave me that figure. It was like, really, forces of nature? Do you have to tease like that?

On the other hand I am rather anxious to gas up later today.

Skintight January

It was twenty-eight degrees at 6:30 this morning when I left my house for my morning walk. But I like walking, I need the exercise, and the the paths are clear. So I walk.

This morning made four mornings in the last six where I've made my trek. If the extended weather forecast can be relied on, an admittedly dubious proposition seeing as it rarely is accurate, I should be able to enjoy a daily constitutional for most of the next ten or twelve days. But last week at this time for example it was supposed to crack 40 today. We're actually looking at a high of 31. But Miami will be underwater in the year 2100 due to among other things weather changes, and we know that for a fact.

Done pontificating. So although cold and dark the winter world is still with its wonder in the early morning. A pretty crescent moon poked through the clouds for me, and night in the city is always quieter than day, even comparing 6:30 in January to 6:30 in June. 

The secret to cold weather exercise I will say obviously enough is dressing for it. In June it's shorts and a tee shirt. In January it's a heavy coat on top of a hoodie. I have however found, well, it's not really classic thermal underwear as it's not cotton. It's some type of artificial material not unlike nylon, and it is warm. It makes the Marty walk more palatable. My only complaint is that it's skintight and thus kind of uncomfortable. 

I know, I know. The adjective skintight anywhere near the proper noun Marty makes me cringe too.

A pox on both your houses

I'm mad at all of you right now and I don't mind saying it.

For starters, you folks on the left can can it. After spending all summer trying to play down rioting which caused billions of dollars in damage while also costing lives (and repressing our rights in the meanwhile) you don't have the moral authority to lecture me on what's happened in Washington. Keep your tsk-tsking to yourself. I don't wanna hear it.

To you rioters in the Capital, for shame. How could you possibly think this would help? It's simply wrong. Like it or not, Biden is going to be President. President Trump has made his case and it's come to naught. Has it occurred to you that this election might just be legit? Stop being petulant. You're only giving the political left and its media allies ammo. You should know better.

What this country needs right now is for Dad to loosen his belt and cough and say, "Now that'll do." Children, the whole friggin' lot of you.

Shopping cart snake

Me Pops could fix a lot of things on drain snakes. Yet there were a few things beyond him; at least one of those you might forgive him his inability to repair.

One day this guy, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, brought in a machine, if you could call it that. The man had cobbled it together apparently with whatever he could find which was even vaguely useful. The motor was from a dryer, the drum looked like a trash can reinforced somehow with long steel rods, and the belt a mere rope tied to fit. It was all bolted upon the frame of an old grocery cart. It looked, uh, ah, er, well, saying it reminded you of a Rube Goldberg is unfair to Goldberg's admitted cleverness. But it worked somehow, at least for awhile.

One day the frame broke. No, it more than broke, it fairly shattered under the weight and the pressure of a spinning 'drum' with a heavy cable. Cloyce brought it in to the Shop for repair. "You'll have to leave it until tomorrow, Cloyce," me Pops explained.

Cloyce wanted it while he waited. "Why can't you do it now?" he demanded.

"I gotta wait until Kroger's closes tonight so I can go steal a shopping cart!" the old man barked back. Then he just told Cloyce to just get the thing outta there.

So maybe it wasn't that he couldn't fix it but simply didn't want the bother.

The Gomez file

This morning at work I had to file down a part in repairing a machine. The user of this particular machine had broken a bearing and, rather than back off on the pressure which was on the bearing or even taking a minute to check why said bearing was not working, said user increased the pressure until he had caused damage to the bearing holder. So rather than simply needing a bearing replaced I now had to file down the warped part of the bearing holder so that it would work. Sometimes people make a repair job more extensive and expensive when they don't just stop what they're doing and try to consider why their machine isn't working as it should. Customers, eh?

So I had to file down the bearing holder before replacing the bearing. This required a rather large file as there was a large flat area which I needed to smooth. I secured the part in my vise and began filing.

The job went well. I believe what helped was that I channeled my inner Gomez in applying the file. You know that scene in the old Addams Family TV show where John Astin (who played Gomez Addams of course) is filing away at something, and sneering as he did so? That was me around 10 AM today, sneering at that part, knowing that it would succumb to my will.

This afternoon, well, I get to make my model trains crash.

She still can joke

It can be difficult not to be melancholy when I take me Mom out on Sunday afternoons. Her mind is failing, and she's so obviously just a shell of the woman she once was that, well, it gets rough. So what I try to do is shoot some humor into our trips, as she is yet able to play along. It's a way that we can interact, and it does make the new memories fonder.

Yesterday was no different. She frequently talks about how much she enjoys just riding around, both with me on Sundays and with my siblings at other times. A typical point yesterday was when she said, "I love riding around!"

"I do too," I agreed. "I like the company too!" I added.

"I like the company too," me Mom responded.

Simply trying to tease I next remarked, "You know, one of is is probably lying."

Mom got a little impish grin on her face. Then she answered, trying to sound sheepish, "Well, that might be me."

I couldn't top it.

I'm only sleeping

Yesterday was January 1, 2021. It also was also the eighth straight time I did not stay up to greet the new Year. 

Why do I think this? Because it first happened when 2012 became 2013. I did that consciously in homage to America's teenager, Dick Clark. He had helped us greet the new year for, well, many new years, but had passed away in April 2012. So I made up my mind not to greet 2013 without him.

Since then I've thought,  I don't need to stay up simply to hear my fellow Detroiters strafing the sky with their errant bullets. What really is the point in that?

I look forward to the new year every new year. But I need my sleep (ok, I just want it), and waking up at three AM with the first thought, hey, it's a new year, ain't a bad way to greet it.

Resolved

New Years Day 2021 is here. So now it's resolution time.

Ah, the hell with it. Try to be better than you were before and let it go at that. Sure, specifics are nice. And we all need goals, something to aim for to perhaps measure how much better we become. But the real measure of a man (and a woman too) is in the immeasurable. What is immeasurable?

Being kind. Being charitable. Being helpful. You never know exactly how effective those things may be. But you know in your heart and your head that they will. 

Happy New Year everyone.