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Another New Year visitor.
Mr Cooper.
He came by looking for lunch.
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Except for the turn of the millennium, New Year has always been rather a non-event for me.
My friend Tim who was then still active in the travel industry, spent the turn of the millennium leap-frogging back and forth across the International Dateline.
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He was one of the escorts on an exclusive round-the-world charter which positioned itself to Samoa for December 31st so the punters could be among the first to welcome the 3rd millennium.
Whoopee.
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It takes a bit to impress me.
It wasn’t even a Concorde charter.
She did many round-the-worlds.
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It was quite enough for me to process passengers at an airport. The idea of flying around with them for weeks was my idea of hell.
Tim is much more easy-going, but even he had a belly full of their demands and complaints at times.
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This past New Year was uneventful as always although on the eve, I went off to have an eco-cardiogram and placement of a 24-hour Holter-monitor.
The doc decided I should have skipping heart beats and occasional over-speeding checked out.
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It’s been 40 years since I first developed an arrhythmia. That Holter-monitor was a bulky thing with lots of wires and a large reader that attached to my belt. Not the sort of thing you want to lump around at work, though I managed to conceal it.
The tiny modern monitor simply sticks on above the heart and you barely notice it.
The 1986 heart murmur unaccountably disappeared somewhere in Tibet.
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Who knows what brought it back? Old age partly, but heart defects run in the family.
Perhaps it was just too much 2024.
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The test was done at Saratoga Hospital which had me remembering the two events of 2021 that caused me to be admitted to that facility.
Now, I can laugh!
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It was an afternoon appointment and as we drove home, the Sun was sinking fast.
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An excuse for more cloud pictures.
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And silhouettes.
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Lately I can’t stop seeing them.
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Flag at half mast for President Carter.
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What is so special about silhouettes?
Is it that you are left to imagine?
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There are some things I absolutely cannot look at.
At least two faces, for starters.
But that’s not what I mean.
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Certain colour combinations, like red and yellow.
Patterns of a certain sort make me feel peculiar. Not dizzy or nauseated, just – disturbed.
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It’s not something I’ve ever tried to analyse.
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It’s of no consequence.
But like many inconsequential things, it is curious.
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Something to ask Google in an idle moment.
Thank you, Carolyn, for your beautiful, photographic tribute to clouds!
Joanna
My comment failed to post on your blog, I got ‘Verification failed’. So here it is again.
My first wedding was on the 31st of December, 1977. So aftre that NYE was also my wedding anniversary for the 8 years we were married. As I was an EMT, I had to work nights for at least 4 of those years, so NYE lost its appeal. Best wishes, Pete.