The Shape of Things to Come

The first page of my new calendar. Some of my favorite features include: the Duke of Zhou's dream interpretation, and the lucky and unlucky things to do on this particular day. The Duke of Zhou says: if you dream about the Yangtze or Yellow Rivers, or lakes, or the sea, then it means you will surely strike it rich--very rich. It was a bad day to break ground or bury someone, but a good day to do sacrificial rites or cut down trees. Also I love the picture of the boys hauling in the enormous fish.

A long-held superstition in my family--I'm not sure about others'--is that whatever you do on New Years Day is indicative of what you will be doing all year. We have always have been careful never to have needless arguments or sulky fits, insofar as that is possible, on January 1.

This year we did admittedly sleep in late; there are worse things than sleeping in late all year though. Then we had a happy leisurely breakfast together. In the past, I had not had much luck making eggs in my lousy bad pan, but a sudden inspiration hit a few days ago. Ever heard of deep fried eggs? Sounds peculiar, I know, but if I put about a half inch of oil in the pan, I can make a quite decent (if a bit greasy) omelet. It tastes fine as an egg sandwich, with bread to soak up the oil. Just like having bread and butter, really, right? Anyway, that's what we had for breakfast, with coffee, tea, biscotti, and oranges.

Later (another ritual in my family) we threw the Yijing (I-ching). Neither of us believe in it for real--in any spooky way--but it has such rich possibilities for introspection that we always do it anyway. And it always seems to have something meaningful to say. Colin's was The Army changing to Before Completion. Mine was Holding Together changing to Obstruction. Year of struggles for both of us it seems. But at least we'll be getting to sleep in.

For lunch we went to the campus noodle shop and had chao fun with egg. They know Colin on sight now, and know that he will always want chao fun with egg. It was a quiet afternoon in the noodle shop, very late for lunch. In fact, they were starting to get the place ready for dinner. One of the cooks was napping, slouched over a table. They didn't charge us in advance for our noodles, and by the time we were done eating the personnel had changed and didn't realize we still had to pay. We need to pay, I told the lady. They need to pay, she told the cook, who waked up and was cleaning off his table-grill. Twelve kuai, I told the cook. The cook squinted at the grill and said to the girl behind the counter, twelve kuai. Twelve kuai for what? the girl complained. Who cares for what, said the cook. Just charge them twelve kuai. I swiped the card for twelve kuai. No doubt we could have got our noodles for free, but why bother. The noodle shop people are good to us. Besides, can't have us failing to pay our bills all year!

In the afternoon--or what was left of it--we went to the café and did some work.

Then on the way home I bought a phone card and we printed out a paper for Colin, bought some water and things for dinner. My stomach is still touchy, so I had dry ramen noodles with a little soup on the side, and jello. Colin had buckwheat noodles with fried tofu, onions, and hot pepper. The all-noodle diet proceeds apace.

This onion, which I bought shortly before Colin's arrival, has already had time to put forth all these many green sprouts. How quickly the time has passed.

After dinner, we played a game of Rummy 500, which began catastrophic for me--I couldn't break double digits for the first three hands!--but ended with such a spectacular come-back that it took three more hands before Colin beat me, and that just barely!

Finally, we spent the rest of the evening working steadily, and I wrote a big blog post.