We had a visit with the Winter-Thurman family for which we cleaned up and made brunch, then some of us trekked into Princeton to resolve the Case of the Elusive Rutabaga (resolved), then back for dinner, and by this time in the evening we’re pretty exhausted.
Regarding rutabagas: It turns out that the hot gift item this fall was the USB turntable — a fact that I did not suitably appreciate, especially when I saw stacks of boxes of them in en electronics store a week or so before Christmas. Since we weren’t going to celebrate till the 26th, I figured I could pick up a turntable for Si on the morning of the 26th, at post-Christmas sale prices, and not have the box lying around the house for a week. Wrong! When I went through town yesterday morning, Pippa and I stopped in five electronics stores, none of which had any USB turntables left in stock. I finally tracked down a USB rutabaga this afternoon, and Si is happily listening to records on it. I, in turn, am awash with nostalgic reveries about the extent to which LPs and turntables defined a phase of my life. Now I wish I had stored those mountains of vinyl somewhere, instead of selling off Si’s birthright for a mess of pottage.