It was a crazy day.

A trip with Maureen, ostensibly to go to Balboa Park and use our new park pass to see some museums we don’t often visit, prefaced with a trip to a sewing machine shop and a tailor for Maureen began mid-morning. Her sewing machine developed a problem when she had attempted to put in a button hole on a high end fabric for a beautiful jacket she had designed.

The sewing machine visit developed into a machine assessment, adjustment, and repairs if needed. Now folks, this ain’t my mama’s Singer pedal-powered sewing machine of the past. These suckers cost more than the national debt. The repair was worth it.

We then went across the street to our tailor who announced she could create the needed buttonholes.

We were happy, and headed off to the park.

i turned onto the exit to normal path up a hill to the park only to find a line of cars all the way up the hill, probably a half-hour if not an hour to get to the parking, which was likely full. i did an illegal u-turn, tried another way and found the same thing with all entries to the park.

We decided to just go to one of our favorite digs for lunch. The first one had many folks waiting to be seated, and no parking was nearby. We went to the second, and it was closed for the holidays. We went to the third and the wait was until sometime next Wednesday. We searched for the third and fourth on unfamiliar routes and had to double back about…oh, a half dozen times.

i shall not tell you what i said, but we headed home. We stopped at a brand new place in route for take out Mexican fare of a beef stew (birria) on a corn tortilla and a shrimp taco.

We felt better.

Hell of a day. In its own strange way, it was fun.

We spent our afternoon with our own projects and settled down in the family room for our evening.

i turned on the television. Football. The think-of-the-name-of-a-corporate-advertiser-with-a- really-stupid-logo-name Cotton Bowl. Good teams: Ohio State, Missouri. Good game except for listening to announcers who wished the world to consider the game equivalent the next world war. Ugh.

As i watched a pretty decent athletic contest marred by about two dozen unsportsmanlike penalties ignored, i looked up the scores of other bowl games. That’s when it occurred to me there as a fitting quote.

Violating my usually very loose rules for what to include in my posts, i stole this from today’s “Writer’s Almanac.” It is a quote of William Gaddis, an author in the middle of the last century who wrote two apparently noteworthy novels: The Recognitions and J.R. Not only have i not read them, but i didn’t even know about them until this morning, adding them to my “to read” list which will require me to compete with Methuselah for the longest living man to read all on my list.

But William Gaddis said, “There have never in history been so many opportunities to do so many things that aren’t worth doing.”

And sitting here tonight i thought this applied to every post season playoff game of any sport.

Then i thought Gaddis’ quote applied to most damn near everything today except for my relationships with good folks.

And you know what? Those relationships are enough.

i hope you all have a bountiful and healthy 2024.