January 12, 2020 thought for the day:  If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. Chinese Proverb

We had a taste of spring for the past few days, today it is back to January weather. The ups and downs are a bit depressing.

I enjoyed the church service today. Rev. Jones is very good and seems to enjoy teaching scripture. He adds comments to make us think and adds a bit of today to the message. After service we had a fellowship with donuts. It was good to bond and chat with friends and visitors.

January 11th photo challenge was “yum!”. I was making V8 vegetable soup and egg dumplings. That was my shot for the day. It fit the theme perfectly.

I got another box unloaded today. I am beginning to get stacks of cookware on counter tops here and there until I get time to find permanent storage places for each piece.

When I left for church, this morning I noticed that my phone had only one percent battery power. I have no idea how that happened. I charged it last night to one hundred percent power. Maybe the battery is beginning to wear out. It sounds odd to say that I am lost without that phone knowing that I grew up with having only a house phone and payphones on street corners for emergencies.


The word today is destination. By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination, Christopher Columbus.. ...roads were made for journeys not destinations, Confucius.  One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one! George Eliot. Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough, Emily Dickinson. Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like, Lao Tzu. 

Today’s photo theme is “in the air”. I would like to have captured my dogs catching a frisbee but that won’t happen even on a day when it’s not raining. They, my dogs, like softer toys that a plastic disk. The quickest thing I could find to capture since I waited until late in the day to get the shot, was a huge squirrel’s nest in the neighbor’s tree.

Well, it looks like robots are being “taught” to do almost anything. This article surprised me, it is about robots milking cows. The opening paragraph tells of a farmer who gets up at 3:00am to start milking 132 cows. He, along with his 89-year old father, finishes about 8:30 in the morning. In March they will be trying out four robot machines. He is making an investment in this project which will include other updates to the barn. It will take about 15 to 20 years to pay off the loan. Thought the robots will take maintenance they don’t have sick days and vacation days and holidays off. There will be a learning curve for both the humans and the cows. They hope to milk the cows three to five times a day by the robots. The article made the point that cows have been milked by robots in Europe for several years. The farmer is hoping with this technology it will give them a better “work-life balance”. There are other automated milking systems around but the robotic systems seems to be growing in popularity. The farmer interviewed for this article said that even with the robots dairy farmers “won’t run out of chores”. There is still the feeding and all of the other chores needed in a barn with living animals.

I think we will order-in from Ding Ho for dinner tonight.

Joy