Dear Diary,

Today I wrote my Facebook invitations to Mardi Gras (March 8) and St. Patrick's Day (March 17). Should you be in town, come by. We'll be happy to feed you. We hold these celebrations every year, so should you be unable to attend this year, and discover it is one of these holidays in some future year, again, come by. We'll be happy to feed you.

I was surprised for the day with the impending opportunity to resume my regular Tai Chi study. This is wonderful news, as I have been noticing a general malaise about my being.


It was also very good to see my teacher and friend again after such a long hiatus. He is living buried in two feet of snow or more, on the other side of a desert wash (arroyo) that is fed from a sunnier countryside, meaning frequent impassability. Don't let the name "desert" fool you: this High Desert gets snow once and it doesn't move all season, and gets the runnoff in spillways from the mountains at higher elevation, which does get more precipitation. It is a cold, dangerous, and unpredictable wild. I would love to live there.

For the "of the day trivia," I learned the Earth is at Perihelion, or the closest point to the sun on its orbit. I am glad our winter is during Perihelion, such that it doesn't get any colder than this. Also, I will stop complaining at the heat in July, knowing that we couldn't get any further from the sun around than we are around Independence day. This also means I was incorrect about the moon during the eclipse, and whether it could possibly get further away from the sun than it was on the Winter Solstice. I obviously should have researched that, but we would have gotten to it when my daughter got around to collecting the data to answer the question. The moon can get no further from the sun than during a total eclipse on the aphelion in July. Just in case you were wondering.