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So our mantle clock is broken. ``Again?'', you might ask, unless you're asking ''still?'' Depending on your frame of reference the answer to either question is yes. The trouble is that it's stopping, even when I've recently wound it. In fact, in one of those perverse consequences that makes reality feel all the more cruel, it stops especially when I've just wound it. And not at random moments, like when there was a small earthquake or someone needed to fake the time of death to fool Columbo. No, it always stops at about 18 minutes past the hour; not the same hour all the time, but some hour.
If this sounds familiar yes, I was complaining about this a couple months ago. Probably. I think I wrote about it but the last time I checked Dreamwidth and Livejournal had borked their powers of searching specific blogs for content because ?? ????? ???? ?? ? ?????? ?????????. So I'm not bothering with that. Anyway, months ago I resolved to take it to the jewelry shop nearby, the one that has a guy who comes in every other Tuesday to do clock repair. I discovered the place was closed Mondays, which the day happened to be, and put the clock back, upon which it ran much better.
But it's not working well, again. So we finally resolved to take it to the jewelry doctor and ... discovered they were still closed Mondays. (The guy comes earlier Tuesday than either of us could possibly be awake for it.) So a couple more rounds of waiting for the Friday before and we finally remembered on a Friday before. And so now the clock is sitting there, I hope being examined.
In the meanwhile I've taken the spare-bedroom clock, a nice little piece my aunt and uncle (the Rhode Island ones) gave me for my undergraduate graduation. It's much smaller than the mantle clock, of course, and it doesn't chime; it just whirs away on a battery that's been unchanged since ... uh ... forever, going about its business and not demanding much of anything. That's nice enough although I miss our chimes. Hope the main clock will be back soon enough.
You may ask: where are the pictures that should be clogging up your bandwidth right now? The answer is, pending; I haven't had time to process newer ones. Don't worry, they'll be along soon.
Trivia: Tasked with finding something appropriate to say for the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast Commander Frank Borman sought advice from Simon Bourgin, a United States Information Agency science advisor he'd become friends with during the Gemini 7 diplomatic tour of Asia. Bourgin wrote (a week before the flight) that it would be a mistake for him (Bourgin) to write a script; that it had to be all Frank Borman; to avoid reflections on the ``transcendental significance of it all' and also that it would be ``a mistake to do the Christmas tree thing. It would degrade the image of the mission.'' Source: Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo, Teasel Muir-Harmony.
Currently Reading: Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Strips Volume 8, Hijinks from The Horn of Plenty, Walt Kelly. Editors Mark Evanier and Eric Reynolds.
