Oh, poor neglected blog. The saying is resolutions are commenced the moment they hit you, not just for marking off the expected January 1 ledger, so I suppose a compromise would be to resume the blog less than a week before the New Year.

My inclination has been to write "home runs", not the singles and sacrifice bunts which build to a gestalt of growing complexity. My latest big subject, though, is retirement. I've worked my last day under the current understanding of employment over a week ago and after some vacation the actual end is, again, basically at the bumper of 2010. There was a film called "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould" which was, indeed, 32 vignettes of whatever length was given over to a story or angle on the storied pianist. The coming on alone of retirement consists of many details.

My parents recently went into assisted living and the house is slowly being worked over by a sibling and wife, and what a testament to the gathering power of the pack rat syndrome. I've availed myself of a few things during visits to gather mail and water, when our last series of storms were conjecture. But I know in the event of vacating my place for any reason there is so much I'll see of my own and some of their plunder and shake my head.

Why? For what use was this really going to be put?

On one sortie I grabbed three forks from one of the prolific kitchen bins. It's a fine idea to put to pasture some of one's own stock due to scratches and other metallurgy but, well, with someone else's which falls under that term of usage? What they were intended for was donations at work, where the abundance of metal knives and spoons did not make up for the absence and disappearances of metal forks. Well, for now, there's no more location to be served like this.

Going through my own kitchen I rounded up several plastic ware tubs and, hooray, matching lids which had played domestic hide and hide some more. But the primary use for these was to take rice and other cooked entrees to work. They will be fine for the wonderful "bring your own legal and occasionally other stuff" Hollywood Bowl, closed for another few months anyway. But when it does reopen and I attend, perhaps a plastic tub and fork will make it to the ongoing concert tradition where Glenn Gould and others have played.