So it’s cold and rainy here in St. Louis. Many of my friends in the ville are at a party that I could have gone to, but I’ve been riding the nostalgia wave a bit too hard so there are times when its best not to push it. Besides, that drive costs money that I don’t really have. I was there so long on my last visit that it almost felt like I lived there again and that’s not what I want. I love the ville and all my friends who live there, but I want new horizons.

So it’s cold and raining and Brad, Beth, & Mary are all sick. Angela is doing life stuff, as is Vick. I was thinking of having the healthy over tomorrow for dinner to see the tree and such. So if you’re a healthy regular contact me for details or I’ll contact you. I could go out in the Delmar Loop tonight, but after two uneventful evenings in one week I must say the purpose eludes me. I don’t think I am going to find much adventure in repeating those misadventures.

This mood calls for comfort food:

I walked down to Mike’s and had the butcher cut a few pork chops for me. It’s always interesting to rejoin the process of preparation and watch him pull the side from the cooler and set the width on the saw. I remember being a squeamish kid and having to bone a chicken for the first time, learning from my mom how to find the joints and all as bone-on chicken used to be the cheapest way to buy it. Custodians and cooks give up the Brahmin’s pretensions quite quickly.

I got three one-inch thick chops and browned them in olive oil on each side with a sea salt rub and fresh black pepper. I removed them from the heat and cooked carrots and potato wedges in the left over oil flavored by the chops. When the carrots started to brown I added three quarters of a cup of water and reduced the heat, I then placed the chops on top of the veggies and left the whole thing simmer with the top on for twenty minutes. I pulled the works from the pan, keeping it hot in a covered dish, and made gravy out of the remaining juice by whisking in a tablespoon of cornstarch.

I watched a classic film noir on DVD – Suddenly with Frank Sinatra and I read a few chapters in Sophie’s World by Justein Gaarder– maybe I should offer a taste of this wonderful book:

“To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child. So now you must choose, Sophie. Are you a child who has yet to become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? … I will not allow you, of all people, to join the ranks of the apathetic and the indifferent. I want you to have an inquiring mind.” (18).

“It is like dividing a deck of cards into two piles, Sophie. You lay the black cards in one pile and the red in the other. But from time to time a joker turns up that is neither heart nor club, neither diamond nor spade. Socrates was this joker in Athens. He was neither certain nor indifferent [about the big questions of life and death that concern us all]. All he knew was that he knew nothing – and it troubled him. So he became a philosopher – someone who does not give up but tirelessly pursues his quest for truth.” (68)