This has been happening with increasing frequency:

1. Celebrity reveals something personal.
2. I read it, I shrug. Why are you telling me?
3. The internet erupts with opinions, for and against.
4. People write angry and/or condescending essays, claiming to know what I think about the celebrity and explaining why I’m stupid / homophobic / sexist / just plain evil to think that way.
5. The flamewar roils on for weeks, until the next celebrity announcement.

Interest in strangers’ personal lives is unhealthy, and no good will come of it.

When does summer begin? It depends:

• For University of Illinois students, summer begins today.
• Most people think summer begins on Memorial Day weekend.
• For Jake & Sam, summer doesn’t begin until the end of the month.
• Astronomers think summer begins at the moment of the solstice, June 21st at 5:04am (GMT).

I don’t worry too much about seasons any more; instead, I divide the year into four parts:

• Shoveling
• Bagging yard waste (#1)
• Mowing
• Bagging yard waste (#2)

Cousin Ryan’s birthday is coming up – his tenth, it is to boggle – and so is Mother’s Day; so we went to Normal for a joint party.

There was lots of food, including not one but two hash-brown casseroles. (Oops.) After lunch, there was cake & ice cream, and presents for Ryan & Grandma. (We didn’t bring any Mother’s Day presents for Jennifer; I hope she wasn’t too disappointed.)

The cousins played badminton in the back yard. Funny how badminton is the sport of the year; the kids are playing it everywhere they go.

The weather cooperated, mostly: it was warm, but cloudy and also very windy. (On the way home, I saw semis going down the highway at a most alarming angle.) The rain stayed away, except when it forced cancellation of Jennifer & Jake’s lawn-mowing plans.

I’m sure they were very disappointed.

Today we gave the mower its first push around the yard of the new year.

It was a cooperative effort. Jennifer went to Sears for mower supplies: blade, spark plug, air filter. Jake & I installed everything, scraped off last year’s grass clippings, and changed the oil. (Oil? Jennifer didn’t buy any. We had some left over from last year, and used that.) And then we all mowed.

(Sam didn’t. He’s still too young for that.)

The yard – the front yard, anyway – is a bit tufty & lumpy. I hope it fills in soon (mostly because if it doesn’t, I have no idea how to fix it).

A few months ago, Jennifer had an eye exam & new spectacles, from our regular optometrist. We’ve been going there for years, they’re…okay. (Jennifer likes them. I’m not so sure.)

In previous years, an eye exam and new spectacles would cost $50: a pretty good deal. But this year, we got a letter: Provider out of network. Claim denied.

What?

Jennifer called the insurance company, whose customer service person said: Provider out of network. Claim denied.

The provider in question was in network, last year. What happened? Some warning of their change in status would have been appreciated, but I wasn’t really surprised to have had none. (I’m cynical about insurance companies. I expect to be treated shabbily by them. They seldom disappoint me in this.)

Weeks passed. We received an invoice from the optometrist: Claim denied. You owe $385. Pay up, deadbeat.

I procrastinated a bit, but finally put a check in the mail. (What else could we do? Argue with the insurance company? That trick never works.)

Imagine my surprise, then, to receive in today’s mail a second Explanation of Benefits letter from the insurance company: Jennifer’s eye exam is covered, and instead of $385, we owe…$50. There’s no hint of who screwed up what, the first time around; now, suddenly, all is well again.

Is it worth the effort of trying to find out why? Probably not. (I am too cynical to expect an insurance company to own up to its mistakes.) But if the optometrist doesn’t refund $335 very soon, they’ll be hearing from me.

Social-networking sites are full – overfull – of inspirational horse-hockey. Here’s one I saw this morning:

You can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.

(The original omitted the apostrophe; I have taken the liberty of restoring it.)

Reading this, I had two thoughts:

• You’ve never been to Niagara Falls, have you?
• Yes, but the rain doesn’t have to fall on me, does it?

Perhaps this means I have an attitude problem.

I read this joke:

An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard and a German are all standing watching a street performer do some excellent juggling. The juggler notices that the four gentlemen have a very poor view, so he stands up on a large wooden box and calls out, “Can you all see me now?”

“Yes.”
“Oui.”
“Sí.”
“Ja.”

…and I didn’t get it.

I read it a few more times, very carefully, and…nothing.

I kept at it. There must be a joke in there somewhere, I thought.

And then the light dawned.

It’s curious, how the part of my brain that reads printed words has no overlap with the part that understands spoken words. When I read, I hear…nothing at all. Is that normal?

(I showed it to Jennifer, and she got it right away.)

We’ve reached the awkward time of year when mornings are too cold for a spring jacket, but afternoons are too warm for a winter one.

When observing pedestrians out & about, it’s easy to spot the early risers: they’re bundled up like it’s January. The late sleepers, on the other hand, are already enjoying spring.

Myself, I wear my spring jacket, regardless of the weather. (Which does seem like it would invalidate my hypothesis from the previous paragraph. Oops.)

Remember the early pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, the ones that revealed the primary mirror’s spherical aberration?

(I remember the collective oh shit from NASA & the scientific community when they realized the micrometer-precision mirror had been ground to the wrong shape. It took them a few years, but they managed to fit some spectacles to Hubble. It’s done yeoman service ever since.)

On mornings when I wake up early (5:00am, occasionally earlier), I take the iPad out to the tv room for a little quiet time. I leave the lights off – there’s no need, with the iPad – and get caught up on mail, news, web sites, etc.

Across the room, the TiVo records whatever it thinks we might want to watch (it’s wrong about that; I never watch its suggestions); for each active tuner, a red circle lights up on the TiVo’s front panel…and in the dark, it looks exactly like one of the early Hubble pictures.

Perhaps I have my own spherical aberration. I definitely need some reading and/or computer glasses.

I haven’t given up on the genealogy research note transcription project. Every few days, I create a few more notes in Evernote: I fill them with my best guess as to what I meant, ten years ago, scribbling away on my narrow-ruled yellow paper.

Does that say ‘Jan’, or ‘Jun’? I might’ve known, once. (Memo to self: don’t abbreviate!)

It occurs to me that these notes serve two purposes:

They’re a research log: a record of places I’ve gone, books I’ve read, things I’ve tried to find. Alas, my research log is unorganized & incomplete. Perhaps I should buy a journal app for the iPad and begin a proper log. (Or not – most of my ‘research’ these days consists of rummaging through Ancestry.com databases. That’s hardly worth recording.)

My notes – such as they are – suggest further inquiries. A death date for my 4×great-grandfather Jefferson Aldridge tells me where to look for an obituary. (Alas, the archives are in Indianapolis, so I won’t be searching them any time soon.) I really should have a genealogy to-do list. I think RootsMagic had something like that, but Reunion might not.

The project goes on. The stack of papers gets smaller, slowly. Someday it will be gone.