monkeys and ponies

Book Clubs: I forgot to mention that I had two book club meetings in February. One was a sort of re-organization meeting for Crones and Tomes. And the other was for the Travelers’ Century Club book club, which discussed The Long Road to Cullaville: Stories from my travels to every country in the world by Boris Kester. Boris joined us for the discussion and was fairly interesting. By the way, there was a little blurb about me as co-coordinator of the book club in The Centurian (the TCC monthly newsletter). In the meantime, my longest running book club seems to have completely fizzled out. I did send an email to the members asking if we have officially disbanded and have heard absolutely nothing back.

MIT Reception: Last week, I went to an MIT Leadership Circle reception at the International Spy Museum. This is one of those things you get invited to by giving enough money annually. They had a nice assortment of heavy hors d’oeuvres (along with beer or wine, though I opted for sparkling water). That was followed by a talk on cryptography and the problem of verifiability by MIT Professor Yael Taumann Kalai, I have to admit that much of her talk went over my head. I only stayed briefly for coffee and dessert afterwards. The venue was a bit disappointing, as we didn’t really get to see the museum and the conference room area we were in was a bit too small for easy mingling. I still had some enjoyable conversations, but it wasn’t one of the better MIT-related events I’ve been to.

Loser Brunch - Philadelphia: For those who don’t know, Losers are devotees of what used to be the Washington Post Style Invitational, a humor contest that continues via Substack. There are a couple of big parties every year and brunches more or less monthly. On Saturday, I made the long drive up to Philadelphia for a Loser Brunch. Most of the drive wasn’t too bad, but my GPS took me through central Philadelphia, which was particularly slow, due to the flower show. And the last part of the trip involved a maze of narrow streets where everyone was driving over 40 miles per hour despite a speed limit of 25. I was able to park just a block away from the house where the event was. We normally do brunches at restaurants more or less around the D.C. metro area, but the reason for this one was that Judy had just moved from Florida and can’t really go to public venues due to severe fragrance allergies. And we were leveraging off another big name loser having moved to a retirement community not far away, as well as yet another one who was in town from Greece. There was a wide mix of interesting conversation, some of it involving topics dear to my heart, e.g. MIT and the Boston Red Sox. I contributed a container of dark chocolate coated cherries Cindy had given me. The other chocolate she gave me I will eat, but I have an aversion to cherries which give me flashbacks to childhood cough syrup experiences. Anyway, it was a nice way to spend a couple of hours.

Visiting Eric: I leveraged off the trip to Philadelphia to visit my friend, Eric, who has been at a rehab facility there for a long time. I won’t talk in any detail about his medical condition, but it was pretty depressing seeing how weak he is. His room (well, his part of a shared room) is full of books and he spends most of his time reading. I brought him a dozen books and I hope he’ll enjoy at least some of them.

After visiting him, I drove to a hotel near the airport, where I stayed overnight. The hotel didn’t include breakfast, but there was a very nice little diner reasonably nearby. I love old-fashioned small town diners and had an excellent omelet with hash browns, toast, and coffee. The drive back wasn’t too bad, at least until the Beltway, which was a slog. Overall, it was a pretty good weekend trip, but it reminded me why I normally take the train when I go to Philadelphia.

Stafford Challenge Week 8:

7 March 2026 - Trust

8 March 2026 - International Women’s Day

9 March 2026 - Early Spring

10 March 2026 - To Do Lists

11 March 2026 - Next to Illegible

12 March 2026 - Anagrammatic Irony

13 March 2026 - Twists of Fate