Marginalia

1. The friends I'm staying with have three children. The youngest one is allergic to peanuts. The oldest one is mad about them. Their parents have solved this problem by stashing away all nut and nut-containing eatables in the garage where the oldest child can happily pack them in his lunch bag and take them to school. Most days this arrangement works quite well but sometimes, when the urge seizes him something fierce, the oldest boy sneaks them into the house and hides away in a corner to eat them. He is five years old.
2. Winter is finally here. A heavy snowfall last weekend and the ground is covered in a luxuriant white sheen rolling over the land. Not quite used to it, I'm still ambivalent about my relationship to snow. It looks beautiful, particularly when it's falling, or not quite falling but floating, almost casually, to the ground. Everything is still and tranquil and you can stand for hours watching the flakes amble by. Of course a day or so later all that beauty is lost in the thick black slush that clings to your shoes as you go outside to retrieve the (junk) mail. I tried to go to the garage the other night to fetch some parathas from their warm nest in the deep freezer and the cold was like a brick wall obstructing my passage, a thousand stiff white punches pushing me back into the house. That's the part I don't like. The winter part.
3. Something I read recently (paraphrased from memory): Excellence means doing the thing right so many times that you eventually cannot accept anything else, even if you're totally exhausted.
   
4. When people say goodbye, why do they say "So long"? What does that mean?