Like most people there are many little things that please me about holiday gift giving. I love thoughtful gifts, well planned gifts, creative gifts, charitable gifts, handmade gifts. However, over the past few years my cousins have given me something I have come to enjoy above all other little presents. Homemade jam and jelly. Each year they tuck a jar into their other present as almost an after thought and each year I spend the following week gobbling up toast and english muffins spread with their utterly delicious jelly. I can’t help myself, it is the feature ingredient in every breakfast until the moment it is gone, the last few smears scraped from the jar with a spatula.

Homemade jelly just tastes better. It’s colors are deeper, it’s flavors are richer, so much less of it goes so much further, and it has the ability to turn each item it is spread on into a trip back in time to the March’s breakfast table. Spreading it onto my toast feels like the playacting I used to do as a child and sitting down to eat it feels like a treat, every time.

I wish my cousins would simply pack me a selection from their family jar each year and give me nothing else. While their other gifts are tasteful and appreciated nothing makes me happier than to see that shining jar nestled neatly inside my package, placed there as just a little extra small gift, waiting for breakfast.

Happy Valentines Day!!

For the first year in a really long time Lee and I actually went out to dinner without the kids on the Hallmark day of love. We ate some delicious Indian food (Lamb Korma and Lamb Masala, veggie samosa, and garlic naan.) We drank an entire bottle of Eschelon Pinot Noir, we sipped chai.

Best of all, we spoke. We paid attention to each other, has lots to say to each other, and truly enjoyed ourselves. (Thank you for babysitting Mar!! We appreciate it.)

Lee got me a book called Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar. It’s an examination of philosophy through jokes. It’s really interesting, it discusses metaphysics, logic, ethics, religion, and more. Here are a few of the jokes they use to express these ideas…

Teleology (Aristotle: everything has a telos, an inner goal it is meant to attain)-

Mrs. Goldstien was walking down the street with her two grandchildren. A friend stopped to ask her how old they were. She replied “The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven.”

Rationalism (The belief that reason takes precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge.)-

The optimist says “The glass is half full.”

The pessimist says “The glass is half empty.”

The rationalist says “The glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

The Monte Carlo Fallacy (The mistaken belief that the roulette wheel has a better chance of stopping on red the 7th time after six prior black landings. Sadly, it’s the same 50/50 chance each time.)

If you are getting on a commercial airliner, for safety’s sake take a bomb with you… because the overwhelming odds are there won’t be two guys on the same plane with a bomb.

Pragmatism (We choose our truth by what difference it will make in practice) –

A woman reports her husband’s disappearance to the police. They ask her for a description and she says “He’s six feet, three inches tall, well-built, with thick curly hair.” Her friend says’ “What are you talking about? Your husband is five feet four, bald, and has a huge belly!” The woman answers “Who wants that one back?”.

So far the book is one of the more interesting ways I have studied philosophical ideas. I can’t wait for my brother to come into town so I can share a night of beer and bad jokes, this time geared towards discussing philosophy!