I have something to have fun with – not to be good at necessarily, but to have a good time learning maybe a wee bit. Makes my brain feel good and lifts my spirits.

Der Bingle’s birthday is toward the end of this month and LZP is, I think, trying to soften the blow of him waking up and hitting his head on the big number 63. (I’ll make it bold but I’m not going to fool around actually making it

BIG

because that usually fouls up the post.  Oh, well, never mind.)

So, LZP, put together a treat package for Der Bingle that included a John’s grocery shirt and hat and glass and a bottle of mead from said store.

Now, there was a potential problem: Two Moo took a real shining to everything:

She declared the mead would hit the spot:

But her sense of right and wrong prompted her to let Der Bingle head back to the Ohio Redoubt with everything.
But that wasn’t all that was in the box. No, other stuff too:

Yeah, Two Moon just realized she should have gone with him for the week.

I have started the clock – put my little ear right up to the darn thing to make certain it was ticking – and now . . . I wait. You are waiting with me.

Here we go:
16 chimes.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . . . YES!!!!!

I can rest more easily now, knowing that had this been something to do with a spaceship and controls gone bad, I would have managed to get the ship to slingshot around the moon and head back to earth. Of course, then there would be the landing part. Okay, let me think of another analogy . . . It may take awhile.

I have this clock that belonged to my grandmother; it chimes – big bongs on the hour and 4 little ones on the quarter hour, 8 on the half hour, 12 on the three quarter hour and 16 on the hour. At noon and midnight, 12 big bongs follow 16 little chimes.

Of late the bongs don’t match the hour and so after a couple of weeks of avoiding spending time manually rotating the minute hand and waiting through much chiming and bonging, I stopped the clock just before it would hit 9 bongs at midnight. Now I have this task of remembering to start it up in about 20 minutes.

I am going to try and just keep it at the front of my mind, but already my thoughts want to go off and think about writing a book because Nine Bongs at Midnight seems like a title begging for a book and the movie, of course.

I didn’t think about the sound of Nine Bongs at Midnight until it just slipped out via my fingers onto the computer screen. It’s a sign, isn’t it?