It’s a brand new year ….

It’s a brand new year and my hopes were for things to be better. They were not! I got up last Friday thinking it was a brand new year and I had all kinds of plans for the very first day. Then it happened. I turned on the computer and instead of greeting me with the usual opening, all I saw was a big circle going around with a message about trying to find my opening. That just continued for most of the morning until I finally gave up and turned to something else. Like watching football.

Early the next morning, I was off to the computer hospital which opened at nine. After gathering the necessary info, the young man left me with, which I’ve come to learn is a standard statement, “We will call you when it is ready”. That was the same answer I got when I called today, four days later, leaving me with two options. Forget the column, or write it in longhand like I’m doing right now, a first in nearly 54 years.

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What I wanted to tell about was how my Christmas was changed by COVID-19. It seemed like the gifts turned out a bit better than usual. Some I picked up, others came to the door, and I even got one by U.S. mail.

Ever since the virus started last March, things have changed. Church services changed and at Trinity Lutheran we have had just brief services or sermonites via Facebook. Actually it worked well with more people watching than ever who usually worshipped in church on Sundays.

Even before I gave it any thought, Christmas Eve services turned out to be really extra special. Thanks to Doug and Kim Roehl and his parents, Erlin and Bonnie Roehl, we had services at Rustic Occasions. Attendance was limited at each service and an unexpected chill made attendance for some of us oldies, not on the list of things to do. We stayed home and watched on Facebook.

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Since I can’t talk to people on the computer, it leaves me with just one thing – watch football. Three games in one day can be tiring, but it also brought up something to complain about. Seems the regular season has ended and the playoffs began. Our mighty Packers earned themselves a “bye” this week, so I’ll have to find some other teams to watch.

While Aaron Rogers has made quite a name for himself this season, I think it is odd that our new coach never gets any credit. I think at the end of his second year as coach, he has lost less than ten games. That should be some kind of a record.

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Since watching television has been taking up so much of my time, it has been interesting to see a couple of new items being advertised. One is that someone came up with a new face mask and there seems to be no end to the ideas I’ve seen already. Now some entrepreneur has invented something called a “frog”. It fits under your face mask and is said to make it more comfortable.

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Time will tell if our world of politics will ever get straightened out. Some of our elected officials, including our president, are trying to say Joe Biden didn’t win. Can’t they count up to seven million? That’s the number of votes Biden had that was more than the president. He also lost the 2016 election by some three million. Somehow the truth never seems to sink in.