Thank God for Family Day. It was great. As we sat around in our pajamas, dilly dallying with unconsciousness, trying to kill of the last of our colds until mid-afternoon when we got to watch the mailman deliver the mail. How delicious to have a holiday that is not applicable to the Federal civil service. I do hope they have their own that provides them the analogous experience. Later, we walked out on the river as the sun set and listened to the grinding sound of ice boats way out on the St. Lawrence. They seem to be associated with the Kingston Yacht Club. Reason enough to try the family membership for a year. I did loads of laundry. We also watched more Doctor Who, reads some Doctor Who literature, checked out some Doctor Who web information and the cast from the Hill from Hell got a Dalek drawn upon it. I made veggie Parmesan with the stuff acquired after Saturday saw a trip to the town's Italian grocery. It was all disorganized, lazy and relatively unproductive.

Is that what "family" means? Sure thing. I still have my copy of "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell from 1932:

I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth.

Magic. This could be an epistle to my generation, we louts raised on video arcades and nuclear fear - the two great pillars of relative valuation. How much plainer could a clever person be about being idle: "work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid." Wednesday morning at 10:37 am when a report is screaming to be done and the email is stacked high, you don't think of such things. Family Day gets you to the point that you can remember such things. I wonder what postmen got paid in 1932.

February day-off reports past: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. That makes this the sixth. I could be fluent in Finnish and Urdu by now had I not decided to blog.