Shipwrecked & Comatose

The human population of Planet Earth seems to be in agreement that 2020 has been a horrible year.  The year began with Australian wildfires and the catastrophes never stopped coming.  We had murder hornets in the US and locust swarms in Africa.  We lost Kobe Bryant, Alex Trebek, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Wildfires didn't stop with Australia; California also had its share.  The stock market and US oil prices crashed.  We had a close call with Iran after the US took out an Iranian general and their retaliation included a missile strike taking out US military bases.  A Ukrainian plane was shot down.  England suffers from the effects of a botched "Brexit".  More innocent people of color were killed by police in the US, causing nationwide protests. The property damage is being blamed on both sides.  The demagogue who seems to do little more than sit in the Oval Office and angrily Tweet turned tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful protestors...

Today is the official start of winter - my most hated season.  The only upside to it is the fact that days will grow longer as the weather grows more miserable.  I also still have Christmas (such as it is this year) to look forward to.   I have friends in Florida and other warm climates who remind me that if I hate winter, I don't have to live in the northeast.  I can live someplace where it's never winter.  In this day and age I can work from anywhere and not be tied to the location of my job (although I am also voluntarily tied to my family).  Why not move and kiss winter goodbye forever? One of the reasons I don't move is I don't know if I would be happy in a world of perpetual summer (although I suppose if I could find a practical way to move to Hawaii, I might give it a shot).  There is something about the changing of seasons that speaks to me.  The fact that I have to live through the short days and miserable weather of winter makes sum...

Here is something that has perplexed me for years.  If you are going to shorten my name down to one syllable, how should it be spelled?  To me, it makes sense to spell it "Rache" because leaving the E on the end of the name gives the A at the beginning a long "ay" sound.  However, most people seem to spell it "Rach".  When I see it spelled that way, it looks to me like it should rhyme with "catch" rather than sound like the first syllable of my name.  I have seen it spelled "Rache" in some publications (for example, in the script of Inherit the Wind when Kevin performed in it*), but it's not the norm. I'm not going to argue about how one should spell the shortened version of my name. For this one, you can spell it however you want.  I have enough trouble trying to stop people from   spelling my full name without that stupid, extra, unnecessary "a" at the end.  (Curse you Rachael Ray for popularizing the dumb incorrect...