January 6, 2004 Having safely made it back from sunny India to wintry England (as I write this it is, uncharacteristically for London, snowing), I sit this morning in my cozy room at the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre, re-embarking upon my e-diary by bringing 2003 to a narrative close. Post-Christmas in Wilson County provided the quiet that I needed for running errands, particularly to the post office, picking up and dropping off letters and parcels. During a 2003 rain torrent Floresville's P.O. lost its roof's integrity; and since the building's landlord was other than the U.S. Gov't, and since that landlord, now living in New York City, declined to repair the building, Floresville's residents were obliged for several months to satisfy their postal requirements at the P.O. in Poth, the small (about 1000 residents) town 6 miles from Floresville's hub. My mother having a P.O. box, we were reduced to driving each day to Poth to collect our mail until, in late December, the old bank building just opposite the hardware store that used to be the Ben Franklin five-and-dime emporium at the very epicenter of Floresville's original business district reopened for business in its new postal incarnation.

Poth is chiefly known, in my family at least, for its two Mexican restaurants, PDQ & Guevara's, that serve dinner in the evening, it being difficult to find an eating establishment in Floresville (other than some franchised fast-food joint) that stay open after 3pm, including our current eatery of choice, Mata's Café. Among the regulars that fill up Mata's for lunch are a cohort of the Floresville police force who (judging by the girth of several of the officers) regularly eat their fill while there. Alex, the gregarious proprietor of this fine establishment, recently fathered a son (Alex Jacob) who we often see sleeping behind the cash register when his mother (one of nine Mata sisters) is working. Alex & the wait staff having got to know us well, they write down my mother's standing order (a bean & cheese chalupa, no meat but plenty of onions) as soon as we walk in.

When not pouring salsa over my cheese enchilada, or spooning beans and guacamole into one of Mata's excellent home-made corn tortillas, I spent time collecting yet more of the succulent pecans that continued to tumble from backyard branches. Snickers the dog gave me moral support in this endeavor, for which he was rewarded with those pecans whose shells were already cracked. His pen encloses a good portion of the shade of the two most prolific of those trees, and throughout the fall he made it a pastime to attack aggressively any fallen pecans, crunching them earnestly in triumph.

December 30 was the best of my winter sky watch days, with a clear perspective on Venus that lasted until nearly 8pm, and a midnight arc that stretched from the setting Moon & Mars through the overhead, mid-heaven Saturn to the rising Jupiter which, acting as a "star in the East," beckoned me in the direction of India, toward which I departed on January 6.

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