happy birthday

my duties i might wish to shirk,
but here i sit, stuck at work
no chance to laugh, no time for mirth
to celebrate my day of birth
the clock seems dead, the minutes stick,
i think i might be feeling "sick"
i wonder if i could get away
to celebrate this happy day

Change? Good or Bad, Is It Even Possible?

"At 46, it's just too late to change your life." That's what the well-meaning voice in my head tells me. I have to admit, it's tempting to listen to the voice. A certain complacent surrender to my remaining years. Wistful regrets sipped like lukewarm whiskey from a chipped coffee mug, a dull comfort in the long night that is the Rest of My Life.

Except... the math doesn't really support it. I'm (obviously) 46 right now. Let's say I live to be 80. 34 years to go, more behind me than before me. Looks like the math is in the voice's favor. However, let's look a little more closely at those 46 years. The first 18 were spent in childhood. Any changes now can build from those years. They don't count against the remaining years (or, alternately, they count for them). Either way, 18-80 is a total of 72 years, with 34 to go that means I've lived 38 of those years. Still past the halfway mark, but not by much. OK, let's see if we can tip the balance. Undergraduate education. Important, true. But hardly definitive. Lots of people go directions nowhere near what they studied at college. If I can scratch those years, then 22-80 is 58 years, with 34 to go, that means I've lived 24 of them. Not even at the halfway point of my adult life. So... too late to change? Not even close.

Ah, but, dude, retirement is 65. 22-65 is 43 years, with only 19 remaining. Definitely past the halfway point. You're locked in, man. Listen to the voice. It's wisdom. I suppose it would be, if I were merely talking about career. But if I'm talking about something else, something more lifelong, something like... a calling, then I think I can consider it fair to use the 80 mark as the outer boundary. "A calling?" the voice asks, "when did that happen? Why wasn't I in the loop on this one? After all, I live in your head." Well, I never said that I had a calling. I never even said I was considering a change in my life. I merely went through the exercise of showing that even at 46, it's not too late, contra to the voice of conservative comfort in my head. "Well, if it's just an intellectual exercise, knock yourself out, kid. Just don't go getting any ideas, okay?" We'll see...

a haiku

body's chemistry
demons devouring my soul
damn serotonin

Christopher Hitchens is Dead

For once I'm glad no one reads this blog any more. I want (need?) to have a place to record these thoughts, and maybe even a sense that I've put them out there, as part of the public tribute to the man, without actually making them public in any meaningful sense of the word...

It was with deep, though unsurprising, sadness that I read the words this morning, "Christopher Hitchens is dead." Unsurprising describes my sadness, I fully expected to feel his death as a personal loss, and it also describes his death: we all knew it was just a matter of time, for he had been sick for so very long.

I never knew Hitchens. As I am a Christian, he would have considered me an enemy of all he held dear. So be it. But I was an "enemy" who was drawn into the writings and thought of this worldly British man of letters. Whether commenting on Central European politics, the work of George Orwell, or the poisonous folly of belief, Hitchens's writings had a way of speaking to my soul.  I found God Is Not Great to be neither a shallow defense of anti-theism (as some Christians had) nor a devastating argument which destroyed my faith (as some now ex-Christians have). Instead, I read the words of a man who cared deeply and passionately about his fellow humans and was pleading, through as carefully a crafted appeal of logic and rhetoric as he could muster (and that was, by no means, inconsiderable), for us to repent of our evil for the salvation of the world. While I disagree with his identification of religion as "evil" I certainly respect his evangelist's heart. And, if we are being honest, I cannot completely dismiss his arguments that religion has fueled much evil in this world...

As an American, I share my countrymen's predisposition to be impressed and enthralled with English accents. I actively sought out podcasts and youtube videos where I could listen to Hitchens speak, and speak he could, like no one else. I could (and I say this because I have) listen to Hitchens talk for hours. My first read through of God Is Not Great was not a read at all, it was a listening to of the local public library's audiobook version, read, of course, by the author. When I later read the printed word, the voice of the man echoed through my head. Since then, my brain has supplied his voice to all of his writings, be that in Vanity Fair or some his older works I tracked down and savored. Letters to a Young Contrarian works particularly well with a "read by Hitch" brain conversion. (Incidentally, my copy has a picture of Hitchens in trench coat and holding a cigarette, which echoes my other English anti-hero, John Constantine. A character I suspect Hitch would have deplored, being rooted in a world of angels and demons).

Christopher Hitchens, like all of the so-called "New Atheists," made me think. I know that many in the theological and apologetic communities dismiss the New Atheists as being but pale shadows of the (by comparison) Old Atheists. I am undoubtedly a more shallow thinker than my fellow Christians, as evidenced by my judgment that the New Atheists raise important points, some of which I do not believe have been adequately answered. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to see the answers as adequate. Maybe I'm too fallen to get it. Maybe that's why I can admire people like Christopher Hitchens. Maybe.

Or maybe I get that Hitchens and Dawkins and all the rest are human beings, made in the image of God, endowed by their Creator with value and worth and dignity and gifts that, while not being used, perhaps, according to His will, nevertheless, to the eyes of faith, still shine forth as testament to the creative love of our God. At least, that's how my Christian mind sees it.

Christopher Hitchens voice and writings have been a significant part of my life for a few years now. And as inappropriate as it may seem, I feel a profound sense of loss. But how much more those who knew the man as friend, as family? My heart goes out to those who have lost a real, physical presence in their lives. The world has lost a public figure, but they have lost someone with whom their life paths were intertwined, that real interdependence we have with those of our local tribe or clan. My prayers are with them, though many of them find such sentiment distasteful.

Christopher Hitchens, cancer stopped first your voice and now at last your words entirely. But it will take the slow cancer of the years to end your influence in the hearts and minds of those who knew you or were touched by your work.

the ghost in the house that you never see

i am the ghost that haunts this house, the house you pass everyday. sometimes you see the house, sometimes you don't, but i know you never see me. the house is scary, but it's not because i'm in it. it's because it's old and a bit different. sometimes the windows rattle, but that's just the wind, and the creaking floor is merely the house settling. i am a ghost. i can't touch you (God knows how many times i've wished i could...), why would you think i could touch the house? if only i could move things, if only i were real to anything, even this old house... to say i "haunt" misleads, i am a prisoner here: silent, powerless, and completely invisible. if anyone is haunted, it is me. haunted by my own existence, a self-haunted ghost, pathetically alone in this house, in this world full of houses that are full of smiling, happy people, people like you. my thoughts are my only voice, and they are endless echoes in my mind. i dimly remember there were once other voices, but all i hear now are the sounds of the house and the bothersome noise of my own thoughts. yet not thinking is worse, because then everything is silent, and there is just the overwhelming feeling of raw existence. through the windows, i see you on the street as you pass each day. but you never see me. at most, you see the house: rundown and deserted, no potential, just a bit of an oddity, an eyesore, at best. and then, undoubtedly, you forget, as you walk away into your day. you are gone so quickly, i sometimes think that perhaps i only imagine you. during those times, i spend the rest of the day and all of the night wondering if i am insane. perhaps you are merely a delusion and there is no one else, no one but me in all this world, and i am trapped in this house. and then, the next day, without fail, you appear again. and i wonder, maybe you are haunting me? perhaps you are the ghost and that bright world beyond these windows is actually the haunted house, and this "house" where i am, maybe it is the only place outside of your haunt, the only place i can be safe. then again, maybe i am completely wrong. maybe i am not haunting, and maybe i am not haunted. maybe i'm just damned. and this house, this world, maybe this is all just hell... maybe, but now i see you coming up the walk, and for a few moments, i will be distracted, distracted by your beauty and half-remembered feelings of... of what? hope? life? friends and family that i cannot remember but who surely must have existed? and then you will be gone again, as always, and the thoughts will rush back in and flood my self and i will remember: i am a ghost, i am haunted, i am damned...

The New Year, a Quick Recap To Date

Flu, flu, chest cold, flu, chest cold, migraine (that brings us up to today). In the midst of that was four and a half hours driving from southern Illinois (flu stage), missing too much work (all stages), and, oh yeah, buckets of misery (and other unmentionable stuff, again, all stages).

I had every intention of setting some resolutions, but my white blood cells didn't hold the line, and my brain went on survival mode. Maybe this weekend I'll begin the new year in earnest (my year will only be 51 weeks long, how weird is that?)

I hope you all are having a better beginning to your year than this!

This post is inspired by Heather, who reminded me this blog exists and I should use the thing. Hmmm, maybe my first resolution?

More Evidence of the True Power

Last year I tapped a building-shaped something with my passenger side mirror. In my defense, it was winter and there was ice involved. The result was that my mirror was hanging limp from the side of my car with only the wires controlling its motor connecting it to my beloved Taurus.

I took the injured car to the mechanic, who looked up the replacement cost for a mirror and gave me a number that amounts to, well, more than I could afford at that moment (or, let's be honest, any moment). Fortunately, there was another customer in the shop at the same time, and he said the same thing happened to his brother a few years back. His brother just epoxied the mirror back on, cost next to nothing. My mechanic agreed to try that and it worked (and was a much less expensive fix). All was good.

Until yesterday, when the epoxy finally stopped epoxying. Of course this had to happen while I was driving up the interstate from a successful visit to my local comic book shop (it was Wednesday, after all). So, there's my mirror flopping along at sixty-five miles per hour and me the cheap jerk who can drop money on comics but won't properly fix his car.

When I get back to town I had a choice: leave the mirror alone until I can get to the mechanic or do something. Of course, there's only one something I can do at that hour, and proud, if somewhat awkward, child of Southern Illinois that I am, I do it: duct tape.

Duct tape, as we all know, is almost magical in its ability to be sticky. Let me illustrate. Last night we had a HUGE storm (I was tempted to capitalize "storm" as well, but some restraint is in order. It's not like Katrina resurrected and hoofed it several hundred miles inland.) Anyway, lots of wind and rain. And this morning... my mirror's still in place. The three strips of duct tape held. I was so proud of those little paragons of adhesive strength that I would've shed a tear if not for the years of anti-depressants that, quite frankly, have pretty much dried up my tear ducts for life. Duct tape is, as we all know, freakin' amazing! (and yes, I will get my mirror fixed properly... someday).

A Summer Memory To Help Distract Me From The Long Winter

It was back in those too, too warm days during the summer of 1983, shortly before my sixteenth birthday, that I met her. Well, that ain't exactly so. I had a vague awareness of who she was. She came from a large Catholic family and had a brother a grade ahead of me and a sister a grade behind. She was three years my junior, in my little brother's class, and she lived next to the city cemetery, which is where we first spoke to each other that summer.

Me and my circle spent more than a little time in the cemetery. In part because we liked hanging out among the dead, in part because we were all a bit too weird for normal company, but mostly because it was one of the few places to hangout in a tiny little Midwestern town. The river ran along the small wilderness just north of the cemetery, and the deer trails and fallen trees were as much a part of our territory as the gravel roads between the tombstones. Sometimes we even hauled our books and dice and character sheets out to the old concrete table in the rarely mowed "nature study" area just outside the cemetery where we battled breeze and bugs to play AD&D under the canopy of trees.

Mostly, however, we just walked and talked. We discovered time travel and reincarnation and warp drive and the perfect government and the funniest joke and the best strategy for dealing with the Kauffman retrograde, all while wandering among the silent gravestones. We bemoaned the tiny redneck culture we had been born into and waxed eloquently about the futures our dreams dared to believe in. We were young and foolish and full of ourselves. We were geeky children who believed ourselves destined to be high fantasty romantic heroes arising from our humble births.

But that first day I ran into her, walking in the cemetery, I was alone. It wasn't terribly uncommon for any of us to go on long strolls alone. Some thoughts need to sit a spell in the cool, dark cellars of the mind before they are ready to serve. Given the year, I was most likely reflecting upon the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos and the unique role humanity plays in that struggle (like many, Neil's title "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock" described my youth sadly perfectly). In those days, I favored Chaos over Law, but that is hardly the point of this memory.

She was in shorts and a tank top. A cute twelve-year-old with big eyes and an endearingly shy smile, as I learned when I said "hi" as we passed.

That was all, and we both went our own ways. And there was evening and morning, the first day.

The next day, as I was walking to the cemetery, my path took me past her house. This was my typical path into the cemetery, and I thought little of it when I saw her on her porch swing reading. Another "hi" as I waved and smiled, not even slowing down as I strode past the girl and through the gates into my kingdom.

When, five minutes later, I saw her approaching, I didn't think anything of it. If I had lived next door to a graveyard, I would have spent as much time as possible there. Just before we passed each other, she stopped and said "hi."

"Hi, again." I smiled. She smiled back, and my heart came alive.

We talked for a while, and I arrived home feeling a strange and wonderful happiness that lasted well into the night. And there was evening and morning, the second day.

Throughout that summer we would "happen" to meet in the cemetery, where we would talk for hours about life and music and our families and books and religion. We laughed and we teased and we listened to each other with all the intensity of the young, with all of the sincerity of nearly mystical communion. She was, in terms of secrets and trust and laughter and sharing, the closest friend I had ever known up til then (with all due respect to my friends, who were all good and true, this was... different, as I suspect most of them would understand). We never kissed, we never were a couple, it was never that kind of relationship. It was all purely and sweetly good, a magic moment in a time and place where one foot was always firmly planted in the realms of faerie.

And, naturally, it didn't last. The end of summer summoned us back to our regular lives, and that was good as well. It was a brief and delightful interlude in my life, one of many lights that linger in the twilight of my failing memories and dying heart.

Autobiographical Random Nonsense Best Avoided By Readers with Discernment

Once upon a time I knew... everything. Well, everything that mattered. I knew the streets of my neighborhood, the names of my friends, and how to enjoy life. I walked, biked, tossed frisbees, even played a little ball with my best friend (poorly, but with a certain enjoyment). I read myths, novels, comic books, science books, and biographies. I prayed naively, without doubt and without pretense. I laughed and cried freely. I had parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and vague dreams of doing something in that distant time when I finally "grew up." I was in elementary school, and life was good.

Ok, so romanticizing childhood is a favored past-time of old people who feel they have missed the boat. I know just how whack my childhood was: I lived it, right? It was better than some and worse than others, but even then, I knew it was a blessing. A blessing that was dragged through mud and broken glass, a blessing that occasionally found itself lost in a metaphorical desert, bleeding and crying, but a blessing nonetheless.

I liked to draw as a kid. I was never any good, but I enjoyed art, especially in junior high. Painting and drawing, and, to a lesser degree, sculpting. Like shop class and home economics, art class produced something from working with my hands. Like most people, producing something tangible with my own hands was deeply satisfying.

I've always always enjoyed music. Not surprising, since most people I've met do. I have absolutely no skill in producing it. Strangely, in high school ALL of my friends were skilled musicians. One of my friends, a scientist-musician, once assured me that given my love of math, there was a musician inside me, but I'm still skeptical.

But there was never a question about my creative medium of choice. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. Not well, and not consistently, and (until the Internet) not publicly, but working with words, ideas, stories... has always been a part of who I am. At one point, in high school, I thought about becoming a writer, but even in high school, being "grown up" and making such decisions seemed far away (oh, silly dreamer! Methinks you needed a bucket of cold water and a swift kick in the rear).

It's odd, given the opportunities to write available to me now, that I don't. Well, not so odd. What keeps me from trying to produce anything of substance is fear. Fear that I have neither the ideas, the talent, nor the discipline to produce anything worth more than the self-published drivel that appears here. Strange, the ten-year-old me wrote a vampire story: pages of painful plot, silly dialogue, and stock characters. No fear, though. I kept it in a blue binder that had a Battlestar Galactica insignia sticker on the cover and spent hours on it: making changes, adding chapters, etc. Couldn't tell you whatever happened to it. It wasn't my first story, but it was the first one I remember working on.

Old people may romanticize childhood, and I am as guilty as the next codger. But maybe, in our defense, there was something romantic about childhood. Not merely the fabled innocence of childhood, the innocence being a necessary condition for the romance, but some largeness in our souls that, I don't know, for want of a better phrase, lived more than we do now.

Or maybe that's just more rose-colored navel-gazing. Dunno. I think of Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien: grown ups who, I believe, kept a romantic vision that most of us seem to lose. In my best moments, I can almost see the grail, shimmering in the last rays of twilight, calling me West. Sometimes, I can sense Chesterton, just beyond the pale, like a Christian Obi-Wan Kenobi, urging me to take up my sabre. But usually, I just pay my bills and take my meds. And, that, as they say, is life.

What is Life?

From Wendell Berry's Life is a Miracle:

To experience [life] is not to "figure it out" or even to understand it, but to suffer it and rejoice in it as it is. In suffering it and rejoicing in it as it is, we know that we do not and cannot understand it completely. We know, moreover, that we do not wish to have it appropriated by somebody's claim to have understood it. Though we have life, it is beyond us. We do not know how we have it, or why. We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us. It is not predictable; though we can destroy it, we cannot make it. It cannot, except by reduction and the grave risk of damage, be controlled. It is, as Blake said, holy.

Speedy Delivery

More updates from the news room of my life...

• Father Andrew Greeley's condition has improved after his freak accident last month. Greels is my (and several thousand, if not million, others') priest. I may not officially be Roman Catholic, but the likes of Greeley, G.K. Chesterton, and Peter Kreeft make me feel like I should be a closet Catholic.
  
• Slackware 12.2 is imminent!
• If you've never done it, let me assure you, grading papers is less fun than you'd think (and the final drafts are coming in next week...)
  
• An old friend found me on Facebook, which is way cool. Social networking site pays off, twitter update at 11.
• Thanksgiving in Lawrenceville with my kids and siblings was nice. Family is good.
• I avoided shopping on Black Friday (shout out to the radicals at Adbusters for encouraging Buy Nothing Day).
• Jonathan Coulton's Christmas song Chiron Beta Prime (from his Thing a Week experiment) has me in Exceedingly Good Spirits this morning.
• The annual Christmas sale at the Lincoln Christian College and Seminary bookstore is in full swing: 45% off books, as well as savings on supplies, clothing, and cards (i.e. things Slacker doesn't remember to buy).
  
• I've found the coolest design at cafepress.com that resounds with my personal mythology. What can't you find at cafepress.com?!?
• Lastly, despair.com has a limited run Christmas shirt.

Well, that's all the news of madness and mundania for the moment (and for those keeping score at home, a boring post is still a post ;-)

Mundane Life Update Stuff

Too long with too little said. I missed commenting on the election wackiness. I missed commenting on the ramp up for the release of Kevin Smith's new film Zack and Miri Make a Porno (which deserved to be commented on, regardless of whether it deserves to be seen). I missed blogging my kids' birthdays. I way big time missed my commitment to blog regularly. I missed blogging the loss of author Michael Crichton.

Real life has been busy. I guess. I don't know. Anyway... this is a stupid and pointless post. I'm going ahead and posting it on the Something is better than Nothing school of blogging, but, sheesh! Go read Wikipedia or something.

Joy

I wanted to look something up online today, which meant a trip out to the office. I decided to walk (undoubtedly influenced by my current reading of Divorce Your Car by Katie Alvord). I live about 2 miles from where I work, and it took me about half an hour to get here. Yes, this is longer than the drive out would have been. I also have sweat a bit more. But...

• I watched a butterfly fly past
• I talked to an old lady sitting out in front of her house on a lawn chair (I don't know her, but does that really matter?)
• I smelled autumn leaves
• I heard said leaves crunch beneath my feet
• I felt the breeze blow through my hair
• I saw the heavy clouds looming overhead (40% chance of scattered thunderstorms today)
• I smelled burning wood (like someone was grilling with wood chips maybe?)
• I experienced that mild excitement I get every time I step across a set of railroad tracks: the feeling of coming in contact with something larger than myself (is it weird that train tracks and beaches give me similar feelings?)
• I noticed trees and dogs and children and the temperature
• I saw a car antenna lying at the side of the road by a busy intersection
• I run the distinct risk of getting caught in the rain. A situation that was so commonplace in childhood that it was barely considered, but as a grown up it seems to be a Thing To Be Avoided At All Costs.
• I was blessed, no, I am blessed by just this simple act of living

I doubt I divorce my car. My kids live too far away for that, and, besides, I like internal combustion: the sounds and smells and the feel of moving down the road. I really do like it. I also really like chocolate, but if chocolate was as central to my diet as solo automobile travel is central to my transportation then I would be in very bad shape. Maybe my car is like my sweet tooth. Then again, maybe not. Regardless, today's walk has brought nothing but joy so far, and I am grateful.

Graduation, Blink, School Starts

The days of summer disappeared like Wiis at Wal-mart. I really thought there would actually be a summer, but, as always, my powers of prognostication underwhelm me. So, here I sit, facing the start of the school year, almost certain that it was just May a few days ago. I have some vague memories of June and July, but they seem more like the echoes of a dream: mostly pleasant with some vaguely remembered awkward bits.

The beginning of another school year is always an exciting time, because I really do prefer the campus full of students: it has an essential rightness about it. And beyond their collective presence, I find myself altogether too fond of the individual students I meet. Another God-created life, another story of joy and love, of pain and struggles. Another testimony to grace, even when the person doesn't see it him- or herself. No one is an island, not even hermit-wannabes like me. I am blessed by the students who are led to sojourn on our campus. I am grateful that some students still share their stories and grace with me via this crazy Internet thing. Much thanks to friends old and new!

New [School] Year's resolution: post at least once a week. Sadly, that would be a major improvement over my recent history. I can't guarantee the quality will improve, but quantity has to be worth something.

However... next week I won't be posting. I won't be exactly near the Internet, so let's just start this "once a week" business the first week of September. Sounds like a plan? Anyway, I hope some of you find your way back here (although, yeah, I'll write even if no one reads).

Shadows on My Own Personal Apocalypse

Sorry about the "long time, no write phenom." Summer got busy and then disappeared. Anyway, just one comment to record for my own journal (I suspect my readers have long since sought other places to waste their time).

Today my ex-wife is getting married.

Blogging Is Dead

Well, if *my* blog is indication (which, let's face it, it isn't). You know how life swallows you up in busyness and you don't quite get around to doing all the things that you keep telling yourself you want to be doing? That would be my life at the moment. Can't actually explain it, since I can't think of a single thing I've been doing, but... there you have it.

Anyway, no deep thoughts, nor even too much minutiae to report (movies: I've seen Iron Man, but none of the other May blockbusters yet).

I know I'm tired and old. I think it's time for a mid-life crisis, but honestly, I don't have the time, energy, or money for one of those. Can I have a mid-life nap instead?

Oh, and happy birthday to my sister Amy and to our former blogger-in-arms Morgan!

Older Than Dirt, Apparently...

Yesterday while driving down to Southern Illinois for my daughter's school program, I stopped for a bite of lupper. I went into an Unspecified Fast Food workaurant and placed my order. The kid then rang it up and, without even asking, rang in the senior discount! This is the first time this has ever happened to me. And all I could think was, "Hey, I just saved 37 cents because I look old. Sweet!"

Anyway, it's funny. Mostly because I didn't think I looked that old, but what do I know? Here's hoping the rest of you don't look significantly older than you are :-)

Quickly...

...since blogger is about to go down for an update and I probably should go eat supper.

I am still alive and well (the last point being more or less subjective, but we'll let it stand).

Ubuntu 8.04 is due out tomorrow (which is when, exactly? Isn't Mark Shuttleworth in South Africa?) Slackware 12.1 has reached release candidate 2 status, so my desktop machine will be looking at an upgrade Real Soon Now.

Work's been "fun" with my boss away in Central Europe for a bit. I really thought I'd be less busy, not more. Who was I kidding?!?

While I am emphatically not a big "blood and guts" film fan, I have a long time relationship with the Aliens franchise. But all the reviews of the latest installment, Alien vs Predator: Requiem, has me convinced that it's time to give up on the series without allowing this stinker to be the last taste in my mouth.

Speaking of series, my friend the naval commander is lending me Babylon 5, so I can finally see what all the hype was. So far, pretty cool. Not Firefly cool, but easily cooler than Voyager or Enterprise.

I've been waking up early, even without earthquakes. This morning I was out of bed at 4 am before I even realized what time it was. Very weird. I cut the caffeine off today at 11:00 am, so maybe I'll sleep tonight (although falling asleep and staying asleep through the night isn't a problem. I'm just waking up like an old person. Oh. Wait. I think I see the problem. Bloody aging process...)

I hope all is well with those of you whom I know almost exclusively virtually, as well as my family and neighbors who may (or, more likely, may not) be reading this. On the off chance my darling sister is reading this: I know, I need to call! :-)

Good Morning, Earth!

So, anyone else wake up at 4:30ish (CST6CDT) to a 5.4 richter scale quake?

In Praise of Folly

with apologies to Erasmus

Happy April Fool's Day to you, one and all! On behalf of the Not-So Great Conspiracy of Moon Jesters and Frost Knaves, welcome to one of the most ridiculous excuses for a Holly day (you did call Holly today, didn't you?)

I thought a poem would be in order. But the one I wrote was HORRIBLY depressing, so then I decided for a joke, but since the "Holly day" thing didn't go over so well... I've decided on a mundane little update.

Reading: Lots of stuff, most notably Douglas Preston's latest novel, Blasphemy. Preston and Child, whether as a literary dynamic duo or doing solo projects, deliver The Most Excellent Scientific Thrillers. I think there's a link to their site under "Authors I Grok." I've also read a couple of "Get Your Life Together" titles: CrazyBusy and Making Peace with the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You and What to Do About It. Interesting reads, since chaos and/or entropy and/or slackfulness keep me in a perpetual state of crazy.

I'm working my way through season 3 of Numb3rs, which rocks beyond all crime dramas because there's MATH involved!

Easter weekend and last weekend with the kids, so life's been pretty sweet on that front.

Anything else? Um, I need a haircut and to pick up margarine from the store on the way home tonight (hey, someone want to remind me of that around 5 CST time? Thanks!)

I hope that you all have enjoyed Winter, because, with God and His druids as my witness, Spring is about to make her debut :-)