My license renewal is here again.  Hard to believe it's another year come and gone.

Unfortunately I'm having problems with the renewal process; the software isn't taking my new code.  It's possible I'll be offline this weekend until I get this bug worked out.

In the mean time, just in case, I'm going to open a blank post for idle chit-chat.

What the heck...this might as well be that post!

Have a great weekend if I don't catch you on line here tomorrow or Sunday!

10:54:10 PM    comment []

A few of us here in Salon blogs have recently mentioned our sadness. SAD-ness.

Seasonal Affective Disorder-edness.  The physical and spiritual gloom that lowers itself over the northlands, easing itself in with the darkened skies and drifting snow, squatting darkly on one's chest and clouding one's mind until spring returns.

I think I hit the murky bottom of SAD this morning.

The kids had just left for school, spouse having volunteered to take them to school.  It was as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the house after the hub-bub and din abruptly ended with the slam of the door.

It wasn't long that I was out, I'm certain it was only for twenty minutes or so, maybe long enough for the first cup of joe to make its way entirely through my system.  How I got to where I was, I don't really know; it's as if I fell there.  Perhaps I was impelled there by the closing door...

When I came to, I realized I was sitting in the den, in a kind of dopey torpor, a second cup of coffee in my hand.

Watching Jimmy Neutron.

Oh, the shame of it.

Fortunately, from this next week forward, everything turns around.  The days will stop getting shorter, the sun rising earlier and setting later.  The new house will demand my every waking moment that is not already dedicated to chasing kids to and from school, to and from after-school programs.  This old house will be nipping on the heels of everything else, needing paint and small repairs to prepare for sale.

I suppose I should have enjoyed that last bit of SAD-ness.

It might have been the last time I can sit down in quiet solitude until next winter.

12:35:12 PM    comment []