I had nothing to say for a little bit

Aside from working and working as though I were the protagonist in an old country song, I haven't done a whole lot this week. I discover that I am a couple of days older and deeper in debt than when I last posted. I apologize for this. I know that I am the only source of entertainment for some of you, and I hope that none of you had to resort to watching television, spending time with your families, or reading books. Nobody wants that.

I kept up on the reading of blogs, though; my personal stash of favorites that I keep in the clickables section (I'd call it a blogroll, but fear that may be trademarked by a service I do not use). I found it more difficult than normal to post comments, though. And starting with this post, I am adopting the scattershot approach to tags I see used so well on Julia Buckley's site.

I think my recent bout of work has caused some friction between the person I've been and the person I'm in the process of becoming. And to get the work done, the person I have been had to win out this time. That guy neither keeps a blog nor works on novels, though, so I'm hoping to find a better balance of these guys in the future. It's tough work, changing.

The holidays don't help. There's a tendency to slide into depression. It started for real on Sunday, and I tried to combat it by assembling an Xmas tree in my living room. I've never really put up a tree in my home before, but I went out and bought a cheap-o prefab one at Target. You don't even have to put lights on it. Already done. Of course, given the money I spent, it looks like something that even Linus would have left in the lot.

About eighteen months ago I bought some old glass ornaments at a garage sale. Some of them may well be older than me. On a couple of them are little scorch marks from rubbing up against those old-fashioned, fire hazard lights. I put on a selection of palatable Xmas tunes I put together a few years ago and started to hang them from the tree. My cats were immediately mesmerized, and I thought they were going to bring the whole thing crashing down the instant I left the room. So far they've been respectful, although I did locate the bag of extra bulbs on my kitchen floor yesterday, repeatedly punctured by something small and sharp. I can't formally accuse them until I hear back from the lab.

The Xmas activity helped a little, but the impending death of my laptop and my newly broken tooth, coupled with the sub-freezing temperatures and the return to my legitimate paying work, have added up to a strange week.

I'm still in a bit of a funk (and not the good kind I might get from listening to too much George Clinton) but should pull out of it within a day or two.