I feel almost normal. Sore throat, headache, froggy voice (but more Tallulah Bankhead than Cookie Monster, so that's progress,) but not really feeling as bad as I have been. I have a social event this morning, and ordinary errands, and I think it might be wise to take it easy this afternoon, but I may be nearly ready to enter the land of the living.

I feel as though I've lost a week. I've gotten most of my work done, and gotten in music and reading and even a little bit of knitting (Erin's sleeves, at right), but I feel as though I sort of missed it all. I definitely missed Front Porch Week on the Grand Plan, though I guess I may get it all done today.

The periodontist whom I met with yesterday seemed very knowledgeable and truly optimistic about my future health, if I were able to come up with large sums of money. He got quite passionate about bacteria, and gave thorough and really not very alarming descriptions of the procedure he has in mind. My only complaint (well, apart from the fact that I have no plan for how to come up with the large sums of money) is that he did all this talking to me while I was reclining in a chair and he was wearing funny glasses.

When someone is talking about removing cells from tissue and how tooth decay can lead to prostate cancer and stuff like that, he shouldn't feel any need to add a touch of the surreal to the experience. A dream-like quality is probably not what he's after. Although it might have been the overall dreamlike quality of the week as well.

#1 son is off to a neighboring state for a climbing competition. #2 son has work, at his secret workplace. #2 daughter has all-day rehearsals. I have this party to go to, and housework. I need to get some more music in there somewhere, I think. I have been working on the upcoming music all week, but only in the sense of listening to it and croaking along. At some point, I actually need to work on the singing, if my voice is up to it. I was a little sad about dropping the Master Chorale for this semester, but it is now a source of relief that I don't have a bunch of Brahms that I'm falling behind on, in addition to all the Lent and Easter stuff.

I also have it on my goals list for this year to learn to read music properly instead of just coping with it. I've gathered some tools for the purpose, and feel pretty optimistic. I hope to get back to the gym tomorrow, too, or at least out for a walk.

So, yeah, that's what I'll be doing today. Enjoy your weekend!

We went to #2 son's work open house last night. I have been forbidden to mention where he works or what he does, and I am also not allowed to say that he looks cute in his uniform.

I thought I would report on C. S. Lewis's book, The Problem of Pain. A few pithy quotes, you know, on an interesting topic. The trouble I have with Lewis is that once I start quoting, it's hard for me to stop.

For example, Lewis points out that, philosophically, "pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving." And of course this is true. If life were merely nasty, brutish, and short, pain would present no philosophical problems at all. Life is horrible, and then you die. No philosophical problem there.

The problem, he says, is this: if God is good and loves us, then why does He allow pain? Free will is the classic answer to this, within the religious tradition of which I am a part. And Lewis agrees; much pain is caused by human sin, either directly in the form of war and oppression or indirectly through greed and complacence about others' hardships.

But he also says that we don't actually want contentment on any terms for those we love. If you tell me that you don't care what your kids do as long as they're happy -- drugs, crime, prostitution, anorexia, as long as they're happy -- I am going to tell you that you are an unnatural parent. In fact, if you park your babies in front of the TV and let them eat candy all day, anything at all to keep them from crying, I'm going to know that you are a bad parent. That is indifference, not love. We don't even feel that way about our dogs, Lewis says. We don't housetrain earwigs or give them baths, he points out, not because we think the earwigs would enjoy having their natural tendencies thwarted less than our dogs do, but because we don't care about them enough.

So some pain is the result of evil human choices. Some is good for us, either as a warning (like hot things being painful to touch) or as a good experience for our characters.

Lewis then talks about sin at some length, and very interestingly. If you are contemplating the theological issues surrounding sin this Lenten season, you might like to read this book, even if you aren't thinking much about pain. He makes some interesting points about the political and linguistic aspects of our distaste for the very word "sin" that I'd love to discuss with others, though I'm guessing that the topic is not to the taste of most of my visitors here. He also has some pointed comments on selfishness that I plan to think about, though any discussion would just have to be my saying how right he is, if I am any indication.

But, back to pain, Lewis then touches briefly on natural causes of suffering, like tornadoes. We know that some of the current "natural disasters" are in fact the result of human greed and wrong behavior on an enormous scale. We were not content with the world as God prepared it for us, so we have altered it, and our choices have led to some unforeseen consequences. Some of the hardships resulting from those things also result from human wrong choices in everything from constructing buildings to the way that we respond to emergencies. But there are also potential hardships in any environment which presents the appearance of a settled nature. Do you remember the Bugs Bunny cartoons in which the cartoonist would appear as a hand drawing and erasing things, to Bugs's fury? We wouldn't really choose to live in a world like that.

"Even if all suffering were manmade," says Lewis, "we should like to know the reason for the enormous permission to torture their fellows which God gives to the worst of men." And here Lewis brings up a point that I have heard others make, with varying degrees of persuasiveness. We can, he says, see the wrong that comes from wrong behavior and from natural disasters. Then we can see the goodness that God allows to come of it: the opportunity to offer kindness and help to others, to show courage and nobility, to learn and improve through our own suffering or through our responses to the suffering of others.

Lewis is not, I think, saying that God allows evil in order to make a point. He has already suggested that, while God could ensure that things made to serve as weapons miraculously would become soft and harmless, or that evil thoughts could not take root in human minds, the consequences of such a system would be unacceptable even to us.

Lewis points out also that thinking of all the human suffering through time and space as though it were cumulative is an error. If you and I each have a toothache of magnitude 1x, he says, that doesn't add up to 2x: no one is suffering 2x. He also reminds us that, if we believe in God (and if we don't then there is no reason for us to think that pain is wrong, rather than just being the nature of life), then our time on earth is only a short part of our entire existence.

"The settled happiness and security which we all desire," says Lewis, "God withholds from us by the very nature of the world, but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy... Our Father refreshes us on our journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home."

Lewis writes a bit on animal and plant pain, too, and it is there that he jokes about mosquitoes, as Ozarque did in the comments: "a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could be very conveniently combined."

I am off this morning to see the periodontist. My understanding is that there is nothing this guy can do for me that I can afford, so I am expecting to have an unpleasant and expensive morning for no benefit, but my dentist told me to go see him, so I am doing so. I will certainly notice my lack of novels during that jaunt. Having finished The Problem of Pain, I have moved on to God and the New Physics.  After that I will head on up to the store for the day. It has been a long week.

Didn't I say that Lent is all about attention? Last night when I went in to get ready for bed, I had this pointed out to me. I was headed for the shower, and stopped to turn on the lamp by my bed.

Now, I had ashes on my face, I hadn't eaten in nine hours, I had just been discussing my Lenten sacrifice, then attending Ash Wednesday service (we were given specific prayer concerns in addition to the usual penitence and grace: the tornado victims from Tuesday night and the millions of little girls globally who do not have the opportunity to go to school), then singing in choir practice about death and pain which you know we never do outside of Lent. You would think that Lent would have been right at the top of my mind.

But I looked over to my nightstand to see what I would be reading after my shower. My mind, for the second or two while my eyes traveled that way, searched around -- what had I been reading? had a murder occurred yet? were the hero and heroine still sparring? was there a wonderful setting?--

In the time it took to come home and greet my family, I had forgotten. It is Lent. I am not reading John Grisham or Ellen Byerrum or Terry Pratchett. I am reading C.S. Lewis on pain. No one I'd rather read on the subject, actually.

Lewis has presented the idea that the existence of pain and disharmony of all kinds is evidence for an objective rightness. That is, if there were nothing that was good and right, except what our culture arbitrarily defines in that way, we would not recognize pain and wrongness. In the face of nearly overwhelming evidence of pain and wrong in our daily experience of the world, our continued ability to think of pain as abnormal affirms the objective existence of good and evil.

The Chief Happiness Officer cited an article from Newsweek, "Happiness: Enough Already." It's about the "happiness backlash." It makes a similar point, if less philosophically. It talks about unhappiness as a reasonable and appropriate response to some things, a reaction that causes others to offer us comfort and causes us to seek positive change. It suggests that we as a culture have decided not to tolerate unhappiness, and defined appropriate sadness as an illness.

You could say the same for pain. Do you have a headache? Don't use that information to recognize that you need a quieter space or a different job or a dustcloth -- take a pill! Are you sad? Don't use that information to recognize that you need to make changes in your behavior or grieve that things are not turning out for you as you had hoped they would -- take a pill!

I think that most of us would say that pain has that purpose: to say, "Don't touch that hot thing or you will damage your tissues!"

But Newsweek goes on to suggest that people who are not that happy -- say an 8 on a scale of 10 rather than a 9 or a 10 -- are more successful than those who are really happy.

Now, I'd be inclined to say that an 8 was pretty happy. But the idea that people who are slightly less happy are more successful caught my eye, because I would also be inclined to say that people who are happy are successful. By definition. Aristotle, the framers of the constitution, lots of folks would say that being happy is success.

Newsweek is talking about money and education. People who are a bit less happy than they could be are motivated to take steps. They end up making more money.

Now, this was interesting to me because the research about money and happiness is pretty consistent. Every year, The Wall Street Journal reports the latest findings on this, and they never give up. I figure it's because they keep hoping it will turn out that money buys happiness. But no. Americans living in poverty are less happy than those who have enough. And people who "poor mouth" -- who talk a lot about how they can't afford things or don't have enough, regardless of their actual circumstances -- are less happy. But beyond that, more money doesn't make you happier.

The thing is, it's always framed in that way. Look at how much money people have, and see how happy they are. Doesn't matter.

The report in Newsweek takes the opposite approach: look at how happy people are, and see how much money they make. Again, there is a limit: people who are deeply depressed don't get out there and make millions. But reasonably cheerful people make more than those who are really joyful?

How can we reconcile these two sets of data?

I bet you could get a grant for this.

It is Ash Wednesday, and I was happy to be reminded of the poem of that name by T.S. Eliot. I hadn't read it in years, and maybe you haven't either. You can read it here.

Some of us will go today for the imposition of ashes, which is to say that we will have a minister make the sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes from last year's Palm Sunday palms. Locally, at least, Catholics and Episcopalians have this done in the morning and go around smudgy all day, but most of us do it in the evening. I believe that the reason the high churches go with the morning ritual is to give the reminder all day long as people say, "Hey, you've got something on your face."

Lent is all about remembering and paying attention, both of which are difficult things to do when we are so busy with our lives.

Ash Wednesday and its ritual are not mentioned in the Bible, and lots of Christians therefore not only do not undertake this ritual, but also do not approve of it. You will hear claims (well, if you hang out in those circles) that Ash Wednesday is based on a pagan festival, but you won't find any evidence for this claim. However, there are those who feel that any religious observance that is not commanded in the Bible is by definition pagan idolatry. There are also those that believe that ritual is wrong in itself, that it drives out true religious experience and makes observation mechanical and meaningless. These guys are not going around with smudgy foreheads.

I like the liturgical calendar, myself, and I am not opposed to a good ritual now and then.

I took my coughing and sneezing home early yesterday, and the Booksfree novels arrived in the mail just about when I did. I was therefore able to read one as I lay in bed with my Nyquil and hot tea. I am feeling well enough to stay up and work today, and can begin my novel fast without regrets.

I have a bunch of nonfiction hanging around waiting to be read or reread, and I also have a couple of books that use a story to make a spiritual point which I am in the midst of reading for study groups. I do intend to read my Book Club novel, which unfortunately did not arrive before today, though I felt that I had ordered it in plenty of time. I'll read it on Sundays. Otherwise, I am fictionless till Easter. Since I normally read several novels a week, I think this will be a noticeable enough change in my life.

I hope so, at least. I usually do a Lenten study. The study group I go to on Wednesdays had talked about doing one together, and I had requested a frugalreader book called 40 Days to Your Best Life, (frugalreader being the online equivalent of "Hey, you want any of these books before I throw them out?" so I know nothing about that book, but it sounded as though it might be a Lenten study), so I took no further steps in that direction.

If you are observing Lent, then I pray that it will be a good journey for you.

If you weren't out partying last night for Mardi Gras, then you might have been watching the Super Tuesday results. It's being pretty exciting, it seems to me. I liked seeing the journalists assure one another that Huckabee of course had no chance and then have to say, well, hmm... looks like Huckabee just won in Georgia.

My husband says that McCain is too short to win the election. His height didn't seem to hurt him in the primaries, but I think that it is true that the taller candidate generally has won since our elections have been televised. If one of the candidates is a woman, would that still have an effect?

Obama and Clinton are both still in. Some of the folks last night were suggesting that the Republicans might now be able to unite and chase after the independent vote, while the Democrats were still having to work for the primaries.

So the election remains interesting, which didn't seem to be true last time around.

As I say, I am recuperated enough to sit up and work, but not to get to the gym, and I may have a nap this afternoon. I hope to visit your blogs and read about your Mardi Gras adventures and/or your insightful comments on the primaries.

Yesterday I did the essential errands and the essential computer work and then went to bed with the last of the books from the box Partygirl gave me. It is Shrove Tuesday today, Pancake Tuesday, Mardi Gras.

This is the day, if you are a traditionalist, to use up all the rich foods in the house before Lent (thus Fat Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday). You can also have an orgy of whatever else you plan to give up for Lent, be it chocolate or complaining. You might get the impression, from Mardi Gras parties, that lots of people give up liquor and immodesty for Lent, but realistically, Mardi Gras is like Christmas. Everyone celebrates it now, without regard to its religious significance. So go ahead.

I am giving up novels for Lent, though I am sadly expecting books from Booksfree. They should have come yesterday, while I was lying miserably in bed with time to read, but they will probably arrive tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, to underscore the sacrifice.

I am too sick to party, but I am going to work up at the store. I am doing the remainder of the errands from yesterday. I am also going to vote, since I am in a Super Tuesday state. I hope you will, too, if you are also in such a state. Whoever you vote for, it is good to vote.

There are things to be said for doing errands while you are ill, because people want to help you quickly and get you out of there. But the errands that I saved for today are the ones that involve being nice to people, and I am hoping that I will be enough better to do that convincingly and without sounding too much like Cookie Monster.

Yesterday I got the new car tags. In order to get the new car tags, I had to assess my personal property. In order to do that, you have to find a parking place and walk through metal detectors and stuff, and of course that's why I had been putting it off. I haven't felt leisured enough to do this.

Actually, the whole metal detector thing is much faster than it used to be. When we first got those put in, we all felt that we had to chat. You know, the guy who stood at the door telling you to ditch your pocket knives had to ask after people's cattle, and the woman who took your purse onto the conveyor belt had to say, "Girl! I love your purse!" and the guy who made you walk through the magic doorway had to assure everyone that he didn't really think they were dangerous or anything, and all the people going through had to make jokes.

Yesterday, though, we all just walked through like we were Yankees or something. Or, in my case, as though I were sick. I apologized to the nice assessment woman for polluting her office with my foul germs and she got me in and out of there in jig time.

Then I had to go to the revenue office. Now, we are supposed to do all this stuff in January. Strictly speaking, I should have paid a fine, and I was doing both my husband's car and my own, so I should have paid two fines. However, I stood there blearily croaking at the clerk and she said she could tell that I hadn't been driving, and let me go.

This is because there is a loophole for car registration. If the car has not been driven, you don't pay a late fee. So if you go in on Monday the 4th, but can convincingly claim that the car was in the shop for a week, you don't pay a fine.

My husband had suggested that we send #1 son to do the tags, on the grounds that I would not lie. He seemed to feel that this was a character flaw. I was a bit horrified that he would think it would be okay to send our kid to tell a lie.

I think it likely that the people in the Revenue office spend the entire first week of every month being lied to in a casual way. Who's going to pay a fine for being a day or two late if they can say, "I haven't been driving it" and get off scotfree? Well, I might. It's a gray area for me. I know that I was wrong not to just go take care of it last month. I would pay the fine without argument if they charged me. But if I could avoid that fine without an outright lie, I wouldn't feel bad about having done so.

#1 daughter had a good talk with one of the prosecutors in her office. Apparently, lawyers look at people who want to become lawyers and speculate on defender vs. prosecutor the way that we might hear a young singer and speculate about tenor vs. baritone. #1 daughter's initial cuteness made them think "defender." After a bit, though, they began to think she had the makings of a prosecutor. Not, as those who know her might guess, because of the pleasure she takes in leaping down your throat at the slightest hint of a difference of opinion. That I think, is a defender thing, too. No, it is apparently because modern people so rarely have a firm belief in right and wrong that when you see a moral absolutist on the horizon, you think, "Aha! A prosecutor!" The fellow told her that she had the upbringing to be a prosecutor, and that he looked forward to being able to pay her what she was worth, so she had better get back to school right away.

This wouldn't have happened if we had sent her into the revenue office to tell lies, now would it?

It is of course possible that my husband threatened to send our son because I was saying that I was too sick, and he was determined not to do it. He would know that -- even though there was an even chance that I might have to pay the fine, since I would neither lie outright nor insist on paying it if they weren't insistent on charging it -- I wouldn't just skip doing it if he was going to send #1 son.

He's sly like that.

The music went well yesterday, though I sounded pretty bad. By the time I got home,  I was ready to admit that I was actually sick. I spent the afternoon in the recliner with a stack of trashy novels and cups of tea.

My husband was stretched out on the couch coughing and sneezing. He is better today, and headed in to work. I am not better. I sound like a seal. My husband had a list of errands for me. I suggested that he should do them after work.

He often has things he thinks I should do since I work from home, and I tend to think he should do them, since he finishes work early. I am aware that everyone thinks that they do more than their fair share of all shared tasks. It's just our nature. But on days like this, I do feel as though I do everything.

We'll see what happens.

I did stir long enough to make a Super Bowl feast, though we called out for pizza to round it out.

The dogs enjoyed the Super Bowl a lot. There was shouting, and people were eating things, and everyone was in the same room, so they got excited and raced around. Actually, Toby and Fiona, the red dogs, raced around. You can see their ears flying in this picture. Spicer, the newest dog, wants to join in this game, but she hasn't figured out how. Her game is fetch, which she plays obssessively as long as anyone will throw a ball for her. She can be exhausted from running back and forth on her short legs, with her tongue hanging out, but she still wants to play. She puts the ball on your lap and barks till you throw it.

I do not throw it, by the way. I get nagged to do things enough by the humans in the household, in my opinion.

I plan to do the essential computer work and then go back to bed. #1 son went out after the game and bought me some Nyquil. I saw, when I checked online to make sure I gave him enough money for the task, a page warning that Nyquil contains "strong narcotics." Frankly, I am just in the mood for strong narcotics.

I don't really have time to write this morning.

I did errands yesterday, took #2 son to gymnastics, made my three contacts, tested the Power Cooking theme show (#2 daughter timed me -- one meal on the table and two in the freezer in 25 minutes, so it's aptly named), and dusted precisely one surface before giving in to the coughing and sneezing.

Fortunately, Netflix had sent a couple of, in my son's words, "sissy movies." My husband, who had also succumbed to the ailment, joined me on the couch and we watched "Beauty Parlor" and "Designing Woman." Both movies involve female solidarity, tangential crime, screwball comedy romance, strong working women, lots of costume changes, and women making frank comments about one another's bodies.

I now have 14 minutes to finish my tea, dress, and get to rehearsal. TTFN!

I was watching a rerun of Seinfeld last night, and saw one of my mother's books. It was in a little stack of books George had loaned to a woman and wanted Jerry to get back for him yadda yadda. I vaguely remember that my mother once got paid for a book's appearance in something, but I had thought it was a movie, so this was a surprise.

I was as "Hey, look!" as if it had been my mother herself making this cameo.

I'm currently reading a book that used to be a blog. I have reached the point, after having read about a dozen such books, of not getting books if I know in advance that they used to be blogs. Since I get most of my books in the mail, I frequently don't know this ahead of time, which I suppose is why I have now read so many books that used to be blogs.

The first thing I've noticed in blog books is the lack of plot. There are events, but they don't have that narrative form you like to see in a piece of fiction. For example, last year we got tangentially involved in a crime at my house, and my husband was seriously thinking about going into hiding to avoid being killed by gangsters and I was seriously afraid that we, innocent though we were, were going to end up in prison.

In a work of fiction, this would be something like Some Like It Hot. A great premise, and you can go in a lot of directions, and it could make a great story.

In real life, it dragged on for months and finally just sort of fizzled out when I quit getting letters from the government and my husband quit waiting for someone to come and kill him. This is what blog books are like. Day by day, the events could be interesting, especially since you get to know the person over time and feel fond of them and want to know what's going on with them. But real life doesn't make for good plot.

There is also a real lack of character development. In fiction, a whiny self-indulgent character will tend to have experiences and improve. Or possibly get killed. In blog books, the whiny self-indulgent characters have experiences -- they get a job or have a baby or lose weight or read the entire encyclopedia -- but they are still whiny and self-indulgent.

Or they might be nice and sympathetic from beginning to end, a thing you like in real life, but not that great in fiction. I don't mean to suggest that even the majority of the characters in these books have been whiny and self-indulgent. Especially the guy with the encyclopedia. He seems very nice. It was just a random example, the point being that blog book characters don't either improve or have tragic ends.

I assume this is because in fiction, the writer plans ahead for the character to change or improve or learn or develop or die, but in a blog, you have a writer who is already as good as he or she can imagine being, aside from externals. So the story is just about externals, and the above-mentioned lack of plot makes those externals disappointing.

Life doesn't make good fiction.

So I am reading this book, and liking the character in spite of her self-destructive behavior, and preparing for the disappointment when we get to the end and nothing much will have happened. In a novel, the author would have put the self-destructive behavior in on purpose, and have a plan for the character either to overcome it or to end up tragically, but this is a book from a blog.

The blog in question has a link to this collection of 1972 recipe cards, in the style of The Gallery of Regrettable Foods, to which I have linked you before. In fact, I've posted enough pictures like these (though without the clever captions) that you will recognize that I find this era of cookbook photos fascinating. Though you shouldn't look at them before meals, of course.

When I read these blog books, I sometimes think that, while the book itself is disappointing, I could enjoy the blog. However, as soon as people make their blogs into books, they quit writing anything interesting at their blogs. This makes sense, I suppose.Why give it away when someone will pay you for it? The blog is no longer their diary, but rather has become a marketing device. So you end up with a book that is not very good as a book and a blog that is not very good as a blog.

Presumably, these people go on to do other things, having ruined both their books and their blogs. Sigh.

My husband and my son have both made pointed remarks about the lack of housekeeping around here. My husband and I even had a bit of a quarrel about it, with him pointing out that I am working more hours than I am paid for, and no one appreciates my doing that, while I neglect my responsibilites to him and the household. It wasn't a quarrel yet when he said that, actually. It became a quarrel when Isuggested that, if people would just leave me alone so I could get my work done, I wouldn't have to work so many hours.

However, he is right. It isn't even true that I don't get my work done when people interrupt me. I still get the work done, I just get cross about it. So I am not going to work today (well, just a little bit) except at housework.

I did make them a coffee cake, which you see here apparently floating around in the spirit world. This sort of thing shouldn't happen in the day of digital photographs.

And we are all coughing and sneezing here again. I don't know whether we passed that virus around and around again, or if we have allergies or what, but there is a dispiriting feeling to having just gotten better and then be feeling miserable again.

So I do think that sitting in front of the fire reading and knitting will be part of the day. I finished Erin's fronts and must now figure out how to proceed next.

It snowed yesterday. This is enough snow to close schools around here. There is more snow than this out there today, but it is too dark for me to take its picture for you. Still, I am guessing that this will be another snow day.

So I had a work day surrounded by boys and dogs. I love them all, but sometimes I wish they would all go away and let me work in peace. It would be one thing if I felt able to stop and enjoy them. But I feel as though I must work unceasingly during working hours.

This may be irrational. At the store, after all, we stop and chat a lot. Sometimes with one another, but always with the customers. Of course, that is also part of our work. If they didn't want to chat, they could just stay home and shop online.

Still, since I work at home, I feel honor-bound to work all the time during work hours.

I get a lot done that way, of course. Yesterday I completed the first subunit for the third grade state history unit.

I had given in to the temptation to leave the most boring part for last -- always a mistake -- so I had quite a lot of time typing things like "Students will use creative problem solving, critical thinking skills, and various resources to select subject matter, symbols, and ideas to communicate meaning. A.2.1."

Not my own, that sentence. I was copying down the state standards that each activity covered.

I believe in state standards. I actually support national standards. Not idiotic standards like "all students will do 10% better on standardized tests than the kids the year before," which is what NCLB has given us, but the National Academy of Sciences National Science Education Standards, the Core Knowledge proposals for a shared 50% of the national curriculum, and so on. Still, a lot of the state standards are questionable at best.

I well remember when I got a copy of the then-new state history standards for review. One of the things kids were supposed to master was our state's "place in the global economy during the Civil War." Mind you, we still had places where mail delivery was a matter of handing a letter to someone passing through and hoping he'd somehow get it to a town that had a post office. We had no place in the global economy.

And, however good the standards might be, they are still going to be dull to type out repeatedly. Anyway, I did that, and then surfaced to make Chicken Saltimbocca from the 29 Minutes or Less Cookbook for dinner.

It was pretty convincing, too.

It was then time to watch the debate between the two remaining Democratic candidates. I was proud of them for refusing to bicker, even though the moderator did his best to goad them into it. I am tired of watching politicians bicker.

I'm tired of watching reporters bicker, too. I understand that they consider it more exciting, but I just don't agree with them. A sprightly argument on important issues with well-reasoned points on both sides is always refreshing, but a bunch of people shouting over one another is not.

While that was going on, I completed another band on Erin's fronts. I need about three more inches here to the shoulder.

In theory, I am supposed to go to the store today, but I don't think it's going to happen. My husband took the only reliable vehicle (which was the right thing to do, considering that he has to drive in the dark and the snow, while I might not have to drive at all), so I am only going to be up there if I catch a ride with The Empress. Since I am usually the only one there on Friday mornings, this is not good. When we had the store near my home, I solved this problem by walking there on snow days, but the current store is twelve miles away, and there is a limit to my dedication.

So I don't quite know what I'm doing today. I'll go ahead and get started on The Dark Art and press releases and the store blogs and the next subunit, and see what happens.