Oh, Lord...Didn't He Ramble?

It's gray here in ND this morning.

It looks like it wants to rain, but like a patient just out of rehab, it's going to deny itself the pleasure.

The snow has finally disappeared from my yard; just a few short days ago, there was a drift about three feet high on the south fence. All that remains is the squalor that comes with the thaw; old leaves, papers and other trash that got mixed in when the blizzards hit and ran.

Mighty gray, though.

Not conducive to happy thoughts. Puts one more in mind of.....introspection, I suppose.

I would like to go a week without disappointing somebody. Or myself.

(I did warn you about introspection, didn't I?)

I would like people to stop volunteering me for assignments, without the common decency of asking me first. I know I work for the government, but I DON'T work for the military. But at the same time, I find it amusing (in a sarcastic way, not a truly funny, feel-good-movie-of-the-summer way) that the talents they rely upon couldn't get me so much as an interview when a position opened where they could actually USE those talents. But. That's the government.

There's a book, staring at me like one of those obnoxious GEICO commercials. It's saying, "It's time to do that research." And I'm saying, "But there's still cake in the fridge."

That made more sense in my head then it did on the page.

Mark Twain, in his waning years, actually wrote a few chapters of a book, chronicling the lives of Tom and Huck in their old age; apparently, it was a book about the futility of life after the age of adventure, and what happens after the imagination is overcome by the realities of life. According do one biographer, he consigned the manuscript to the flames of this fireplace. I think that's a pity, but at the same time, it would diminish the images of our youth; where we did imagine ourselves as pirates, and steamboat pilots, and prospectors of gold in the fields of California.

Sometimes, I would give everything I have, everything I ever had, and everything I will EVER have, just to not...think....like I do.

And other times, not.

The preceding ramble was brought to you by a lack of coffee, a lack of deep sleep, and the prospect of a long day.

But I'm reminded of something my friend and former student Greg Owen wrote about the retirement of John Madden...

"...So you got this fat guy over here babbling on about football and then BOOM! Retirement comes along and and the fat guy, he's not talking about football anymore which is okay, cause you got the fans over here and they haven't listened to a word he's said in years..."

If you here it in a Madden voice, it's much funnier, I think.

A good day to you. Ramble on, my friends.