This time of year we struggle with control and chaos. There isn't much we can do about ice in the road, or about the unceasing wind, or no mail on account of weather, mice in the walls, water in the kerosene and it still gets dark early. We want white sugar and coffee, Hershey kisses and buttered toast and rum. We want bacon. We are racked with guilt over the same, brainwashed as we are with some baloney that we should somehow look like movie stars. This isn't seasonal-affective disorder, it's

“Shovel-ready.” Boy, that one's going to get tiresome before the year is out. I don't know who first used the term, meaning an infrastructure or engineering project that has already been rubber-stamped by the 'crats, the lawyers, the locals, and the DEP, but if the American Dialect Society picks this expression as the “word of the year” I'm going to climb up on my desk and jump.

The Civil Engineer's trade group tells us that there are 2.2 trillion-with-a-T trillion

I sure can pick 'em.

Last year, I willingly cleared my desk of several paperwork jobs, and was relieved of a couple of others. “Good,” I figured, disgruntled, indeed, but thankful at the same time. “More time to write.” I was content on my way to a stable, if part-time, employment as a columnist for numerous local publications. PRINT publications.

Like I said…

I think I've seen this action before. Herewith, a memory:

In 1981, I graduated from

One of my neighbors asked me the other day, "How long have you guys been having that party?" It has probably been nearly 20 years now; I remember when Sue and I decided that we needed to host a Christmas party, and my home for some reason made for an easier site than hers. She found out from Cait how to make the good egg nog that she'd remembered having at one time, and gave me a recipe that has been concocted differently each year since but with two invariables: make it a couple of