times like these that cause one to long for that cabin in the mountains with an enormous stone fireplace, mug of hot cocoa stuffs, blankets and slow wriggling beneath them, to huddle and layer all insular against the elements. ah well. the cabin too difficult to arrange, i'll settle for the blankets and their warm insinuations.

my days are taken with the big fat book middlemarch, which is stunning and which i could not more highly recommend. having read but 500 pages i already feel schooled in the human condition, and that is not nothing but might i also say schooled in the art of prose which is also not nothing. my other activity is the filling out of applications for this and that -- the whole thing has me both excited and anxious for new place & circumstance. i hope for direction, for time, worry about sunshine and the future of us and making wrong decisions but as they say more damage is caused by wrong decision than by indecision and i'll take that as a guiding principle for now, that and noses to grindstones.