Spate/dearth

I have of late been rather quiet here. This is not for lack of post ideas (and even drafts), but for lack of internet connectivity at home. When my house is put back on the web-o-sphere grid, there will be a great outpouring.

For now, though, like John C. Wright's Paethon, I have realized how much of my mental space is online. Without all that e-maintainance to do, tending my blog gardens, checking on my RSS feeds, ruthlessly trimming to inbox zero, what do I do? I go home and stare at my hands for awhile. Then I cook something. (I've discovered the secret ingredient to delicious pumpkin scones.) Or clean something. Then I go to sleep even earlier than usual -- sometimes 9. Or 8. I have gotten a lot of sleep, without the internet.

Over the weekend, while replenishing my depleted stock of flour and cornmeal, I happened upon peaches being sold by the open box, not the pound. So I bought a box of (carefully examined) peaches. I have eaten peaches at (sometimes as) every meal since then. They are delicious, and juicy, and the challenge for me -- as usual -- is to eat them all before they go bad. As a household of one, this is how I've come to manage my diet: buy very little, and eat it. There is no natural force to gradually diminish leftovers, as there is at home.

A spate of peaches. A dearth of connectivity. And when I do have internet -- that is, now, at the office -- I feel terribly guilty using it for personal maintenance and not research. Hopefully by next week (an EPIC week), we'll be back online. Stay tuned. Big things are coming.


This post's theme word: ophiolatry, "the worship of serpents."

Stoplight macarena

Yesterday as I was walking home, I passed a group of maybe 30 students hanging out at an intersection. At the red light, they spread across the avenue crosswalk in a line and sang and danced the macarena for the cars stopped there. When the light turned green, they gathered back on the streetcorner.

That dance will never die.


This post's theme word is: misoneism, "a hatred or fear of change or innovation."