There’s something gloomy about the light that comes through my studio window this time of year. It takes a full-spectrum bulb, a cheery countenance, and a vast amount of herbal tea to combat it. If I’m outside, walking, the light feels better, but from inside the house, it’s cold and dead.

I hope everyone had who celebrated Thanksgiving had a great one, and that all of us have much to be grateful for. Now that it’s over it seems that Christmas is already looming large. There will even be a real tree this year, thanks to the hauling power of a pickup truck!

I haven’t had an awful lot to say in the past few days, but I apologize for the extended absence. It’s recently been difficult to write at all, but I feel that without this site I lose an important connection with both the world and myself. Bear with me.

I’ve been following the writer’s guild strike (and events leading up to it) pretty closely for the past few weeks. I don’t have a TV, but I do watch a few choice shows. Last year I bought a season pass to Heroes on iTunes. This year, NBC pulled out of iTunes and began offering Heroes on their own site. I know I’d rather pay $1.99 to be able to watch it in the living room, on my projector, without commercials.

Of course, under the current system, the writers of Heroes get nothing regardless of how I watch it. And I guess that’s the point to me; I’m a consumer of their product just as much as a TV owner, and I know a lot of people who are in my boat. There are only going to be more over time, and it doesn’t take a techno-visionary to see it.

And if there’s money to be made by watching or listening to things on the internet, then the people who created those things deserve a share.

I thrive best hermit style
With a beard and a pipe
And a parrot on each side

I’m feeling a lot hermit-y these days. More introverted than usual, even. I’m doing my best to get out, but this is just a general notice that it’s a bit difficult right now.

I now officially own a pickup truck. It’s been a long, strange trip every step of the way, but it’s finally titled and registered in my name. The world’s surliest woman helped me at the RMV, saying a total of 8 words to me the entire time. She not only avoiding eye contact with me, I’m fairly sure she didn’t mange to look at me at all throughout the entire transaction.

Since I’m in Massachusetts, I’m not morally obligated to install a gun rack. I count this as a kindness.

This is too good not to share, almost as good as the FBI going after almanac carriers.

There’s some delightful logic in this. Terrorists sure like falafel, right? Therefore, if you find people that eat a lot of falafel, they’re sure to be terrorists!

The FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

The entire article is here, and is worth reading if only for the unironic use of the word “brainchild.”

I got my cut of recent online sales of Travelog today.

$8.86 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES

This is better than the 24 cents I got last year.

My favorite place to read is sprawled out on a couch. Some people prefer a comfy chair or a table, but a couch is where I do my best reading. Sadly, I haven’t had a couch I could fully stretch out on for my entire adult life.

That is, until today. I’m pleased to announce that behind me in my studio, at this very moment, is a very cushy 3-seat sofa.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read something. Just because I can.

An enigma wrapped in a mystery enclosed in a folder.

My MacBook Pro is feeling sick. I’ve been hoping that all the signs recently have been just quirks, but this afternoon’s system lock had the clunk of finality. Let’s see what AppleCare can do.

EDIT: And it’s going in for repairs. Cross your fingers!

The trees are rioting outside – it’s all sorts of red and orange. I’ve got Pierre Boulez’s Rituel playing on iTunes. It’s one of my favorite pieces of his, very evocative.

I’ve spent the afternoon going through old work emails, making sure I’d caught all the loose ends. For the most part I had, but there are one or two things lingering from months ago that fell through the cracks. Now it’s time to dig them out, dust them off and make them right.

There’s something about this sort of work that creates an illusion of control. I’ve got lists, I’ve got a plan, I’ve got it together. A second or two of reflection shatters it, but it’s not a bad way to be now and then. It helps with the work; larger picture musings of how our lives are nothing but uncertainties and loose ends is not useful in this circumstance. Not a time for big picture thinking, but the trick of it is how to gather loose ends without making the focus too tight, and thereby creating even more loose ends.