… that’s better. I turned off the TV. It’ll turn itself back on at 10:00, so I can watch Numbers. I think it’s a rerun tonight though.

Looks like the neighbors across the alley are stringing lights tonight. Which is nice. I’ve had mine up for several days now, just a simple string around the balcony and down the stairs. Maybe the neighbor has aspirations of winning the association’s decoration contest next week. He doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, and neither do I. Some of the condos have really dressed it up this year. There’s a unit a couple of streets over with bushes that look like a magical train. The wheels turn and stuff. The kind of thing that can make a six year old go completely fruitcake with Christmas glee.

If it seems like I’m kind of vamping here, faking it because I wanted to blog about something and had no ideas at all, that’s about accurate. Last night, as I was kicking back in the tub reading the New Yorker, I was struck stupid with a brilliant idea for a story. But it washed away, as ideas tend to do. So it goes. And tonight I’m mostly looking forward to bedtime. I usually like to stay up, but I’ve got the old Sealy all decked out in wintry flannel sheets, and that’s really going to feel good. I love these little transitions in life, the kind that don’t require medical or funereal ministrations. Just the flannel sheets in winter, the fan blowing on the bed in summer. I am a man easily satisfied by change.

Change is like cologne, a little drop will do it.