Where Have I Been?

(1) Shoulder Injury: Plus great drugs. Need I say more?

(2) That point in the semester. Much grading, many drafts coming in.

(3) My computer had ailments -- well, not my computer per se. My mouse. I have me an Apple at home, you see, and the mouse went wonky, and in Pork Smith, where I abide, a mouse for an Apple is not a thing one can stroll out and buy. Nope. You either have to drive fifty miles to Fayetteville, which I was not in the mood to do, or order the pup online and have it shipped in, waiting a week for it, or paying a ton for next-day or second-day shipping. Yikes. (I picked door number three, and waited three days.)

(4) Family in town and a couple of parties have eaten up any spare time I might have had.

Result: I have missed everything. I didn't know about the writers' strike. Missed the gender/Clinton issue. Missed about six goofy things Huckabee said. I'm totally behind. But I did do a lot of reading -- I finished Kage Baker's new book, ripped through The Last Days of Summer, and started Rough Music, not to mention rereading Middlemarch and Dracula for the Vic Lit class;also, I've got Richard Russo's new book in the stack (yay!).