A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR: I am going on vacation next week for two weeks so my postings, which are already pretty spotty to begin with, will become even more spotty. I blog at work, something I can get away with because I am not a linker constantly on the lookout for something new to link to, but an essayist of sorts, which sounds a lot like bragging now that I read it, but is more or less true. I write these things out first at home and then bring the text into the office and type it into the computer. I do this after working hours; as these bits don't, as a rule, go on for more than 1,500 words and as I'm a fairly good typist on the computer (hopeless on a typewriter, though) I can do them quickly and not feel like I'm goofing off on the library's time. In any case, as I won't be here (for the most part) there won't be a lot of additions to what I've already got here. I will be back on the 25th, just in time to complain about my birthday the following day, and to see how I, once a flappy bird, have sunk in the TTLB system back into the ranks of the cold-blooded. And no, I am not going anywhere interesting; this vacation will be spent in a series of doctors' offices for the annual monitoring of my already crappy health. With any degree of luck, the doctors will tell me that I will hold together for another year, God willing and the river don't rise.