RAIN AND OTHER CONCEITS: Well, it’s pouring rain here in our happy little burg, and the wind is gusting up to forty miles an hour, so I am looking out my window as I write this and enjoying the sight of pedestrians trying to shield themselves from the assault of horizontal rain. Horizontal rain is not a phenomenon many people in this neck of the woods are used to dealing with; most people here regard vertical rain as the barely tolerable norm and see no reason why they should accustom themselves to the existence of horizontal rain. Consequently, most of the people passing by my window are holding their umbrellas in the forward position like Roman soldiers holding their shields against a charging Celt, and then occasionally lifting the umbrella over their heads to protect themselves from rain that isn’t falling that way. The gap between the physical reality of horizontal rain and the psychological norm of vertical rain has caused the destruction of three umbrellas and much vile language on just the part of Main Street I can see from my chair. You may not find this particularly funny, of course, but then, I am easily amused.

This leads, somewhat illogically, to the subject of vacation, which I will be taking for the next week. I realize that for the constant viewer the difference between those days that I am working and the ones I am vacationing is, to all extents and purposes, practically nil, since on the days I work I don’t usually write and on those days when I am vacationing I don’t usually write. I am not saying that you will see the difference between the paucity of posts not written when I am working and the paucity of posts not written when I am on vacation, but in the latter case, I have a viable reason for not posting more often, whereas in the former it’s just me being lazy as usual.