Black Gold.

Hey, spring. This is going to send all the fruit trees into bloom, of course, which will call down the gods of late freezes -- except not even, since those gods saw their shadows and went back to sleep for six weeks. These gods will be the gods of timely, seasonal freezes, and all this vastly undeserved glory is bound to extract some kind of price from those dudes. We're not yet in the teens of February, friends. What's important is not to get excited. What's important is to remember how guilty we must feel about all this, how unsettled. What's important is to drive the truck, windows down, in to work anyway.

This was a weekend of built-in bookshelves. The going is slow, but going. If all keeps going this evening, we'll be trimmed out. Then the painting and the, oh, how do you say, the actual shelving. Right now they're just pretty, spendy boxes.

Bought drill bits late last night at Lowe's -- Hitachi's Black Gold brand, because what I need out of my drill bits is a fierceness nonpareil -- and the cashier looked at them, said Black Gold, then said Texas Tea, and then sang, in its entirety, the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies. Double-time. Then I came home and drilled more tiny pilot holes. Slowly.