Blue Lights.

We were out of coffee here at 27401, that most banal of things to report, lifewise, but it's true anyway, and it leaves the forecast on life support, on tea, but that's alright: we look a bit like London out there, and there's what seems to be a little squally rain on the way in out of the north and west, a fine way to carry us out the other side of a month that'll show us nearly eleven inches of rain before we're said and done, which will be a few short hours from now.

Coming this week, at 8 pm EST to a television near you: most of the old sixties Christmas specials. Charlie Brown. Rudolph. The Grinch. Hanging lights off the front of the house last night with TLK, it occurred to me that I like the season a hell of a lot better than I like the actual day itself. Even if it is a big-boy bike you're getting, a Diamondback without training wheels, there's something about the day that can't ever quite live up to whatever it is there is about November 30 or December 8 or the second Saturday out, going to the mall with your dad to shop for your mom—there's something about all the buildup that's better, something that gives you not quite hope, per se, but perhaps a general softness about the world, a belief, maybe, that as we wheel toward the darkest days of the year, the earth will in fact again tilt back the other way, and that we will warm and light ourselves once more. Or maybe it's just that we here at ANYLF are more inclined to worship at the altar of the solstice, and of weather, than we are anybody else's falderal. No matter: TLK, person extraordinaire, last night co-captained the operation back to the big box well after dark to buy more blue lights. Blue lights were where it was at, he asserted. Blue lights were still what was called for, even after we'd hung all the blue lights I had. So we did—buy more, that is, and hang those up, too—and so kicks off the season, whichever season it may be. Happy birthday, Frosty says, once they do whatever it is they do to him to bring him to life. This is before the tragedy in the greenhouse, of course.


We are home from Thanksgiving. Rescued from it, really. It is nearly December. There are low clouds. It is cool if not cold. Weather is on its way in. It is time for another cup of tea.