Dark today with rain in the afternoon. I have this model of fall and winter that says winter starts sometime in November and it's over in February, which means March, my birth month, should be warmer than it really is. Well, winter starts on December 21st, the shortest day of the year. Which means that although my winter's beginning is a month off base, it does start to get lighter now as days progress. (Another gut level misapprehension that the solstice comes in the middle of winter and not the beginning.) This is good. This is very good. I have this idea if I can keep busy enough, fall will fizzle and winter will be halfway over before I notice. Silly me, but you never know. Spring may be sneaking up as we speak.

I still need that week or so off. I did say I was going to take Thursday and Friday of this week off and marked it down on the company calendar, but I looked at Friday and there was the company Christmas party that afternoon, which means it's only a half day's work anyway with all the beer you can drink and Thursday I'm committed to a class on our new web management software and a meeting with the internal web development group. Which I would like to attend. So no four day weekend this weekend . Not surprising. There are stories of Christmas parties past with unlimited bars and shrimp cocktails stacked to the ceiling, bleary eyed fellow workers who left the party together and showed up Monday married and hung over. All those mythical folk have long since left for companies who's stock has made them rich in the interim even after this recent market. Or are these just current urban myths, stories we tell one another nodding our heads, believing them to be true when they're not. Better to believe. Better, perhaps, a good story than a bad truth.

Later, having listened to the concession speech and the conciliation speech. I remember an old Austin exhortation and it somehow seems appropriate: Onward, through the fog.