Whenever there is a longish...

...gap in the postings here, you can pretty well count on it being due to a mental vacuum 'chez moi'. It's certainly not because I'm doing something else that is more fun...would that it were so but it isn't.

My posting lapses are more likely because I'm wrestling with what I want this blog to be. I'll have visions of being one of those serious current events commentators at one point then I'll read the wonderfully funny work of a writer like Heather at Dooce and think that's the direction I want to go in. Yesterday morning I got into a political discussion again. On my way to the office afterwards I realized that I had gotten all heated up again and I realized that I just don't have the quick "think on my feet" tools for that kind of exchange. That led me to the thought that it really wouldn't make any difference anyway because the current administration and party in power has a death grip on the process of governing and has co-opted all three branches of the government. I'm sixty years old and I just don't have the time for it anymore.

So, I'm going to leave all that stuff alone from now on. Doug Thompson and others are much better equipped than I for that arena. The best thing for me to do is to read them, which I regularly do, and try not to let what they observe and say depress me any more than is absolutely necessary. That said, I'll probably still take the occasional verbal pot shot at the occasional 'inside the Beltway nere-do-well' but I'm not going to let the surreal world of Washington DC be what this little slice of the blogoshpere (if you hate that word as much as I do please forgive me for using it) is all about.