Hibernation

Yup, it's snowing outside, so it's about time to make my winter hibernation plans. Since I can't make it down to the Florida beach house this year (or any year), I've put on my fleece skirt, made myself some tea and oatmeal and outlined a rough work schedule of one hour on, half hour off to get myself through the day. That's your tax dollars at work folks... at least if you pay property taxes in Chicago it is.

As a good beginning to this hibernation I've already lined my insides with the following:

I might need a colonoscopy after that last one.

This week, while eating and cooking and otherwise making merry, I also finished this book:

Which, of course, enhanced the festivities by adding a dash of guilt and a smattering of disgust at humanity. The book is a series of narratives, delivered to and transcribed by McSweeney's staff, by people who have been affected by the last 30 years or so of fighting in Sudan. It ranges from a graduate student living in the US to young people in refugee camps and on the streets of Cairo to single parents returning to their destroyed homes. Plus, it has about 50 pages of appendices for those of us who are very out of the loop on the whole "current events" issue on account of avoiding the news because it makes us sad, and we're going to eat the spinach and buy the asbestos t-shirts anyway, so why be afraid for our lives while doing it? Anyway, I usually hear the updates on which common household item I'm supposed to avoid sticking in my ear eventually and the rest of it seems like repetitive downers, but I have to admit that this book actually got my attention, and not just because it came free in the mail as a part of the McSweeney's book club. I'd recommend it highly, but that would make me sound like I enjoy the suffering of others, and I'd say everyone should read it, but that would make me sound preachy, so I'll just say "Good book. Yes."

And now the heaters in my office are making a sort of dissonant anti-music kind of sound, so I think I'll go climb into a file cabinet until the robots have swept through and eliminated all their enemies.