Thursday, November 8, 2012

Post Election Depression: I Need A Doctor!

It is a cold November day. The snow is falling and the temperature is dropping. Right now, at four in the afternoon Mountain Time, it is 31 degrees Fahrenheit. For my European friends, that's about minus one Celsius. Brisk. Xander, Oma and Opa just finished our afternoon tea. Amazingly enough, we just discovered that Xander likes tea, really. It's "Ginger Snappish," and aided by a bit of almond milk and sweetener, but it's real tea and he is very much a part of the Montana tea contingent. Wintertime, the tea is hot. Summertime, it's usually iced. This is our second snow of the season. It is not going to amount to a heck of a lot of snow (in the higher mountains, on the passes, it could be significant), but very low temperatures will keep what does fall on the ground. The earth is dressing up for the Winter Ball. One season has passed, and another begins. It seems like only yesterday the World Series was on. It was only yesterday that our new President turned out to be our old President, much to the relief of many and the consternation of a few. This blog is not going to be about politics. It's about filling the void after election night, especially up here where the sky grows dark before five pm and the snow is falling gently but steadily outside. After all, the World Series was a major television event. Election coverage had us glued to the set. Now the television has reverted to the wasteland it was before, noisily repetitive where the best things to watch on most nights are re-runs of NCIS, the Mentalist and Castle, while I await the next arrival in my Netflix queue. I know I ought to join the 21st Century and learn how to do direct streaming. It would make the wait a great deal less weighty. But I am of that generation somewhat bewildered by modern technology. I have not caught up, and I doubt that I ever will. I know how to use a computer for some things, a DVD (upgraded to BluRay), even a cell phone. But I find I am getting by without an iPad, tweets and instant messaging. I know I am handicapping myself in the area of getting me out there to a wider reading public, but I am lodged in my comfort zone where I am cozy warm, and it's snowing outside. I don't need Facebook to tell me that. So I plow along. With a snow shovel, not an actual plow. I use a keyboard with relative ease, but the typewriter is not far away and I still use pen and paper for sketching out many ideas and assembling outlines. I still use snail mail, even when it snows. You know what they used to say about letter carriers -- neither rain nor snow nor dead of night, blah blah blah. In Salinas I had to deliver mail only one time when it was snowing, in 31 years. I did deal with earthquakes and flooding and torrential downpours, but never the powdery white stuff. I deal with that now, mostly by watching it fall. But watching snow fall is not enough to keep me busy. I could read a book -- or write one -- but what I want is compelling television! I look at the schedule and search desperately for the next great media event. When is Doctor Who coming back?

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