Happy Fat Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Night to all you out there in the cybernets and interwebs. I am convinced that the readership of this blog consists of me, myself, and my dad, who has no particular reason to celebrate today, not being a fan of the shroves or the pancakes, but Happy Tuesday to you anyway, Dad. Here in Lancaster, in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, itself smack dab in Central Pennsylvania, today is Fastnacht Day. Mmmmm....fastnachts....[insert drool here]. If you have never had one of these lardicious delights, you're missing out [insert coronary disease joke here].
So what can I squeeze from the old mindgrapes today? I broke my usual morning routine to try to get into the office a little earlier than usual, and that was just a bad idea, as it seems to have thrown off my whole day. I tried to hit the ground running, tripped because of a lack of caffeine, and haven’t really been able to pick myself up since. I consider myself a morning person, but I still need an hour to get acquainted with the morning (I’m a respectable girl after all) before jumping into things.
But onto mindgrapes and squeezing the rich juice from them...I write (I originallly typed “blog” there, but I have decided I am suddenly very anti the word “blog” as a verb, but not “anti” as a full-fledged fix) about the little things because it’s usually the little things that fill our lives. Not that there aren’t big things to grind your teeth over in your sleep (which is one of the little things I started worrying about after I hit the quarter-century mark), and they matter too, and I wish that more news coverage and civil discourse were devoted to the big things, rather than Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears. But big things tend to take over the night through our dreams (or mine, at least) and if I didn’t give space in the waking world to the little things, the chipping away would make me weary. Although I’m sure you would love to hear my well-educated, well-informed opinions on healthcare, the penal and justice systems, social welfare, public education, life, the universe, and everything. We could have a very civil discourse on these and other topics (over high tea, of course), but filing one’s thoughts away in a web-type log is not necessarily conducive to informed opinions and civil discourse. What it is conducive of is rambling and ranting and tangents and attention deficit disorder. Which works out well for me and the little things.