The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel

Tired. I'm tired of walking up and down escalators that don't work. An escalator can't, in a sense, break -- it instantly turns into a still-usable staircase when it stops running -- but that shouldn't be an excuse for what seems to be close to 50-percent downtime. I'd rather climb an actual set of stairs than a frozen escalator. The variable spacing between the steps makes my legs and feet feel weird. It's as if, with a single step, I'm suddenly several inches taller or shorter. I like to stay the same size, or at least feel that way.

Impressed. My hat is off to the novelist V.C. Andrews, who died in 1986 but has continued to write eight more novels after her death. Her genre: Gothic horror, appropriately enough. Apparently, she had some help with these posthumous thrillers, but still. One has to be quite well-appreciated by one's readers to earn such an extended career. I can't think of another field in which it would be possible (there are no posthumous copy editors, alas), although I did see a very lively looking Marilyn Monroe in a recent perfume commercial.

Amused. One of the softball teams at work is called The Hit Factory. That's almost clever enough to make me want to play. They would have to call it something else, though, like maybe the Unlucky Strikes.