Too busy too long

All right, all right, I know I haven't written for a while. I've got my reasons.

Mainly because I get really busy in mid-winter. Like last year, I got really bogged down with my basketball-coverage duties in January, running off three and four nights a week to games during the coldest part of the year. Last week, for instance, we had overnight lows of -31 F and -28 F (-35 and -33 C), and I was out at games four straight nights. No wonder I came down with a cold on Friday.

Good news, though. The cold is nearly over. I know it is; I gave it to my wife.

Also, the subzero weather is over. The entire area was in the throes of massive cabin fever after about two months of unrelenting cold and snow. But we got into the 40s last Sunday. It cooled a bit on Monday, but Tuesday was back in the 40s, and it was mostly sunny Wednesday. When I left for the office after lunch on Wednesday, the porch thermometer read 60 F (16 C), 90 degrees warmer than the week before. Nice!

That means my mid-winter depression is nearly over, too. Some milder weather and a little sun will do that. So, too, will the impending end of basketball season. It means that soon I won't have to spend all those nights away from home. By mid March, I can do what I want in the evening after being in the office all day. That's a nice change, especially since these last few weeks have been so damn hectic and stressful.

My wife's cold arrived the day after we went out for Valentine's Day. We had talked about going out Sunday evening, but my cold was still bothering me a lot, and I had a lot of work on stories that night, anyway.

By Monday night, the paper was all finished, and I didn't have a game. So we went to a local restaurant. Alas, we should have gone earlier. We left at 5, hoping to eat and then get to a movie starting at 6. Fat chance on Valentine's Day. We had to wait. "You'd think it was Mother's Day," I joked to my wife.

After dinner, we went home and watched the first 45 minutes or so of the original version of "True Grit." Then, off to the movies. Our theater is the only one within 50 miles, but for once they had a pretty good film: the remake of "True Grit," with Josh Bridges. My review: They did real well. They didn't try to cookie-cutter the old John Wayne version and put their own stamp on the same story. I liked it a lot. We both did.

I got a Valentine's Day e-card from S and T. They sent me a Victoria's Secret Valentine--mainly consisting of pictures of pretty girls wearing pretty undies, and who's going to complain about that? My friend N didn't send a card, but she wished my wife and me a happy Valentine's Day.

No valentine from my friend B, but that's understandable. She had just spent a long weekend with one of her friends, and this time he was staying at her place--her husband was out of town. (He knows him--remember, they're poly.) We chatted a little on Tuesday, and she said it's a lot different than meeting him in another city.

Forgot her exact words, but she said when she goes back home after a weekend out of town, it's fairly easy to pick up normal life. But after having him in the same house for a few days, it's been a lot harder than normal. Fortunately, they slept in a guest bedroom, not their main bedroom.

I haven't seen B since that one weekend in 2009, and I doubt we will get together during 2011. She has more friends now, and they are easier to visit. So do I, for that matter. And then there's the matter of living thousands of miles apart.

Meanwhile, I am talking with S and T about things we can do once the weather gets nicer and my schedule stops crushing me. N and I will get together more often, too. It's been a long, long winter, and we're all looking forward to nicer weather and spending good times together.

****

In the last few weeks, I started writing several posts but never finished them. I'd write a few paragraphs, promise myself that I would finish it later ... and never did.

One post was about life up here in January, especially if you (like me) aren't into outdoor activities like skiing or hunting or snowshoeing or riding around on snowmobiles ...

It's been a chilly, breezy January, with persistent arctic winds blowing all our snow around into big drifts. We have had plenty of wind lately, and it has whipped the snow into big piles.

I also ought to be looking around for critters, but this is a really rough time of the year for critters--those that aren't hibernating, anyway. The bears are in their winter sleep, so they are doing fine. But the deer ... it's tough on them now. They don't hibernate, and their little pointy feet sink down into the snow. So it's slow going for them, and they have to burn a lot of energy to get from here to there, even though they walk in single file, in each other's footprints.

It's not fun to be a deer during winter. Truly, winter is worse for them than hunting season in fall--because in fall there is plenty of food, and the deer won't starve. If they are unlucky, death from a hunter's shotgun is relatively quick. Death by starvation is anything but.

I also wrote a post that explained I was taking a temporary break from writing blog posts ...

No more words. No more pictures. For a while.

I am worn out, and I think part of that is because I have been worrying so much about keeping up the reports on life (as I see it and/or experience it from my little remote corner of the world). Plus all my work and the other things I am interested in. Like I wrote someone recently, what I need most of all is a 30-hour day and a nine-day week.

Something has to give. For me, it is writing for fun on the blog. It was informally done a while ago. This merely makes it official policy. And it's not a permanent change. Just for a few weeks.

During January, of course, I closely followed the Green Bay Packers' run through the postseason and then winning the Super Bowl in early February. But wouldn't you know it! The weekly paper I work for didn't send me to Dallas to cover it in person ...

Maybe it's just as well I stayed home. It would have been a budget buster, for sure. I was just reading an article that says the cost of a Super Bowl ticket was just about $2,000, and that doesn't include parking. The best, closest parking spots at Cowboys Stadium, according to the article, was over $900. Spots a quarter mile away from the stadium were going for $200. Apparently, they've got money in Texas.

They must. Here are some of the concession stand prices. A 20-ounce Pepsi? That costs $6. Just a 20-ounce bottle of water: $5. 32 ounces of nachos: $9. A hot dog: $6. A dill pickle: $2. A tub of popcorn: $13. A bag of Doritos: $3. A beer or a Smirnoff Ice: $10.

The can of Dr. Pepper I got from the fridge cost a lot less than that.

Those are parts of projects that got abandoned or just forgotten. Life moves on. The worst of winter is over. The Packers won't play again for a long time. And the end of high school basketball season isn't far away. When that happens, the jailer turns the key in the lock and sets me free.

Freedom is a wonderful thing. It's been a long, long time. But pretty soon the times are going to get better.