I’m in the dining room, a little after eight, everyone either asleep or close to asleep. Today was a long day, I suppose, but not without merit.

This morning I woke early, before dawn, but M and the boys preceded me onto the first floor. I stairmastered for thirty minutes while watching the first episode of Buffy’s seventh season. M and the boys hit the back field with the neighborhood kids. I don’t know what they were doing out there, snowballs, snowforts, that sort of thing, I imagine. I emptied the crystal, etc. from the living room cabinets, cleaned the wood, rinsed the crystal, and rearranged it all. M and the boys then gathered up more neighbors and visited the local hill with sleds and snowboards. I guess they did well. I read for a bit and cleaned while they were gone. Later S and I watched football while M and N played Wii and T hung out at a friend’s. I made lasagna rolls for dinner, worked on the computer, and, in a few spare moments while M was picking up T and the other two were upstairs, turned down the lights and listened to Stars of the Lid’s “And The Refinement of the Decline”. I’m trying to find some time to pray, to think, every day. Maybe I’ll keep the lights down low after I finish writing and clear my head. After dinner the boys had quiet time, an unmitigated disaster until I gave N and S specific suggestions (action figures, drawing, reading). They were fine afterwards. I still can’t believe how mean they are to each other. Were my brother and I that mean? Probably. T and I played a quick round of Heroscape, too. We watched Zoey 101 together then read and told stories (that was fun, hadn’t told stories for a while) until they fell asleep.

Five bullet posts, since I haven’t bullet-posted lately:

I read Larry Doyle’s “I Love You, Beth Cooper” over the weekend. Quick read…glad I snagged a copy from the library rather than Borders. The book was good, anyway, a good winter weekend diversion, the kind of book one could read on a plane.

I’ll probably finish “Nova Swing” before I return to “Jane Eyre.” I’m only thirty or so pages away from the end of the former, so I might as well knock it out. I’m trudging through to the end because I read “Light”, and I’m almost done, but I can’t say the sequel is my thing.

I still haven’t watched the BBC doc on E and his father. Maybe I’ll check out the doc this week. I have a copy on my computer.

Netflix Queue…”History Boys” and “Overnight.” I’ll probably get “Superbad” (which I loved) and the last Pirates film from Blockbuster.

Coldest day of the year tomorrow, high of twenty-four. I left the house for all of ten minutes today. Maybe I’ll hit work early. Good night.