Now is the winter of our discontent.

Gonna be a short one today; my Christmas spirit took a bit of a beating yesterday. It was the anniversary of the death of my oldest friend, who left a wife and kids behind. Didn't help that it was the shortest, darkest day of the year---but thank heaven the weather was only cold and not bleak. Of course, we can't ignore the fact that the first day of winter means there are 90 or so more to go.

I also finished an editing job that, while not from hell, may have been from heck. I won't go into telling details, but I will say that it was a nonfiction book, and while the author has an ear for the illustrative anecdote, he also constructs sentences with the care of a man with delirium tremens building a house of cards while wearing oven mitts.

I only had a few days to get it done, including all weekend, and as I was being paid a flat fee rather than an hourly wage, no matter how much time I put in the pay didn't change. And it was such a mess. I kept at it right up to deadline. It put me in that awful position of having to turn in a job that I knew was no good (because the original was just horrible). It injures my reputation, because no one ever blames the author. Unless I'm the author. Then I'm the one who sucks.

Editing is not digging ditches, but it ain't easy money, either.

All that was followed by a nightmare that woke me up at two in the morning and made it hard to settle back to sleep.

So I'm sorry that this is just a kvetch blog today; sometimes winter happens, even in Advent. My apologies, and I hope to be back to my usual goofy self tomorrow.