Just in case you needed another reason not to go to school in New Jersey (Princeton is too expensive, and Rutgers – which has become a mediocre football team during these SU football dark ages, and whose “fans” somehow think it’s become a powerhouse, all due respect to James Gandolfini – sucks), a shooting at an off-campus party near Seton Hall has left one dead and five wounded. My guess is that the shooter’s father is in “waste management.” In a sign of the times, a witness to the shooting was interviewed “by BlackBerry instant messenger on condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety while the shooter remained at large. She said she was too upset to talk over the phone.” Funny, but to an old guy like me, it’s much easier to speak than it is to push those tiny little buttons on the phone. Some comedian – can’t recall who it was – once said that, had they invented texting first, and then voice, people would be flipping out at how great voice is. “It’s great! You don’t have to type shit out.. You just talk!

Otherwise, it was a mildly productive weekend for me. I got in some quality tractor time (which, in spite of what Granny said, is really on the level of landscaping equipment, not farm equipment; you’ll have to excuse her, though. She grew up in New York City, and calls “the woods” the “forest”), got my laundry done (that reminds me, I still need to get my socks out of the dryer), and finished off another window (assuming “finishing” doesn’t include painting). Not a whole lot, but I now have enough material to do a few more windows (I hope), and, with four more to go, I see some light at the end of the tunnel. At least as far as the windows are concerned. As for everything else that needs to be done around here, there is no end (or light) in sight.

But now it’s time to disengage my brain (not the thinking part, so much, but the parts that at one time held all my dreams and aspirations), so that I can pretend to be a good little happy idiot consumer citizen taxpayer.

Fourteen more years to go.