The Days of the Funk are Numbered

So Sunday evening Dennis told me I needed to get busy or the blog company was going to close me down due to inactivity. True enough. I could excuse myself for being busy, but I doubt I'm busier than anyone else. I could claim sleep deprivation from watching too much of the Olympics, or brain numbness from watching far more political convention coverage than is healthy for any American. I could lament that everything in my daytime calendar has lodged in the "URGENT AND IMPORTANT" category, instead of merely the "Important," but that sounds like whining. Don't get me wrong: I do my fair share of whining, as anyone around me can testify. It's just that no one would want to read about it as well.

The truth is that I have plainly been in a funk. Perhaps it is the sourness of the mortgage market or the wincing price of gasoline. Perhaps it is the thunderous silence of bankruptcies looming or announced for companies or people few dreamed could find themselves in such a predicament. Perhaps it is the miserly interests rates that signal a retreat in the prospects of leisure rather than the advance I would rather see. Perhaps it is the flooding in our state earlier in the summer or the new round of storms this week in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps it is that vague, diffuse sense that all is not right with the world -- that too many things are terribly wrong. Perhaps it is simply my own internal weariness. Or, more likely than anything, bad moods just happen. Unlike most people, summer tends to have that effect on my affect.

But the temperature has been dropping -- autumn is in the air. Scattered occasionally under nearby trees even leaves are starting to fall. Hardy mums will soon be taking the place of geraniums around the neighborhood, high school football scores already dominate the late-night Friday news. Gas prices at the pump have been dropping in recent days, the dollar to Euro exchange rate has been steadily improving over the last week or so...

And Italy is only 16 days away. But who's counting?
So maybe the days of the funk are numbered...
...and I'll trip, again, over something worth blogging about.